Camden Road railway station in the London Borough of Camden, north London, is operated by London Overground. It is on the North London line and in Travelcard Zone 2. The first Camden Road station was opened by the North London Railway in 1850 on the east side of what is now St. Pancras Way. It was renamed Camden Town on 1 July 1870, but closed on 5 December the same year when it was replaced by the current station, a short distance to the west. The station is at the corner of Royal College Street and Camden Road. Designed by Edwin Henry Horne, it opened as Camden Town by the North London Railway on 5 December 1870, but was renamed Camden Road on 25 September 1950 to avoid confusion with the London UndergroundNorthern line which had opened in 1907. Thus, between 1907 and 1950, there were two stations called Camden Town. It remains Horne's only station still operating as such. The present Camden Town London Underground station is 450 metres to the southwest of this station. It is one of the few railway stations in England in which there is a police station. In addition to the frequent local passenger service, the station is a busy location for freight traffic due to its proximity to the junctions linking the North London line to both the West Coast Main Line at Camden Junction and the East Coast Main Line at Copenhagen Junction. The former is particularly well used by container trains from the deep water ports at Felixstowe and Tilbury to various terminals in the Midlands and North West of England; it also carried a passenger service until 1992.
Services
To allow four-car trains to run on the London Overground network, the North London line between and closed in February 2010, and reopened on 1 June that year, in order to install a new signalling system and to extend 30 platforms. After the reopening the work continued until May 2011 with a reduced service and none on Sundays. The typical weekday service in trains per hour is:
6 eastbound to via. Some early morning and late night trains start or terminate here.
There is now no normal passenger service on the line from Camden Road to Willesden Junction Low Level via Queens Park, though the route can be used if the line via Hampstead Heath is blocked for any reason.
In the future there may be a walking connection to and from King's Cross. The Camden Highline is a proposed public park and garden walk transforming a disused section of the North London Line between the two stations. A community group of the same name is proposing to bring back the 0.75-mile-long railway into public use as an elevated linear park and greenway. The project was envisioned by a geographer, Oliver O'Brien, and promoted by Camden Town Unlimited. In the summer of 2017 a crowdfunding campaign raised £64k using the Spacehive platform and received 314 donations including the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan who said: "This innovative project has the potential to become a real asset for Camden and is a great example of a local community taking an idea and garnering support in order to make it a reality. I look forward to seeing it develop." The project started fundraising the construction costs in August 2019.
