Trains at: London Waterloo, SWML, 30/11/19

A great afternoon spent at London Waterloo which is the London terminus of the Southwestern Mainline where we see no end of services from South Western Railway.

London Waterloo is the busiest station in the UK in terms of passengers passing through every single day. Last alone the station handled roughly 94.3 million passengers which is just an astounding amount of people, coupled with the amount of trains that are coming out of the area on a daily basis.

There is a great deal to tell about this station however I will break it down to the more important parts for you.

When the station was first built it wasn't actually intended to be a terminus station. Apparently it was supposed to be a link to an extension leading further into the city. Once it had been decided that the station was to become a terminus it was quickly decided that the station would need more platforms in order to meet the quickly growing population. Especially as the line that had been built was serving some of the biggest areas of London at the time. When 1899 came around there was 19 platforms built but only 10 were in use as they were all over the place.

When 1909 made an appearance the station was going through more redevelopment, essentially is was completely redesigned. There was a bridge linking Waterloo to Waterloo East that was removed but there was a siding still in place that was actually used during WW1 to store trains used to take people out of the city, but more so for the transportation of troops to the docks at Southampton. But this was removed once the war was over. The interior of the station was given a complete overhaul with the roof getting a large amount of the treatment.

When Southern Railway took control of the network and the station they implemented for a third rail power scheme which meant that they could start looking at electric trains instead of the current steam and very early diesels, they went with a 600 volt mechanism to power the trains. In 1932 they spent over £500,000 on a public address system which eventually became practice in most stations around the UK, incase anyone is wondering that would be roughly £35 million in todays money!!

Sadly the station was the target of several severe bombing campaigns which saw the station close on a regular basis and train services heavily disrupted for months on end. Even the mail that would go to the southern end of the country was being stacked up with well over 5000 sacks of mail building up on the platforms.

This used to be the former sight of the Eurostar services running through the heart of London before heading out into the countryside and going to Paris and Brussels before going to St Pancras in 2007.

My next station will be Manchester Piccadilly on the West Coast Mainline.

You can now find me on Facebook through the group Tornado922, there you will find regular updates, videos and photos from all of my goings on throughout 2019.

You can also find me on Instagram through the name tornado922