The forgotten London station where the Eurostar used to start

If you grew up in the south of England, London Waterloo was your entry point into London.

It was a doorway to the buzz and excitement of the capital where – in the days before cell phones – you could arrange to meet your friends under the famous Waterloo clock.

If they didn’t show up – they didn’t show up!

It was a lovely old station building and a gateway from where you could explore the South Bank and head across the river to the bright lights of the West End.

Read more: An abandoned London Underground line that would be like riding a roller coaster

But in the early 1990s the station suddenly jumped into the modern era.

There was a brand new glass canopy that looks a bit like a space station next to the subway entrance and these neat new trains that look like rocket ships.

Eurostar came to town.

Now you can simply take a train and head to Europe – to Belgium, France and Germany.

The station, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, was a four-platform elongated plaza with a winding roof of glass and steel – 400 meters long with 36 arches.

To make it appear truly exclusive, a structural glass wall separated the existing Waterloo station from the International Terminal.

Grimshaw submitted his design in a competition held by the British Railways Council, but in an interview with de zeen, he said the project was a “complete nightmare” as the design had to fit a perfectly irregular shape.

Grimshaw has ingeniously created a curved asymmetric roof that can expand or compress to fit any site regardless of its shape – like telescopic tubes that slide inside one another.

Ticket services and the departure hall were hidden underground, below the railway tracks, in order to optimize the platform space above.

Grimshaw later said, “I think people thought he was very witty and thoughtful in a really meticulous way. Even if you’re not an architect or an engineer, you can see that he would work.”

He says its success is due to the amount of detail in the design.

“They were very touched by the fact that we called and said ‘What is the diameter of the cleaning brush on the cleaning machine?’ “Because we wanted to make the corners of the building suitable for the cleaning machine.”

The International Terminal at Waterloo was completed a year ahead of schedule – before the canal tunnel serving the station was ready. The building was largely prefabricated, which led to its rapid construction.

The station opened in November 1994, and was praised by critics. He was awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture as well as the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Prize of the Year.

The first Eurostar train departed on November 14, 1994.

But in less than 15 years, that gate has just disappeared. I remember visiting Waterloo one day and just went – just like that! Obviously the platforms were still there, but there was no Eurostar station.

The last Eurostar train left the station in November 2007.

From the next day, Eurostar services used the new London station at London St Pancras.

So what happened on the ground for Waterloo International. Was this just a lost £130m?

There was no clear plan of what to do with the gleaming international terminal at Waterloo.

He looked like another white elephant in London.

Since 2008, platform 20 has been used for some southwest train services but other platforms have remained empty.

In 2010/11 two platforms were used to show a theatrical version of The Railway Children. During the performance, the audience sat on both sides of the track and a real train pulled in and out of the station.

Amazing, but hardly a good use of a multimillion pound plant!

In 2013, international platforms were pressed into service again during the renovation of Waterloo’s main station.

Then in 2018/19, the five platforms were gradually reused as part of regular rail services. But this was only after a massive £800 million upgrade to the station.

As Nicholas Stone, the Londoner, points out, the problems arose from the fact that Waterloo was only a temporary solution for the cash-strapped British Railways looking to provide international service.

Waterloo had some extra capacity at the time Eurostar was planned and the government had made it clear that it would not pay for a new dedicated rail line.

So instead, it used Waterloo and built Stewarts Lane Chord to connect Waterloo station lines to Kent lines from Victoria.

It wasn’t a perfect solution and working on a proper one was with a new custom font.

Londoner Dave Arquati explains the reasons why St Pancras eventually chose to replace Waterloo:

“Later, the case for building a suitable high-speed line was successfully formulated. A large number of road options were studied by British Railways and others.

“Because an entirely new line had to be built in London, the same restrictions on Waterloo did not apply, so the new terminal could be anywhere with (a) good forward connections and (b) space to build new platforms.

“Being the most accessible location in London and with a large site adjacent to a brownfield ready for redevelopment, St Pancras meets the requirements perfectly and that is why it was chosen.

Politically, it also helped that the new road not only served one lower district identified for renewal (at St Pancras) – but also served another district in Stratford in East London, and a third at Epsfleet in Kent.

“However, it didn’t come cheap – depending on your procedure, the redevelopment of St Pancras was around £600m to £1bn.”

So we have it. Waterloo International has had a moment in the sun, but its fate truly shines a light on the intricacies of rail projects and the amount of money that can be lost when forward planning is discarded in favor of short-term solutions.

As London tour guide Graham Greenglass notes: “The temporary Waterloo Eurostar Terminus originally cost about £135m + permanent ongoing costs of about £1m per year just to keep it empty. You can’t make it up.”

Do you have a story about London that you think we should tell? Email martin.elvery@reachplc.com