London Waterloo Railway Station
London Waterloo is one of the main train stations in London and a major transport hub. It is located in the London Borough of Lambeth and is named after the nearby Waterloo Bridge . The station facility in Travel Zone 1 consists of four interconnected parts; the actual main train station, the former Eurostar terminal Waterloo International , the spatially separated Waterloo East station and the underground subway station of London Underground . In 2013, 95.937 million passengers used the station.
Waterloo Central Station
Waterloo Central Station was opened on July 11, 1848 by the London and South Western Railway (L & SWR). The original plans were for a through station that would have enabled trains to run into the City of London . In the end, however, only a terminal station was built . At the beginning the name was Waterloo Bridge Station , after the nearby bridge , which in turn was named after the Battle of Waterloo , which was successful for England . In 1886 the name was changed to Waterloo Station to adapt to common usage.
Over time, the station became more and more confusing and dilapidated, so that the company decided to demolish the entire system and rebuild it. The complexity of the system has been the subject of numerous derisive allusions in books and plays. For example, in Jerome K. Jerome's novel Three Men in a Boat, none of the participants knows the exact platform, the exact time or even the destination.
In 1900 the construction of the new station began with 21 tracks and a 244 meter long transverse hall. The work continued with interruptions until 1922. During the Second World War , the station was badly damaged. A little anecdote is that Waterloo used to be the starting point of the daily "Funeral Express" to Brookwood Cemetery , 30 miles away . Trains with coffins left the Necropolis station just outside the main hall. However, this was destroyed in 1941 and not rebuilt after the end of the war.
After the privatization of the British railways in the 1990s, the entire system came into the possession of the infrastructure company Railtrack , and in 2002 it was transferred to its successor Network Rail . The trains run to the southern suburbs of London and the south-west of England and are mainly operated by the railway company South West Trains .
The station is the theme of the 1967 pop song Waterloo Sunset by the English band The Kinks . This song was voted one of the most beautiful songs about London in a British magazine.
Waterloo Station is the location of a significant chase scene in the agent thriller The Bourne Ultimatum , in which the leading actor Matt Damon plays the role of the secret agent of the same name and persecuted by the CIA.
Waterloo International
The Waterloo International train station is right next to the actual main train station. Its five platform tracks are numbered 20 to 24. In the two-story station hall (including parking facility), the Eurostar trains to Belgium and France departed from November 14, 1994 to November 13, 2007 . The station was built from 1990 according to plans by the architecture firm Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners and cost 130 million pounds . The station's architecture has received widespread praise and received several awards when it opened, including the Royal Institute of British Architects ' Building of the Year award and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture . Due to the length of the reception hall and the incoming Eurostar trains, it was necessary to make the structure of the roof flexible to compensate for the air pressure. For this reason, elements are attached to the outer abutments of the roof with which the roof can be raised and lowered vertically up to 20 cm in segments.
Since the High Speed One was completed in 2007, Eurostar trains have been running to St Pancras International station , and Waterloo International has been closed. The station fell under the jurisdiction of the British Department of Transport, which had to decide on its further use. Possible variants were the conversion into an office and shopping center or the handover to South West Trains for the express trains of the South Western Main Line to Weymouth .
In December 2011, the then Minister of Transport, Justine Greening, announced the reopening of platform 20 for national traffic in 2014. Since October 2013, this track has been used by passenger trains when other parts of the station are overcrowded. The final opening for scheduled traffic was planned for May 2014. In March 2014, South West Trains and Network Rail announced that tracks 21 and 22 would be operational again by the end of the year.
On September 6, 2014, the British Minister of Transport, Claire Perry, announced that the opening date for all platform tracks was 2017.
Waterloo East
→ See Waterloo East station
Waterloo East is an operationally independent through station east of the actual main station. Access is via a pedestrian bridge. Southeastern trains run from Charing Cross station to the south coast and Kent .
Metro station
→ See Waterloo (London Underground)
One of the most important transfer stations for the London Underground is located deep below the Central Station . The Bakerloo Line , Jubilee Line , Northern Line and Waterloo & City Line operate here . The Waterloo & City Line, often jokingly referred to as The Drain , was the first underground railway at Waterloo Station and was opened on August 8, 1898 by a subsidiary of L & SWR. The Bakerloo Line opened its platforms on March 10, 1906, followed by the Northern Line on September 13, 1926. The Jubilee Line, whose platforms were put into operation on November 20, 1999, was the provisional conclusion.
See also
- List of train stations in London
- Traffic in London
- Teesside Airport Station , the station at the other end of the station usage list
Individual evidence
- ^ Estimates of station usage. (Excel, 1.1 MB) Office of Rail Regulation, 2014, accessed on July 28, 2014 (English).
- ^ Few passengers and trains but Waterloo's tunnel vision wins award for elegance , The Guardian , December 2, 1994
- ↑ Waterloo International: one of five platforms to reopen in 2014. London SE1 community website, December 23, 2011, accessed on July 23, 2014 (English).
- ^ Eurostar platform returned to London commuters. The Telegraph, December 28, 2011, accessed July 23, 2014 .
- ^ First Significant Step In Re-Opening Waterloo International Terminal. South West Trains, October 23, 2013, accessed July 23, 2014 .
- ↑ £ 5m to bring Waterloo International rail platforms back into use. London SE1 community website, October 23, 2013, accessed July 23, 2014 .
- ^ Waterloo International: new bridge built across 'orchestra pit'. London SE1 community website, June 24, 2014, accessed July 23, 2014 .
- ↑ Waterloo International fully open for local trains 'in 2017'. London SE1 community website, September 6, 2014, accessed May 29, 2015 .
Web links
| Previous station | National Rail | Next train station | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| final destination |
South West Trains suburban trains |
Vauxhall | ||
| final destination |
South West Trains express trains on the South Western Main Line |
Clapham Junction or Surbiton or Woking |
||
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 9 ″ N , 0 ° 6 ′ 47 ″ W.