"Graeme Wall" wrote in message
...
On 25/02/2012 09:48, Peter Masson wrote:

Towards the end of the 19th century Waterloo LSWR consisted of 4
separate stations:
South, New or Cyprus
Central or Main
Windsor
North or Khartoum


Were they administratively different or just staff nicknames for the
different groups of platforms?

Cyprus and Khartoum were staff nicknames, but South, Central, Windsor and
North were official names. Each section seems to have had its own cab yard,
and passenger routes between the various concourses were not obvious.
South's platforms were not numbered in the main sequence (and in the main
sequence the LSWR did not apply different platform numbers to the opposite
faces of an island platform.

There are plenty of stories of the confusion of the place. Best known is
perhaps the problems the protagonists in Three Men in a Boat had in finding
their train to Kingston, which they solved by bribing the engine driver. A
Devon farmer is said to have remarked to his wife, after four or five
unsuccessful attempts to find his train, 'No wonder the French got licked
here.' ;-)

Peter