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Waterloo & South West Upgrade: Overview

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 by December 2018. That’s room for an extra 45,000 people each morning and afternoon – equivalent to more than the capacity of the O2 arena and Oval Cricket ground combined. The upgrade 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 the following by December 2018:

• 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 10 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.

To accommodate these changes, Network Rail will provide five extra platforms at London Waterloo by temporarily re-opening platforms 20-24 in the International Terminal.

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’.

Thameslink Upgrade

Between Saturday, 26 August and Saturday, 2 September, including four working days, there will be no Southeastern services to or from London Bridge, Waterloo East and Charing Cross while Network Rail continues to rebuild London Bridge station and the surrounding railway, as part of the Thameslink Programme. On Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 August there will be no Southeastern trains at Cannon Street and Blackfriars and fewer Southern services to London Bridge.

During this time there will be far fewer trains into London. Those that do run will be much busier than usual and will be diverted to other stations, including Victoria, Blackfriars, Cannon Street and London Waterloo International. Queuing systems will be in place in some stations and passengers should leave more time for their journey.  Passengers are strongly advised to plan ahead and visit www.ThameslinkProgramme.co.uk/2017 for detailed travel advice.