The station was apparently constructed from 8679 on land purchased from Pulney Andy, a noted scientist and medical doctor.

northern entrance to this railway station is on the arterial Poonamallee High Road in Chennai city.

History says that the station was actually a fort, called the Egmore Redoubt, similar to Leith Castle, which is a part of Santhome.

[4] The station building was constructed on a 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) land, for which 1.8 acres (0.73 ha) was acquired from S. Pulney Andy, an English physician, who, in his letter to the 'Collector of Madras,' initially refused to sell his property owing to the difficulty with which he had purchased and developed the property.

After acquiring the land, the SIR invited Henry Irwin, CIE (chief engineer), who did much of latter day Indo-Saracenic in Madras, and E. C. Bird, company architect, to design a building to suit the traffic need.

[5] The station became the major metre-gauge terminal for Chennai after the formation of Southern Railway in 1951 and served as the gateway to the southern Tamil Nadu, chiefly due to its acting as a connecting point for passengers from the south to the Chennai Central for boarding north-, west- and east-bound trains.

The old-fashioned, cramped station had done duty for many years as terminus for the South Indian Railway.

"[5] The signal cabin at the station was opened in 1935, when the suburban line between Madras Beach and Tambaram was electrified.

[10] A new suburban station building was opened in November 2004 when the Tambaram–Beach broad-gauge section became fully operational.

[5] In 2004, construction of a second entry to the station on the Poonamallee High Road side began at a cost of ₹11.53 crore (US$1.3 million).

In December 2012, Southern Railway awarded contract to a new agency with a 43-member team taking charge of upkeep of zone II.

[13] Contracts for cleaning Chennai Egmore station has been awarded for a period of 3 years from 2010 for a value of ₹2.05 crore (US$240,000).

Both the entrances has MTC bus routes passing through them and have pre-paid taxi and autorickshaw counters.

The suburban platforms are covered by the ₹40 crore (US$4.6 million) Integrated Security Surveillance System (ISSS) project implemented in 2012.

The project, implemented jointly by the Southern Railways and HCL Infosystems, includes installation of CCTV cameras that would record visuals around the clock and store the data for 30 days, with the footage transmitted and stored using an Internet Protocol system.