A pumping station was built on Portland Road to create a vacuum in a continuous pipe located centrally between the rails.

The Norwood Junction railway crash occurred on 1 May 1891, when the cast-iron bridge over Portland Road fractured under an express train from Brighton to London.

The LB&SCR goods shed built in 1865 remains in place, now used as railway offices.

The object was to terminate some additional services arriving via Crystal Palace which would otherwise have needed to go on to Beckenham Junction to terminate, thus obviating unnecessary occupation of the 1+3⁄4 miles (2.8 km) of single bi-directional line east of Birkbeck Junction and also save a carriage set.

To achieve the change the lead to the down spur at Bromley Junction would have been being removed to the up line and a facing crossover put into place west of it.

Despite safety problems for the user-operated level crossing into the track maintenance depot on the former steam shed site (because of restricted sighting under Goat House bridge) having apparently been resolved, the changes have been postponed until the work at London Bridge is complete.

This is mainly because it was judged that the cost did not justify the change, at least until a general renewal of the signal and control installation is undertaken.

During peak hours, some trains between London Bridge and Caterham & Tattenham Corner do not stop at this station.

Windrush line (London Overground) The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is:[13][14] London Overground services at Norwood Junction are operated using Class 378 EMUs The LB&SCR constructed a large marshalling yard to the south of the station during the 1870s, extended in the early 1880s.

Because of the narrow nature of the site they were laid in clusters of six to eight, one beyond another, with the lead to each forming an individual headshunt.

[15] With dwindling freight traffic the yard fell into disuse by the 1980s and the tracks were relaid to accommodate an enlarged Selhurst Depot.

The Southern Railway opened a five-road motive power depot with a 65 ft (19.8 metre) turntable in 1935, to serve the marshalling yard.

The project includes the lengthening of platforms, station remodelling, new railway infrastructure (e.g. viaducts) and additional rolling stock.

"Norwood Junction gain[ed] an all-day-long Thameslink service to Bedford via Blackfriars and St Pancras, with two trains per hour to Epsom via Sutton" and timetables will continue being expanded and adjusted into 2019.

The proposals form a key part of the wider plans to unblock the Croydon bottleneck, but they would also have benefits as a standalone project, helping to improve reliability and run more frequent services.

Proposals are for the station to be constructed entirely within the railway boundary, and Network Rail would seek consent for these changes through the usual planning process.

Over the months and years ahead Network Rail will continue to make the case for investment in the Brighton Main Line railway 2020.

It is from this station that Jonas Oldacre takes his train to London Bridge in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" (1903).