The Railway Tavern, Tulse Hill, SE27

A surprisingly large pub given the small frontage, but it extends back a long way and even has a garden along the side. It is still painted in very dark colours, brightened up with odd bits of lighting. No cask ale - three T-bars carry fairly mainstream stuff, with a few craft included from Brixton etc. Very much geared up for eating, with most tables reserved for later on. The menu appeared to be Indian.

This large pub, situated outside Tulse Hill station, has a large opened out interior that only hints at its former, multiple room layout. The room has dark wood floorboards and matching panelling in places, which, when combined with the dark colour scheme the rest of the room has been painted in, not to mention the low level lighting employed within, makes this a very gloomy and dark pub, even on one of the hottest days on record, as it was when I visited. You enter to a sizeable space full of tables and chairs, with high tables and stools to the front and some pews through the centre. The servery is sited on the rear wall with a dark wood panelled counter and bar back, plus a coffee station just around the corner. A gutted fireplace to the left has a TV screen above it which was showing live cricket and there was a lot of promotional material covering the walls whilst the windowsills were full of depressing looking, wilted flowers. The pub runs further back down the right-hand side, where some nice banquette seating is available. From here, you have access to a split-level covered garden area which was being well utilised on my visit. The top section has table football and pool, with long benches to sit along, whilst the lower section has metal flooring, lots of tables and chairs, a pinball machine and its own card-only bar. This in turn takes you out to the patio garden which has loads more seating, some of which doubles back on itself to run along one side of the pub. There were just two handpulls in action when I arrived, dispensing Hardy & Hanson Bitter and canopy Sun Ray. The latter was charged at £4.50 a pint and was suffering very much from the extreme temperatures – difficult to know whether beer quality would be of a higher standard on a day with weather more representative of the British Isles. This isn’t too bad for a station-side pub, with the nice, well-appointed beer garden being the main draw. I quite liked the internal décor, but it was too gloomy and a marginally higher wattage bulb or two would make all the difference. The jury remains out regarding the beer quality, but this isn’t a bad place to stop off whilst waiting for a train.

The Railway Tavern is situated just outside the exit from Tulse Hill station. This is a decent enough looking pub,once inside there is a roughly square shaped room with the bar facing,the room is bare boarded,the seating bench type and normal tables and chairs,plus a couple of settee's to the front,there is a DJ rig to the rear right. There were five real ales on the bar,i had a drink of Black Sheep Golden Sheep which went down well after the journey down here from Nottingham,the other beers were Purity UBU,Sharps Atlantic,Hobgoblin and Doom Bar. The pricing was very expensive with my half of Golden Sheep costing £2.50 the most expensive drink of the day on my crawl round this area of South London. I quite liked the pub but the background music was crap,an added bonus is that it was open just after 11am. Pub visited 16/4/2016

£4.50 for a pint of watery Sharps Atlantic (4.2%)? Since when did Tulse Hill warrant higher than West End prices? No. Just WRONG!

Official site of Railway Tavern - www.therailwaytulsehill.co.uk

Official site of Railway Tavern - www.therailwaytulsehill.co.uk