The London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened the station on 11 July 1848. The name on opening was Waterloo Bridge Station, from the nearby Waterloo Bridge, and in 1886 it officially became ‘Waterloo Station’, reflecting the long-standing common usage and some L&SWR timetables.
Extensive reconstruction between 1900 and 1922 gave the station 21 platforms and a concouse nearly 800 feet long. The main pedestrain entrance, the Victory Arch, is known as Exit 5 and is a memorial to company staff who were killed during the two world wars. Damage during World War II meant that the station required considerable repairs, however no significant changes to the layout of the station were made.
Waterloo Station is the principle mainline railway terminus serving Southern England and through the Channel Tunnel (Eurotunnel) to Continental Europe. The station is on the southern bank of the River Thames between Westminster and Waterloo Bridges roughly opposite Whitehall.
The original terminus of the 1838 London and Southampton Railway was at Nine Elms but the line was extended to Waterloo in 1848. The 1848 station was rebuilt 5 years later in 1853 and was the subject to numerous expansions. The station also housed the London terminal of The London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company, a platform dedicated to the dead and their greiving relatives and friends.
In 1922 Queen Mary opened the current station. This suffered severe bomb damage during World War II but the underground passages served as safe bomb shelters to many hundreds of people.
Waterloo Station International Terminal was built between 1989 and 1994 and earned the architect Nicholas Thomas Grimshaw the RIBA gold medal for this long, low, spacious structure in steel and glass. The first high-speed rail service to France started in 1994.
