page_title: Southall railway station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Southall railway station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Up freight passing Southall Station. View westward, towards Reading etc.; ex-Great Western main line, Paddington to the West. The train, a Class D partially-fitted freight, is on the Up Relief line - and evidently being admired. The locomotive is BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 No. 92224.
context_page_description: Southall is a railway station on the Great Western main line in Southall, London, England. It is in Travelcard Zone 4 and passenger services are provided by Great Western Railway from London Paddington and by TfL Rail to Heathrow Airport. It is 9 miles 6 chains down the line from Paddington and is situated between Hanwell to the east and Hayes & Harlington to the west.
  The station is managed by TfL Rail in preparation for Crossrail. It is estimated that in Autumn 2021, the TfL Rail service will be re-branded as the Elizabeth line.
context_section_description: The Great Western Railway opened Southall railway station on 1 May 1839, nearly one year after it opened its first railway line on 4 June 1838, between London Paddington and Maidenhead Riverside (the latter now known as Taplow). The Brentford Branch Line to Brentford Dock was opened for freight in 1859; a passenger service ran on the branch from 1860 until 1942, using the unnumbered platform at the south of the station (the line serving this platform is now only used as a relief line). From 1 March 1883 to 30 September 1885 (when the service was discontinued as uneconomic) the District Railway ran trains between Mansion House and Windsor which called at the station. The goods platforms  opened as part of the original station; they were closed and dismantled in 1967.
  Southall station has bilingual station signage, owing to the large Punjabi community in the local area. Station signs on the platforms bear "Southall" and also "ਸਾਊਥਹਾਲ" in Gurmukhī, a script commonly used for the Punjabi language. In 2007, following issues raised by other ethnic groups in the area, First Great Western announced it would review the signage. The bilingual signs were kept, and they are still displayed at the station. It is one of the relatively few stations in England to have bilingual signage, others being Wallsend (Latin), Hereford (Welsh), and St Pancras International, Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International (all French).
caption: Up freight passing Southall Station in 1961
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