Waterloo was never meant to be a terminus, which explains its confusing platforms
Britain's largest station by floor space, with more platforms than any other, began life in 1848 as a stopping point on a line meant to push on to the City of London. That extension never came, so Waterloo grew in fits and starts, and travellers spent decades hunting for the right platform.
The London and South Western Railway first ran trains from Nine Elms, opened on 21 May 1838 and linked to Southampton by 11 May 1840. As commuter traffic from places like Wimbledon, Kingston and Weybridge grew, the company wanted a site nearer the West End. An 1845 Act allowed an extension to York Road, near Waterloo Bridge, carried mostly on a brick viaduct and requiring the demolition of 700 houses. William Tite's station opened on 11 July 1848 as Waterloo Bridge Station, laid out for through trains. The financial Panic of 1847 killed the onward plan, and the name was shortened to Waterloo in October 1882, matching what people already called it.
Queen Victoria liked the privacy of Nine Elms, so it stayed open for her, and a private royal station followed on Wandsworth Road in 1854. That same year the London Necropolis Company opened its own station inside Waterloo to run funeral trains to Brookwood Cemetery. Meanwhile extra platforms were bolted on piecemeal: the Windsor platforms in 1860, more in 1878 and 1885, and a short-lived link toward Charing Cross and Cannon Street in the 1860s.
A full rebuild opened in 1922, crowned by the Victory Arch over the main entrance, a memorial to the First World War. Waterloo was the last London terminus to use steam, which ended in 1967, and between 1994 and 2007 it handled Eurostar trains to the Continent before they moved to St Pancras.
The station takes its name from the bridge, itself named for the battle, which was fought exactly two years before the bridge opened. Today, with the code WAT, it serves lines to Weymouth via Southampton, Exeter via Salisbury and Portsmouth Harbour, where ferries leave for the Isle of Wight, plus commuter routes across Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. Once the busiest station in Britain, it now ranks second, having handled 70.4 million journeys over the twelve months ending March 2025.
Source: London Waterloo station
