The station was opened by the District Railway on 3 June 1889 on an extension from Putney Bridge station to. The extension was built by the London and South Western Railway which, starting on 1 July 1889, ran its own trains over the line via an eastward-facing loop that joins the to main line. The section of the District line from Putney Bridge to Wimbledon was the last part of the line to be converted from steam operation to electric. Electric trains began running on 27 August 1905. Regular passenger services between Waterloo and Wimbledon through East Putney were ended by the Southern Railway on 4 May 1941, although the line remained in British Rail ownership until 1 April 1994 when it was sold to London Underground for the nominal sum of £1. Until the sale, the station was branded as a British Rail station. The spur line between Wandsworth Town and East Putney was reduced to single track in the 1980s. The route from Wimbledon to Wandsworth Town is still used by South Western Railway for empty stock movements and occasional service train diversions, as well as three daily South Western Railway services which run to and from Waterloo via the route in the early hours of the morning so South Western Railway services pass through East Putney station on a daily basis, but without stopping. There are very infrequent movements of Network Rail engineering trains and light engine movements through the station as well.
Station layout
The junction between the District line tracks and what is now the National Rail loop to the main line is immediately to the south of the station. Two pairs of tracks run through the station giving it a narrow Y-shaped arrangement with a shared central island platform and two separate platforms across the tracks for opposite directions. The street-level station entrance and buildings lie between the two arms of the Y. The isolated National Rail platform is disused and overgrown, but the National Rail platform on the central island is in working order. Although it is not served by regular trains it is very occasionally used for terminating services from Wimbledon in connection with engineering works. A barrier has been built on the central island platform across the part of the platform that forks off to the north-east and forms the right arm of the Y. The station has four staircases. The one to the disused National Rail platform is not accessible to the public, but the two up to the island platform are both in service. The National Rail connection to the Clapham Junction to line remains in place and is still used periodically to transfer trains – usually Empty Coaching Stock – to the Wimbledon Traincare depot. It is also used periodically when the normal South Western Main Line route is blocked / unavailable between Wimbledon and Clapham Junction. Until 1990, the eastbound tracks of the branch formerly crossed over the tracks of the Clapham Junction line via a bridge north of this station, and then ran parallel with the main line on a viaduct for some distance before merging with the tracks at Point Pleasant junction to the east of Putney Bridge Road. This link is no longer used and connections are made by the former westbound branch track which operates as a single line. The main deck of the disused viaduct has been removed although the central piers and the abutments of the viaduct remain.
East Putney was a proposed stop on the Chelsea-Hackney Line. It was envisaged that the station's District line service would have been replaced by the new line.
