Rail Magazine Issue 833 Zurück Ausgabe

HALF OF WATERLOO CLOSES FOR REBUILD
Every eight seconds for three hours during the morning peak, the equivalent of a full doubledecker bus of people arrives at Waterloo station, that’s 100,000 people every weekday morning. Each year, 100 million use Waterloo, compared with 75 million at Heathrow. Over the past 20 years, the termini’s passenger journeys have more than doubled. Waterloo has always been busy, but on the privatised railway it has absolutely boomed and now it simply cannot cope. So, in the early hours of Friday August 4, a Network Rail ‘Orange Army’ arrived at the station to begin a 24-day closure and blockade of more than half of the station’s 19 platforms, for an upgrade that will increase capacity by 45,000 passengers each morning and night. It’s a huge and massively disruptive job, which is why NR and South West Trains have been warning passengers about it since January.