In 1833 an Act of Parliament granted the L&GR the rights to build a 4-mile-long (6.4 km) viaduct from the south end of London Bridge to Greenwich and to run trains along it.

[5] Perhaps not surprisingly given the station's physical limitations, only a month after it was opened there was a fatal accident when passenger Daniel Holmes was run over by a train.

A number of passengers who had already boarded the southbound train were injured and Holmes was killed instantly when Millender's runaway engine struck him.

The accident was witnessed by George Walker, the L&GR's Resident Director, who subsequently wrote of the difficulties that his staff experienced in keeping people off the tracks.

This changed in March 1838 when the company's directors ordered trains to stop at Spa Road hourly throughout the day and reserved half a carriage for passengers to and from the station on Sundays and holidays.

The company came under pressure to reopen Spa Road station, as competition from the railway had caused the demise of a horse-drawn coach service from Bermondsey to Deptford.

This involved moving the access staircase to the north side of the viaduct, building a waiting and booking office room in the arches and constructing a shed over the line.

The following February another life was lost at Spa Road when a man named Birmingham suffered a fatal injury in the station.

A third-class passenger was killed on 1 April 1850 when he climbed part-way out of his open carriage and hit his head on the shelter's projecting roof as his Greenwich-bound train passed through the station.

The ticket collections meant that up trains had to stand there for some considerable time, close to the parapet wall and perfectly visible from street level.

One regular traveller, Alfred Rosling Bennett, later recalled, Gangs of children made it a practice, especially on summer evenings, without any apparent hindrance from the police, to attend every train and, standing at the junction of Rouel Road with Frean Street, to shout in chorus with a sort of cadence, "Throw down your mouldy coppers!"

The chorus was repeated incessantly until the train moved on, unless coppers, mouldy or otherwise, arrived and then there would be a glorious tussle of boys and girls in desperate strife for the prize.

The station arches and the land in front of them were redeveloped into a light industrial estate behind a block of flats, accessed via Priter Road.

[14] Parts of the station still exist; platform remnants are visible from trains travelling between Deptford or New Cross and London Bridge, and can easily be seen in satellite imagery.

[12] On 8 January 1999, when two commuter trains collided and derailed in the Spa Road Junction rail crash, some passengers had to be evacuated through the old station.