Kensington and Richmond line of the LSWR

The Kensington and Richmond line was a railway in West London, England. It was built by the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), which already had a main line to Richmond from London. The Kensington line was chiefly a defensive measure to limit the incursion of rival railways into LSWR territory. It ran from Kensington on the West London Railway, by way of Hammersmith, Turnham Green, Gunnersbury and Kew; it opened in 1869. It had a separate station at Richmond, in keeping with the LSWR intention of preventing competitors from easily obtaining running powers to go further into the LSWR area.

Nevertheless, several competing companies ran passenger train services into Richmond over part of the line, and the Midland Railway developed an important route for the supply of house coal to the developing suburbs served. In 1877 the Metropolitan District Railway connected to the Kensington line at Hammersmith, and ran an increasingly intensive passenger service to Richmond. From 1879 the District operated to Ealing, and soon the volume of its train service swamped the capacity of the shared route section, from near Hammersmith to Turnham Green. When the District Railway electrified its train services in 1905, it was obvious that line capacity was overwhelmed, and the line was quadrupled from 1911, the District Railway being allocated a dedicated double track.

The LSWR had almost exclusive use of the other double track, but its own service, now seen by the public as inferior, was declining steeply, and in 1916 it was withdrawn completely.