Several commentors on the recent station aerial pictures post were interested in knowing a bit more about the single track link that used to exist between Waterloo and the line out of Charing Cross, which both Greg Tingey and Timbeau highlighted as existing previous to Waterloo’s later rebuilds.
The link was constructed in 1864 though was never heavily used. At that time it carried a short-lived Cannon Street – Kensington (Addison Road) service, and then was later used for a Willesden Junction – Waterloo service run by the LNWR. It was never highly trafficked, however, and eventually saw little more than use for the occasional rolling stock move. Very occasionally it also saw royal traffic (it was used by trains taking Queen Victoria from the Channel ports to Windsor).
It can be tricky to visualise the link now, for as Timbeau points out:
You must bear in mind that the main station was completely rebuilt in stages from south to north between 1900 and 1922, and the spur disappeared in 1911 as part of this process.
The link was an extension of a siding located between what were then platforms 2 and 3 (roughly where platform 10 is now) and extended across the concourse and station frontage and across the cab road to the now disused bridge across Waterloo Road – this bridge was used for pedestrian access to Waterloo East until the present high level span was built in c 1990.
Old Platforms 2 and 3 were much longer than the rest, extending deep into the concourse (in the way two platforms at Liverpool Street did until recently) and, even without the spur, they effectively cut off platform 1, and the separate South station built in 1878, from the rest of the complex. (The south station closed in 1909, and the present platforms 4 and 5 now occupy the site.)
Greg Tingey was kind enough to pass on several scans of images he was able to find which give a bit of an idea of how it would have looked, for those interested. The photo comes from Charles’ Klapper’s London’s Lost Railways which is sadly no longer in print, whilst the track diagrams are from O. S. Nock’s book on the LSWR.
Interestingly, if you look closely at the track diagrams you’ll spot the mark of Alfred W. Szlumper, the LSWR’s chief engineer at the time and the man responsible for the Waterloo rebuild. The Szlumper’s were very much a railway family – his brother worked extensively as a railway engineer in Wales (including as engineer for Aberyswyth to Devil’s Bridge) and his son Gilbert would later be General Manager of Southern.
Thanks to Greg Tingey for hunting down the appropriate images
Excellent, thanks for this. Looks like a dumping ground now. I wish they would knock it down
Really fascinating stuff. Thank you for providing the map and photo. I wonder if any other photos exist of the spur?
Excellent, thank you. One wonders what theHSE requirements for such an operation would be today…
For information, the history of this LSWR/SER link is included in Chapter 1 of this book :-
The Waterloo and City Railway. John Gillham. 2001
Oakwood Press, ISBN 0 85361 544 6
Briefly, the link was authorised in 1859 as part of the London Bridge to Charing Cross extension, and the LSWR saw it as a means to gain access into London Bridge, or later to Cannon St, for their City-bound traffic. But the LSWR and SER couldn’t agree terms for it’s regular use – the SER insisting that the charges should be higher than usual to reflect the cost of their new railway (shades of Heathrow tunnels ?).
By 1867 the link was effectively out of use, except for occasional transfers. In 1869 Waterloo Junction Station (now Waterloo East) was opened instead for interchanging passengers. In 1891 it was estimated that 3.5M passengers per annum were using this station to get to the City. It was this traffic which the Waterloo & City tube was intended for.
There remains a minor residual consequence of the link. The mileage on the South-West mainline starts at 0m 5ch at Waterloo. The Zero chainage point is on this spur link, approximately at the LSWR/SER boundary (it may have been measured slightly wrong, and be just on SER territory).
The War of the Worlds (1897), by HG Wells: Chapter 14
(the Martians were advancing on London from their bridgehead at Woking)
“About five o’clock the gathering crowd in [Waterloo] station was immensely excited by the opening of the line of communication , which is almost invariably closed, between between the South-Eastern and South-Western stations, and the passage of carriage-trucks bearing huge guns and carriages crammed with soldiers. These were the guns that were brought up from Woolwich and Chatham to cover Kingston. There was an exchange of pleasantries: ‘You’ll get eaten!’ ‘We’re the beast-tamers!” and so forth.”
FNRM Review – the Journal of the Friends of the NRM at York – published an article by myself in Issue No.156 (Summer 2016). This article (Reflections on South Eastern Engineering works, 2016) was intended to then review progress on the track layout between New Cross, London Bridge and Blackfriars. All of which is now (2018) complete! However, I did stray into the history of the Waterloo link! And concluded with a few personal recollections. So your comments of great interest! Thanks.
The NLS has an OS map from 1894-96 that clearly shows the connection to Waterloo Junction.
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.5037&lon=-0.1114&layers=168&b=1
Also very informative is Stanford’s 1862 map: http://www.mappalondon.com/london/north-west/westminster.jpg .
Depending on how well the map was updated for this edition, this suggests that the link might have been put in place when the South-Eastern was negotiating to buy Hungerford Market and the suspension bridge, so they could build their West End terminus.
It does make me wonder if it was also an insurance policy on their part, in case they ran into delays making the purchase: they might have been able to negotiate the use of two platforms at Waterloo for a temporary West End service. The South-Western certainly had room to expand westwards to make up for such an arrangement, assuming it had been made worth their while. Given that I think I recall reading that the South-Eastern regarded it as absolutely essential to be able to offer a service to the West End, it might have made sense.
Very interesting map, but it does seem unlikely that this link was an SER insurance policy.
The extension from London Bridge to Charing Cross was authorised by the Charing Cross Railway Act on 8th August 1859 (22 & 23 Vic cap 31), by the nominally independent, (but SER-backed) Charing Cross Railway Co. However, when the Bill was first presented to Parliament it did not include the link, and the LSWR opposed the Bill for the intention of getting the link included, because they wanted an end-on junction for their through traffic to the City. The LSWR failed to get the necessary clauses included in the Commons but succeeded in the Lords, and the link was included in the Act – also with the stipulation that the link must be opened at the same time as the main line to Charing Cross. Double track was authorised, but only single was built.
On 11th January 1864, to the surprise of the LSWR, the main line to Charing Cross was opened – but without the link !
On being approached, the SER replied that “they were advised that the branch in question being duly constructed and finished, and passed by the Board of Trade, was now open in compliance with the terms of the Act”. Thus, after making the branch and agreeing the services which were publicly announced at the time, the SER refused to work it, and refused to give way even under the threat of legal proceedings.
In short, it is clear that the SER didn’t really wanted this link, and were “unhelpful” about it.
In the later words of the LSWR annual report of December 1867, “Although the branch has been in some degree used, it has never been allowed to fulfil it’s real or full purpose and is, at the present time, by the determination of the SER, thrown out of use altogether”.
(One of the SER’s counter-proposals was apparently that the LSWR grant them running rights to all stations within 26 miles of Waterloo. Not surprisingly, that was declined..).
The Stanhope map, dated 1862, would probably have been surveyed or updated when the Charing Cross Railway was under construction – it is possible that Brunel’s Hungerford Suspension Bridge was still extant, but would shortly be demolished and replaced by the railway bridge (although the piers of the old bridge were re-used).
As noted above, the link was effectively moribund for years, with only occasional special trains and wagon transfers. The last recorded use was in March 1911, and it was severed in 1912 under authority of an LSWR Act of 18th August 1911. (Part of the SER side lingered as a siding until c. 1925).
Refs: Waterloo and City Rlwy, J Gillham, as referenced above.
LSWR in the 20th Century, Faulkner/Williams, 1988
@ NST Ah, that explains it completely! Speculation with incomplete facts is usually wrong…. 🙂 I was also very much aware that maps , particularly ones of this age, can be misleading because there’s no guarantee every part of the map was revised to the same date, so they can sometimes be a patchwork quilt , each piece of which is correct for a different date.
Many thanks for the definitive answer, makes it clear that it was completely unloved by the SER.
There was the earlier “counter-proposal” (except it came first, of course ) by the LSWR to extend from Waterloo to have either a back-to-back or side-by-side terminus with the LBSC & SER at London Bridge.
Now that would have been interesting ……
I dispute that use of the link was only occasional after the short-lived passenger service ceased. The main traffic was milk from the West Country to South London, and arrangements for this were timetabled. Even when severed by the LSWR rebuilding, the SER end was retained as a siding and churns etc barrowed across for reloading to rail. I speculate that the last such traffic was to feed the Charing Cross Hotel. The siding was removed in 1925, the last use being a van of CME stores and files transferred from Ashford to the new SR HQ at Waterloo. For further info, see Secsoc journal
Invicta 79.
I was looking through the London & SouthernWestern railway company monthly magazines at the National Archive at Kew last year.
I was amazed to see an article, with map, outlining a semi circular railway from the Windsor up side under the station to emerge on the Wimbledon down side. The idea was trains would not have to turn round.
I believe a similar arrangement existed at Grand Central in New York & on the northern line at Charing Cross, which still is in use.
The article said the loop was in the final planning stage & it read as if it was going to happen.
I agree not directly related to the main subject, but another extraordinary line at Waterloo that no one today could have conceived of, like the SER link & the Necropolis Waterloo platform.
Waterloo was not the only place where a terminal loop was proposed. The London & North Western Railway Act 1907 granted powers to build a loop at Euston for the Watford electric line. Traffic between Euston and Watford had trebled between 1884 and 1904, resulting in a plan to build an additional pair of tracks, which would be electrified. There would have been a pair of 30 ft diameter tube tunnels from a point east of Kilburn, with underground stations at South Hampstead and Chalk Farm. The tunnels would have diverged south of Hampstead Road to form a loop with a single platform about 70 feet below Euston main line station. The arrangement would have been very similar to what was completed in Liverpool seventy years later. The cost of the tunnel and associated work was estimated to be £962,444. The Bank of England inflation calculator shows that £1 in 1907 was equivalent to about £118 in 2018, so that is a present day cost of at least £113.5 millions (and what would it really cost if proposed now?). The scheme did not proceed because the LNWR decided to build the less expensive parts of the Watford New Line project first. Then extension of the Bakerloo line to Willesden Junction in 1915 meant that fewer suburban trains needed to run to Euston, so they could be accommodated in the main line station and the loop was considered to be unnecessary.
Re: Charing Cross loop
Yes, there was a loop there but it was taken out of use when the Northern Line was extended to Kennington in 1926. The northbound platform at what is now Embankment station was built as part of the loop. The loop tunnel was hit by a German bomb in 1940 and sealed off. IanVisits has a couple of articles about it, see links below.
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2013/09/09/photos-from-inside-an-abandoned-tube-tunnel/
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2011/10/26/the-northern-line-tunnel-that-was-bombed-and-flooded-in-1940-and-is-still-sealed-shut/
@NT
Which is why travelling Northbound from Embankment on the Northern Line is one of the very loudest parts of the Underground.
Of course, that same loop is now at Kennington instead, although this too will see a reduction in use once the extension to battersea is completed. (Or will it stop being used altogether?)
I’ve also seen proposals to extend the Victoria line with a loop at Herne Hill, more to help with terminal capacity than for the added interchange (the latter being just a bonus). I’m not sure how crayony* those plans are/were
@ DJL
Pretty crayony but it has been discussed a lot and it’s at the more reasonable end of the crayon box!:-)
I think as has been said one of the main problems with building to connect to Herne Hill would be a massive transfer of passengers from the NR station, quickly filling up the new capacity. If a loop is built I suggest it will be more modest with an unconnected station away from existing rail transport.
@DJL Kennington : Or will it stop being used altogether?
It stays intact and may be used to terminate a third of services …
https://londonist.com/london/transport/does-the-northern-line-extension-to-battersea-mean-the-end-of-the-kennington-loop
Intrigued to see the link between Waterloo and SE rails , seems totally logical , why did they close it ?
Bill Cotter
Because you would have had an open rail link right thorough the middle of Waterloo concourse – at about platform 10 -12 …..
This has been discussed before – there’s even an old article somewhere in here with a picture ….
Moderator’s note: The article which Greg refers to (for which he sourced the picture) is the very one on which this comment has been made. Before responding to someone else’s comment, it is sometimes a good idea to scroll up to explore the context!
Concerning the Waterloo to Canon Street loop via Waterloo Junction. Is the bridge that still exists today north of the mainline into Waterloo East from London Bridge and runs at SER height but under the tracks into Blackfriars connecting to the original sidings north of the spur from London Bridge part of the link? It would seem to be in the right place and face in the right direction to perform a required function of connecting Waterloo Junction to the spur into Cannon Street without crossing the traffic from Snow Hill and Blackfriars into London Bridge?
@Steve Latter
Interestingly, Jago Hazzard just made a video on this link, which may answer your question.