The Daily Telegraph reports that Eurostar will quit Waterloo in 2007.

I think this is a good idea. Even from Waterloo, it would be quicket
to take the tube to St Pancras and then take a fast Eurostar.

The question is, what will happen to the 4 400m long platforms. On
previuos form, the rail companies will consider the issue in 2007,
make a decision in 2009, order rolling stock in 2010, and start using
them properly in 2014.

My suggestion. Act now, build extended, 400m platforms at a few outer
London station (perhaps Surbiton and Staines), and use these to
consolidate 8 carriage trains into 16 carriage trains for the final
trip through London.

This needs preperation now, but SW Trains, or DfT, will probably do
nothing till 2007.



Eurostar will drop Waterloo services when link opens
By Paul Marston, Transport Correspondent
(Filed: 15/11/2004)

Eurostar has dropped long-standing plans to continue to run some
services from London Waterloo when the high-speed link to the Channel
Tunnel is completed in 2007.


The Anglo-French company is expected to announce today that it will
close Waterloo International, from which it had previously intended to
operate about a third of trains to the Continent, when the faster
route into St Pancras opens.

The decision means that customers from south of the Thames will have
to travel considerably further to reach trains to Paris and Brussels,
though the track and platform capacity vacated at Waterloo will become
available to improve the reliability of domestic commuter services.

The international station, built for £130 million in 1993 and famed
for its glass roof, has four platforms and controls about 50 train
pathways a day, which could be transferred to South West Trains to
relieve overcrowding.

More than 1,400 Eurostar staff are employed at Waterloo and its
associated train depot at North Pole in west London. All will be given
the opportunity to transfer to St Pancras and a £300 million
yet-to-be-built depot at Temple Mills, near Stratford, in the East
End.

Senior executives at the train company have deliberated for almost a
year over whether to desert Waterloo, where Eurostar services began 10
years ago.

Some managers argued that lucrative business passengers in London's
affluent south-west suburbs would fly from Heathrow rather than
struggle across the capital to St Pancras if the Waterloo link were
severed.

They also maintained that French and Belgian business demand might
fall because Waterloo's dedicated non-stop Underground route to the
heart of the City was felt to be superior to the four-stop run on the
Northern line from St Pancras.

However the company's management board eventually decided that the
cost of maintaining two London bases would be too great.

It also concluded that the fact that journeys to Paris and Brussels
would be 20 minutes faster from St Pancras would lead inevitably to
the Waterloo route becoming viewed as a second-class option. Opening
of the final section of the high-speed link in early 2007 will cut
London-Paris times to 2hr 15min and London-Brussels to 1hr 53min.

Growth potential is seen as greater at St Pancras, because the station
- with adjoining King's Cross - has direct feeder services from the
East Coast and Midland main lines, Thameslink and six Tube routes.

Considerable debate took place over whether to change the station's
name because the fourth-century saint sparked little recognition among
the French and Belgians but St Pancras was a widely known name in
Britain.

Eurostar's board accepted, too, that the shift of London's
"International" rail title would spare French passengers any lingering
resentments about Napoleon's defeat in 1815.

"Alex Terrell" wrote

The decision means that customers from south of the Thames will have
to travel considerably further to reach trains to Paris and Brussels.


Hard on the heels of British Airways binning the Gatwick-Paris services!

In message , Alex
Terrell writes

The Daily Telegraph reports that Eurostar will quit Waterloo in 2007.

I think this is a good idea. Even from Waterloo, it would be quicket
to take the tube to St Pancras and then take a fast Eurostar.

There's no direct tube! It ought to be quicker to take the Jubilee
direct from Waterloo to Stratford and pick-up Eurostar there. However,
the interchange at Stratford looks as though it is going to be poor.

--
Paul Terry

"Alex Terrell" wrote in message
om...

My suggestion. Act now, build extended, 400m platforms at a few outer
London station (perhaps Surbiton and Staines), and use these to
consolidate 8 carriage trains into 16 carriage trains for the final
trip through London.

It would not be difficult to use these platforms for Windsor Line trains,
making it much less likely for any trains to have to queue up outside
Waterloo waiting for platforms. But that wonn't make use of the platform
length - it would probably be too expensive to extend any Windsor line
station to take 12x20m trains, let alone 16- or 20-car.

There could be a case for running 15x23m trains on the Southampton Main
Line, with platform extensions at, say, Woking, Basingstoke, Winchester,
Southampton Airport Parkway and Southampton Central. But to make use of the
long platforms at Waterloo, the Fast Lines on the SWML would have to cross
the Windsor Lines. I don't think there's room after the Chatham Line bridge
to get up to the Linford Street flyover, so it would mean something like
getting the Windsor Lines to dive under the Main Lines between Clapham
Junction and Culvert Road. The cost would be likely to get so many noughts
on it to destroy any business case.

There's also the question of what to do with all the passenger accommodation
at Waterloo International, waiting rooms, immigration offices, etc. Would it
convert into a shopping mall? ;-)

Peter

Why can't the Kent express or whatever it's going to be called use it
to connect at Ashford?

Alex Terrell wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 15 Nov 2004:

The Daily Telegraph reports that Eurostar will quit Waterloo in 2007.

I think this is a good idea. Even from Waterloo, it would be quicket
to take the tube to St Pancras and then take a fast Eurostar.

I wish I could agree with you. From where I live, in South London, it
was easy to get a bus to Waterloo - much easier, with luggage, than
faffing about on the Tube. Okay, Northern Line to Waterloo and Vicky
line to KingsX/St P are probably about the same in terms of time, but,
dammit, trains from Waterloo go on lines I use and know.... the trains
even go through Brixton Station! It won't be at all the same when they
have their dedicated track.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 6 November 2004 with new photos

Peter Masson wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 15 Nov 2004:

There's also the question of what to do with all the passenger accommodation
at Waterloo International, waiting rooms, immigration offices, etc. Would it
convert into a shopping mall? ;-)

Fairly easily, I would think. Last time I was there, it looked like one
anyway!
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 6 November 2004 with new photos

In message , at 12:09:34 on Mon, 15
Nov 2004, Peter Masson remarked:
There's also the question of what to do with all the passenger accommodation
at Waterloo International, waiting rooms, immigration offices, etc. Would it
convert into a shopping mall? ;-)

Half of it is already shops.

Also, the routes through the terminal will have to be considered - while
getting on is relatively straight forward assuming they drop the
last-minute-only boarding scheme, getting off currently involves a
considerable walk through the bowels of the building.
--
Roland Perry

In article , Roland
Perry writes
Also, the routes through the terminal will have to be considered -
while getting on is relatively straight forward assuming they drop the
last-minute-only boarding scheme, getting off currently involves a
considerable walk through the bowels of the building.

Actually, if you work it out that won't be necessary.

Looking from the west side, the layout is something like this:

Platform level
----------------------------------------------------
| S | / \ /
Booking | E | / Departure \ / SEC = security
hall | C | / lounge \ / checks
---------------------------------------------
| C | \ /
Meet & | & | \ Arrivals / C&I = Customs &
greet area | I | \ area / Immigration
-----------------------------------------

Passengers go from the departure lounge into little foyers which lead to
the escalators and travalators. On arrival, these same foyers divert
them into further routes downwards into the arrivals area.

Remove the security and C&I mess, and you can send everyone through one
layer and take over the other layer for other purposes.

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

I would suggestr that if E* quit Waterloo then they are going to upset a lot
of important people. However leaving them aside I would think that at least
50% of E* present ridership has direct access to Waterloo and as a result
of the move any saving on the journey time from St.Pancras will be lost in
getting to St. Pancras. I foresee that the gainers in this piece of muddled
thinking will be E* competitors the airlines. Services from Gatwick to Paris
and Brssels will be reinstated and new ones will start from Southampton and
possibly Shoreham.

There are two other matters which come to mind E* say they cannot afford
Waterloo and yet they can afford three new stations. Perhaps someone can say
how they will be able to justify Stratford and Ebbsfleet. E* is at pains to
tell us how they have carried 6M passengers so far this year but I seem to
remember that 10 years ago the projection was that by now that there would
be 16M passengers. With regard to interchange at Stratford the E*station is
about 1/3rd of a mile from Stratford ML, UD and DLR but this will be
ameliorated by the decision to require Union Railways North to provide a
travelator.

Perhaps it is just as well that the passenger usage predictions have proved
to be wide of the mark because dispersal of such a measure of usage from the
Kings Cross area would only serve to demonstrate just how wrong the decision
to abandon Waterloo was.
MJW