Waterloo International
Boring of the Channel Tunnel commenced on 15th December 1987, but previously, in 1985, the specification for a new international passenger terminus in the capital was finalised. The new station had to meet the following criteria:
· Be close to Central London
· Have the capacity to handle a total of four international train paths every hour (outbound and inbound combined)
· Have such length that its platforms could accommodate trains comprising twenty-vehicles
· Have first-rate public transport links
One existing site that met most of the above requirements was the country’s largest terminus, Waterloo. As a result of a rebuild completed by the London & South Western Railway in March 1922, the station was formed of two distinct sections which essentially housed standalone operations. On the north western side of the terminus were those platforms dedicated to Windsor services, Nos. 16 to 21. These were housed within a ridge-and-furrow extension added to the original Waterloo station during 1884/1885, and this was the only remnant of the pre-1922 site. All other services used platform Nos. 1 to 20 underneath the main overall roof, the latter comprising dimensions of 540-feet by 520-feet. Proposals outlined wholly abolishing platforms 16 to 21, replacing these with four new platform surfaces within the ‘’main line’’ part of the station, and re-signalling the track layout to feed the Windsor lines into the 1922 trainshed. Demolition works would be extensive and involve the following:
· Obliteration of a multitude of brick arches along the station’s north western perimeter. Many of these had been let-out to businesses, which were now required to relocate.
· Abolition of Waterloo signal box. This had been commissioned by the Southern Railway on 18th October 1936, and originally comprised 309 miniature levers.
· Removal of the electrically-operated Armstrong Lift on the northern side of the station, used to convey railway vehicles to and from the underground caverns of the Waterloo & City line. Early on in the design stage, consideration had been given for its possible retention.
· Removal of the 1885 trainshed.
· Removal of the cab road in-between platform Nos. 11 and 12.
· Abolition of the ‘’Village’’ block. This was a two-storey-high structure, separating ‘’Windsor’’ and ‘’Main Line’’ platforms, but built within the scope of the 1922 trainshed. When commissioned by the LSWR, it housed staff rooms, the Station Master’s quarters, and the lost property office.
· Widening of the railway viaduct south of the station and the building of a single-track link between Waterloo and ‘’Chatham’’ lines (Nine Elms Flyover).
Work began in 1989, first by the demolition of the aforementioned cab road and the insertion of an additional pair of platform faces serving a double-track. At the southern end of the cab road had also existed a loading dock served by a pair of short sidings. These modifications required completion before the total closure of the ‘’Windsor’’ platforms, to provide the ‘’Main Line’’ station with enough capacity to deal with the transferred services. By July 1990, the ''Windsor'' platforms had been boarded off from the rest of Waterloo station. On 30th September of the same year, Waterloo signal box closed, and control was passed to a temporary panel. Dismantling of the 1885 trainshed and demolition of the supporting brick arches formally began when the then Transport Minister, Roger Freeman, ceremonially used a pneumatic drill on that side of the station on 11th December 1990. Demolition of the ‘’Village’’ block permitted the insertion of a further two platform faces underneath the extent of the main trainshed.
The project was priced at £100 million and essentially, the new terminal structure would consist of four levels: platforms; departures / arrivals; customs and immigration; car park (basement). The platforms would be protected by a distorted curved roof designed by architects ''Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners'', measuring a width of 55-metres at its widest point, reduced to 35-metres after narrowing at the ''country end''. By British standards, the international trains to be accommodated here were incredibly long, comprising of no less than twenty vehicles (including power cars), thus the platform lengths were impressive:
· Platform 20: 396 metres
· Platform 21: 402 metres
· Platform 22: 411 metres
· Platform 23: 421 metres
· Platform 24: 428 metres
Foundations of the
terminal were deemed complete by July 1991. In the meantime, construction of
trainshed roof components was taking place in Wetherby, West Yorkshire, by
appointed manufacturers ‘’Westbury Tubular Structures Ltd’’. Assembly of the
metal framework was subcontracted to ‘’Bovis Construction Ltd’’, and the
trainshed was to be clad with 20,000 square metres of glass.
The international station was formally completed on 17th May 1993, but
international passenger services did not commence operation until 14th November
1994. The building cost of the station had since risen to £130 million and when
''Eurostar'' services first began, the station accounted for just eight pathways
in and out of Waterloo station as a whole, split between trains to and from
Paris and Brussels - this later rocketed to fifty international pathways to and
from the terminus. The international station was subsequently transferred to
London & Continental Railways in 1996 during privatisation, with a book value of
£136 million; the domestic station had become part of Railtrack on 1st April
1994, the latter organisation being floated on the London Stock Exchange on 20th
May 1996. With the confirmed relocation of international trains to north of the
Thames, at St Pancras, consideration was at first given to keeping the present
Waterloo International station active, operating approximately a third of
Eurostar trains out of there. However, the cost of maintaining two station hubs
was deemed too great, and Waterloo was scheduled to cease serving Eurostar
services on 13th November 2007. It was announced that the station would transfer
from London & Continental Railways to Government ownership, in exchange for the
new maintenance depot at Temple Mills. Since the initial announcement outlining
the closure of Waterloo International, two schemes in particular came to the
forefront of deciding what to do with the structure: that of either converting
it into a shopping centre, or allowing domestic services to make use of much
needed platform capacity. The latter option was eventually settled on.
In November 2007, the Government confirmed that it would be over a year until
the first domestic services could use the vacated international station
platforms. The works required for the conversion operation are extensive, and
these include the demolition of the Nine Elms Flyover, which links the station
with the ''Chatham'' main line. A Department for Transport report concluded that
sufficient capacity to run scheduled services over this connection was not
available, since the double-track viaduct could only accommodate an absolute
maximum of eight trains every hour. The lengthy station platforms also require
heightening, since they have been constructed to the lower European profile. Eurostar gutted much of the security equipment from Waterloo International for
reuse at Ebbsfleet International, the latter being scheduled to open five days
later than the rest of the CTRL's ''Section 2''. The ''domestication'' of
Waterloo International forms part of a three-stage strategy created by Network
Rail, involving a comprehensive redevelopment of the whole Waterloo station
site. The project has been enshrined within the infrastructure company's
business plan stretching between 2009 and 2014, and includes moving the entire
station concourse down to a lower level, to link in with a new City Square
development planned around the adjacent Waterloo Road. Limited domestic services
using the former international site were originally scheduled to commence in
December 2008, at the start of the National Winter Timetable. It was envisaged
that only platform 20 would be in use by this time; since it is effectively the
other half of domestic platform 19, it can easily be accessed from the main
concourse. Conversely, platforms 21 to 24 can only be reached by means of the
''low-level'' international concourse, via escalators and lifts, thus require
greater modification to make them available. South West Trains ran the first
test train into platform 20 of the former international station on 4th June
2008, marking the start of driver training.
London Waterloo: Domestic & International
Today's track layout, complete with international station platforms. Click on the above image
for a full-size version. Drawn by David Glasspool
1995
The curved trainshed is constituted of steel structural members, with weather protection provided in the form
of strengthened glass. A pleasing aspect of the design criteria was to make the station as light and airy as possible,
which always helps to create a pleasant environment. In this 1995 view, the entrance can be seen below - it is linked
to the platforms above by both lifts and escalators. Mike Glasspool
14th March 2004
A large canvas cube-shaped banner was once in evidence above the lower concourse area, suspended from a
roof in desperate need of restoration. David Glasspool
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