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Notes to Editors

The Waterloo & South West Upgrade

This is the biggest investment in the railway into Waterloo for decades. It will provide a bigger and better London Waterloo and 30% more space for passengers during the morning and evenings. This will also allow us to provide more space for longer distance passengers in the near future.

Across the network, the Waterloo & South West Upgrade will bring:

• Five more platforms at Waterloo, through the rebuilding of the former Waterloo International Terminal
• Longer platforms for longer trains, at a number of stations on the Reading line.
• 30 brand new trains, providing 150 extra carriages. The trains will run between London Waterloo and Windsor & Eton Riverside, including the Hounslow Loop and Weybridge via Brentford, calling at many of the network’s busiest stations such as Clapham Junction, Vauxhall, Brentford and Twickenham.
• New technology to make trains more efficient and improve punctuality.
• Improvements to depots and maintenance facilities to look after the network’s biggest ever fleet of trains.

August 2017

During August, work will start to extend platforms 1-4 at Waterloo, to allow longer 10-carriage trains to run on Suburban routes. Platforms have already been extended at more than 60 stations on the suburban network but Waterloo is the final, and most complex, station which needs upgrading. Due to the layout of the track and the curve of the neighbouring platforms, to extend platforms 1-4, we also need to carry out the following work, which requires platforms to be closed at Waterloo:

• Install new track on the approaches to platforms 1-8.
• Realign and rebuild the far ends of platforms 5-8.
• Provide access for the required machinery to carry out the work.

There will still be some further work to carry out after August 2017, but this will be restricted to weekends. When completed, longer 10-carriage trains will be able to serve suburban routes when the new timetable is introduced from December 2017.

Passengers can check how they will be affected by visiting southwesttrains.co.uk/wswupgrade or by searching online for ‘Waterloo Upgrade’.