Waterloo & City line

The Waterloo & City Line is the shortest metro line of the London Underground. It was officially opened on 8 August 1898. There are only two stations: Waterloo and Bank ( until 1940 called City, hence the name of the line). The line is 2.4 km long and passes under the Thames; The journey takes four minutes. The main task of the line is the transport of commuters between Waterloo Station and the financial district in the City of London. Late in the evening and on Sundays the line is closed.

History

Planned by engineer James Henry Greathead route was originally part of the London and South Western Railway, from 1923, the Southern Railway. It was nationalized in 1948 along with the rest of the railway companies. The operation was carried out as a supplement to the main railway lines in Waterloo Station. Originally located on the south side of the Thames Waterloo station should have been only a stopover, but in 1846 the government banned aboveground routes through the city center. The tariff system was fully integrated into the national rail network and thus it was possible to direct tickets on the bank (or earlier "City" ) to buy.

In 1994, the Waterloo & City Line was acquired for a symbolic price of one pound of British Rail and transferred to the system of London Underground. In January 2003, the line was closed for a little over three weeks to bring them up to date safety levels. In the same year the Metronet consortium took over as part of a public- private partnership program, the maintenance of the track and the facilities.

Special

The Waterloo & City Line is colloquially known as The Drain (sewer pipe ). Reasons for this are on the one hand the odor of the muddy soil in which the Waterloo Station built and on the other hand, especially the tubular shape of the tunnel. Some people think that the appearance of the line she would rather remember on the U -Bahn network connectable to a drain pipe that drains the City.

The Waterloo & City Line runs along its entire length in a tube tunnel. This causes problems when transferring trains in the company workshop. Before the construction of the Euro Star terminal "Waterloo International " in 1990, the trains were transported individually with a special elevator on the north side of the station to the surface. Today, the trains will be lifted as needed with a mobile crane through a shaft next to the maintenance workshop of the tunnel.

Because of the break in operation on weekends, the line became a popular filming location for films such as Sliding Doors (1998, with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role ) or the TV adaptation of The Tripods (1984).

Stations

  • Bank - opened on 8 August 1898 as City, renamed the Bank on October 28, 1940
  • Waterloo - opened on August 8, 1898

Potential stopover

  • Blackfriars - Waterloo & City Line operates under the station Blackfriars through; in the 1980s came proposals for the construction of an intermediate station on there, but the Department for Transport did not see any traffic-related advantage.
Waterloo tube station Bank–Monument station Eurostar Blackfriars station Bakerloo Line Central Line Circle line (London Underground) District Line Jubilee Line Metropolitan Line Northern Line Piccadilly Line Victoria Line Northern City Line
814468
de