Waterloo station (/ˌwɔːtərˈluː/), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, located in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of the same name and is adjacent to Waterloo East station on the South Eastern main line. The station is the terminus of the South Western main line to Weymouth via Southampton, the West of England main line to Exeter via Salisbury, the Portsmouth Direct line to Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight, and several commuter services around West and South West London, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. Many services stop at Clapham Junction and Woking.
The station was first opened in 1848 by the London and South Western Railway, and replaced the earlier Nine Elms as it was closer to the West End. It was never designed to be a terminus, as the original intention was to continue the line towards the City of London, and consequently the station developed in a haphazard fashion leading to difficulty finding the correct platform. The station was rebuilt in the early 20th century, opening in 1922, and included the Victory Arch over the main entrance, which commemorated World War I. Waterloo was the last London terminus to provide steam-powered services, which ended in 1967. The station was the London terminus for Eurostar international trains from 1994 until 2007, when they were transferred to St. Pancras International.
Waterloo is the busiest railway station in the UK. It is also the country's largest station in terms of floor space and has the greatest number of platforms at 24. When combined with the Underground and Waterloo East stations, it is the busiest station complex in Europe.
Location
The station's formal name is London Waterloo, and appears as such on all official documentation. It has the station code WAT.[5] It is in the London Borough of Lambeth on the south bank of the River Thames, close to Waterloo Bridge and northeast of Westminster Bridge. The main entrance is to the south of the junction of Waterloo Road and York Road.[6] It is named after the eponymous bridge, which itself was named after the Battle of Waterloo, a battle that occurred exactly two years prior to the opening ceremony for the bridge.[7][8]
Several London bus routes, including 1, 4, 26, 59, 68, 171, 176, 188, 507, 521 and RV1 all stop at Waterloo.[9] Some buses call at stops by the side of the station on Waterloo Road, others at Tenison Way, a short distance from the Victory Arch.[10]
History
Background

Waterloo was built by the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR). It was not designed to be a terminus, but simply a stop on an extension towards the City. It replaced the earlier Nine Elms, which had opened on 21 May 1838 and connected London to Southampton since 11 May 1840.[11] By the mid-1840s, commuter services to Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Kingston upon Thames, Ditton Marsh and Weybridge had become an important part of L&SWR traffic, so the company began to look for a terminus closer to Central London and the West End. An Act of Parliament was granted in 1845 to extend the line towards a site on York Road, close to Waterloo Bridge. The extension past Nine Elms involved demolishing 700 houses, and most of it was carried on a brick viaduct to minimise disruption. The longest bridge was 90 feet (27m) long and took the line over Westminster Bridge Road.[12] The approach to the new station carried four tracks, with the expectation that other companies would use it.[13]
The station was designed by William Tite and opened on 11 July 1848 as "Waterloo Bridge Station".[4] Nine Elms closed for regular services at the same time, but Queen Victoria was fond of the privacy afforded by the old station, so it was kept open for her, and a replacement private station built on Wandsworth Road in 1854. Waterloo Bridge was originally laid out as a through station, as it was expected that services would eventually continue towards the City of London. The L&SWR purchased several properties along the route, before the plans were cancelled owing to the financial crisis following the Panic of 1847.[4] In October 1882, Waterloo Bridge station was officially renamed Waterloo, reflecting long-standing common usage, even in some L&SWR timetables.[4]
Expansion

The L&SWR's aim throughout much of the 19th century was to extend its main line eastward beyond Waterloo into the City of London. Given this, it was reluctant to construct a dedicated grand terminus at Waterloo.[4] Consequently, Waterloo had none of the usual facilities expected of a terminus until 1853, when a small block was built on the far east side of the station. In 1854, the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company opened a private station inside Waterloo that provided services to Brookwood Cemetery.[14] The station was demolished and replaced with a dedicated building in 1902, as part of the reconstruction of Waterloo in the early 20th century.[15]
Traffic and passengers to Waterloo increased throughout the century, and Waterloo was extended in an ad-hoc manner to accommodate this. In 1860, new platforms were added on the northwest side of the station; these were known as the Windsor Station after its intended destination. An additional dock siding of the main station opened on 17 March 1869.[14] A 5-chain (330ft; 100m) link to the South Eastern Railway (SER) line from London Bridge to Charing Cross opened in July 1865. It was diverted from London Bridge to Cannon Street on 1 February 1867, before being withdrawn the following year.[16] The SER opened Waterloo Junction station on 1 January 1869 as a replacement, that allowed LSWR passengers to change and access services to Cannon Street. A further extension on the southeastern side of Waterloo, to provide more services, opened on 16 December 1878. A further extension to the north, beyond the Windsor Station, opened in November 1885.[17]
For each extension, the long-term plan was that the expansion was "temporary" until the line was extended past Waterloo, and therefore these additions were simply added alongside and around the existing structure rather than as part of an overall architectural plan. This resulted in the station becoming increasingly ramshackle. The platform numbering had grown in an ad hoc manner, resulting in the confusing situation of No.1 being in the middle of the station complex, where it had been since 1848.[18]  The original station became known as the "Central Station" as other platforms were added. The new platform sets were known by nicknames – the two platforms added for suburban services in 1878 were the "Cyprus Station", and the six built in 1885 for use by trains on the Windsor line became the "Khartoum".[19] Each of these stations-within-a-station had its own booking office, taxi stand and public entrances from the street, as well as often poorly marked and confusing access to the rest of the station.[18]
By 1899, Waterloo had 16 platforms but only 10 numbers allocated in different sections of the station or on different levels; some numbers were duplicated.[20] This complexity and confusion became the butt of jokes by writers and music hall comics for many years in the late 19th century, including Jerome K. Jerome in Three Men in a Boat.[18] It was criticised and satirised in several Punch cartoons.[21]
Rebuilding

The L&SWR spent the 1880s and 90s trying to finalise plans to continue the line beyond Waterloo and City. An overhead line was proposed in 1882, and again in 1891, but both times was rejected due to cost. In 1893, an act was passed for a tube railway. On 8 August 1898, the company opened the Waterloo & City line, a deep level underground railway that ran directly between Waterloo and Bank–Monument station in the City.[22] This gave the company the direct commuter service it had long desired (albeit with the need to change from surface to underground lines at Waterloo).[22] With Waterloo now destined to remain a terminus station, and with the old station becoming a source of increasingly bad will and publicity amongst the travelling public, the L&SWR decided on total rebuilding, in a project they called the "Great Transformation"[23][24]
Legal powers to carry out the work were granted in 1899 and 1900. About 6.5 acres (2.6ha) of land was purchased to accommodate the new building, which included six streets (and part of two others), along with All Saints' Church. The L&SWR built six blocks of flats to home around 1,750 people as compensation for those displaced. Extensive groundwork and slum clearance were carried out before construction on the terminus proper began, including several rundown buildings that had been extensively used for prostitution.[23] By 1903, the land had been cleared for work to start.[24]

The new station was opened in stages. It was partially ready in 1909, with the main booking hall opening on 11 June 1911.[15] A vehicular roadway to the station opened on 18 December 1911.[25] The connection to Waterloo Junction was removed in March that year, but a siding remained until 3 May 1925. The bridge remained in place and was used as a walkway between the two stations.[26] Construction of the main station continued sporadically throughout World War I, and the new station finally opened in 1922, with 21 platforms and a 700-foot (210m) long concourse.[27] The roof and platforms were initially designed by J. W. Jacomb-Hood, who travelled to the US to look at station designs for inspiration.[28] Following Jacomb-Hood's death in 1914, work was taken over by Alfred Weeks Szlumper.[23] It was built in an Imperial Baroque style out of Portland stone.[28] James Robb Scott designed the office range. The new station included a large stained glass window depicting the L&SWR's company crest over the main road entrance, surrounded by a frieze listing the counties served by the railway (the latter still survives today). These features were retained in the design, despite the fact that, by the time the station opened, the 1921 Railway Act had been passed, which spelt the end of the L&SWR as an independent concern.[29]
Waterloo was a major terminal station for soldiers in World War I, and for sailors travelling to Southampton for the British Expeditionary Force. It also handled ambulance trains and mail from overseas. A free buffet operated at the station between December 1915 and April 1920. The station itself saw little damage, except for an explosion on one of the lines on 29 September 1917.[30]
The rebuilt station was formally opened on 21 March 1922 by Queen Mary.[31] The main pedestrian entrance, the Victory Arch (known as Exit 5), was designed by Scott and is a memorial to company staff who were killed during the war. Upon opening, it marked 585 employees who had been killed in World War I. It was flanked by two sculptures featuring Roman goddesses; "1914" with Bellona in armour with a sword and torch, and "1918" showing Pax, the goddess of Peace sitting on Earth.[32]
Southern Railway
The LSWR began to look at electrification of suburban services during the 1910s, using a 600 volt DC third rail mechanism. The first such service to Wimbledon via East Putney opened on 25 October 1915, with services to Shepperton following on 30 January 1916, the Hounslow Loop Line on 12 March and Hampton Court on 18 June.[30] Ownership of Waterloo underwent a succession, broadly typical of many British stations. Under the 1923 Grouping it passed to the Southern Railway (SR). The SR continued the third rail electrification of lines from Waterloo, including a full service to Guildford on 12 July 1925, and to Windsor on 6 July 1930.[33]
A public address system first ran in Waterloo on 9 March 1932, and by the following decade was regularly broadcasting music around the station.[34] In 1934, the SR planned to invest £500,000 (£35 million as of 2018) to improve the signalling and track layout to allow better use of all platforms.[35] A full electric service to Woking, Guildford and Portsmouth Harbour (for the Isle of Wight) opened on 4 July 1937, as did connecting services to Aldershot and Alton. On 1 January, an electric service opened between Waterloo and Reading, with a branch to Camberley and Aldershot, which was designed equally for the anticipated increase in military traffic in the area as well as commuters.[34]
Waterloo was bombed several times during World War II. On 7 September 1940, the John Street viaduct immediately outside the station was destroyed by a bomb, which prevented any services running for 12 days. Full services did not resume until 1 October, which particularly affected mail traffic with over 5,000 unsorted bags piling up on the station platform. Waterloo was closed again after bombing on 29 December 1940. It re-opened on 5 January 1941, on the same day that station offices on York Road were destroyed by bombing. The station took heavy damage again after an overnight raid on 10–11 May 1941, with fires lasting for four days.[36] One 2,000-pound (910kg) bomb was not discovered until it was uncovered during building work along York Road in 1959.[37]
British Rail and privatisation
Following nationalisation in 1948, ownership of the station transferred to British Railways (BR) as part of the Southern Region. Under BR, more of the network was electrified and boat train traffic declined in favour of air travel. Waterloo was the last London terminus to run steam-hauled trains. The final journey took place on 9 July 1967, and featured a large group of rail enthusiasts with cameras and recording equipment, attempting to capture the departure of the final steam service to Bournemouth. The electrified service began the next day.[38]
The station was managed by Network SouthEast also under BR. Following the privatisation of British Rail, ownership and management passed to Railtrack in April 1994 and finally, in 2002, to Network Rail.[39][40]
Eurostar

In 1994, platforms 20 and 21 were lost to the Waterloo International railway station site, which was the London terminus of Eurostar international trains to Gare du Nord, Paris and Brussels-South. An inaugural service left Waterloo on 6 May for a joint opening ceremony with Queen Elizabeth II and the French president François Mitterrand. Regular services began on 14 November.[41][42] Construction necessitated the removal of decorative masonry forming two arches from that side of the station, bearing the legend "Southern Railway". This was re-erected at the private Fawley Hill Museum of Sir William McAlpine, whose company built Waterloo International.[43]
Waterloo International closed on 13 November 2007 when the Eurostar service transferred to the new St Pancras railway station with the opening of the second phase of High Speed 1, also known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Ownership of the former Waterloo International terminal then passed to BRB (Residuary) Limited.[42][44]
Accidents and incidents
There have been few accidents at Waterloo compared to other London terminal stations. On 21 August 1896, an engine leaving the locomotive yard overran its clearance point, colliding with a departing passenger train. Five passengers were injured.[45] On 5 May 1904, a linesman accidentally stepped on a signal wire. This gave a false clear signal to a goods van, which collided with a passenger train, killing one,[45] while on 25 October 1913, a collision between two passenger trains at Waterloo Junction killed three people.[46]
On 13 April 1948, the goods hoist to the Waterloo and City line began to sink while a M7 class tank engine was pushing loaded coal wagons onto it. The engine dropped into the hoist's shaft, ending up upside-down and spurting steam over it. The driver and fireman managed to jump free, and the locomotive was rescued piecemeal and used for spares.[47]
On 3 June 1960, an empty stock train formed of two 4COR electric multiple units overran signals and was in a sidelong collision with a steam-hauled passenger train that was departing for Weymouth, Dorset. A few people suffered slight injuries.[48] On 11 April the following year, an electric multiple unit overran signals and was in a head-on collision with a steam locomotive. One person was killed and fifteen were injured.[49]
On 10 March 2000, a passenger train collided with an empty stock train in platform 5 due to driver error. Thirty-five people were injured.[50]
On 15 August 2017, a Class 456 electric multiple unit collided with an engineers' train at the station. The passenger train was derailed, causing disruption for the remainder of the day. Three people were checked for injuries, but nobody was hospitalised.[51] The cause was a wiring error in the signalling which meant that a set of points not correctly set was not detected. This allowed a proceed signal to be shown when it should not have been possible to do so.[52] The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) investigation into the accident concluded that mistakes were made similar to those which caused the Clapham Junction rail crash in 1988. The RAIB expressed concerns that lessons learnt from that accident were being forgotten over time.[53]
Station facilities

The major transport interchange at Waterloo comprises London Waterloo, Waterloo East, Waterloo Underground station, and several bus stops. There are more than 130 automated ticket gates on the station concourse, along with another 27 in the subway below.[54]
A large four-faced clock hangs in the middle of the main concourse. Meeting "under the clock at Waterloo" is a traditional rendezvous.[55][56]

Retail balcony
Network Rail has constructed a balcony along almost the whole width of the concourse at the first-floor level. The project's aims were to provide 18 new retail spaces and a champagne bar, reduce congestion on the concourse, and improve access to Waterloo East station by providing additional escalators leading to the high-level walkway between Waterloo and Waterloo East. Retail and catering outlets have been removed from the concourse to make more circulation space. First-floor offices have been converted into replacement and additional retail and catering spaces. Work was completed in July 2012, at a cost of £25million.[57][58]
Police station
The British Transport Police maintained a police station by the Victory Arch at Waterloo, with a custody suite of three cells. Although relatively cramped, it served over 40 police officers until the late 1990s.[59] The police station shut in February 2009, following the closure of the Eurostar Terminal at Waterloo. [60] The railway station is now policed from a new Inner London Police Station a few yards from Waterloo at Holmes Terrace.[61] Until July 2010, the Neighbourhood Policing Team for Waterloo consisted of an inspector, a sergeant, two constables, special constables, and 13 police community support officers.[62]
Services

[ vt ]Mainline railways around the South Bank

 South Western main lineto WeymouthHungerford Bridgeover River Thames  WaterlooCharing Cross Waterloo East(1864–1868) Blackfriars Road Elephant & CastleBlackfriars   Thameslinkto Sutton, Sevenoaks and BrightonThameslinkto MML & ECML (1864–1885) Blackfriars BridgeCity Thameslink Brighton main lineto Brighton  London BridgeCannon Street  South Eastern main lineto SE London and KentRiver Thames
South Western Railway
The main part of the railway station complex is known as "Waterloo Main" or simply Waterloo. This is the London terminus for services towards the south coast and the south-west of England. All regular trains are operated by South Western Railway.[63] Waterloo main line station is one of nineteen in the country that are managed by Network Rail[64] and the station complex is in London fare zone 1.[65]
Waterloo is Britain's busiest railway station by patronage, with just under 100million National Rail passenger entries/exits in 2015–16.[66] Waterloo railway station alone is the 91st-busiest in the world as of 2013.[67] However, including National Rail interchanges, the Underground station, and Waterloo East, the complex handled a total of 211 million arrivals and departures in the 2015/2016 financial year (not including interchanges on the Underground). It is therefore the busiest transport hub in Europe.[68] It has more platforms and a greater floor area than any other station in the UK (though Clapham Junction, just under 4 miles (6km) down the line, sees the greatest number of passengers alighting or departing trains).[69] As of 2017, the South Western Railway run around 1,600 trains per day, used by over 651,000 passengers, making it Europe's busiest commuter service.[70]
The following off-peak daytime services are available:
16 trains per hour (tph) to Woking via Clapham Junction (Mainline), of which
2 tph to Basingstoke (stopping)[71]
2 tph to Woking (stopping)[71]
2 tph to Alton (stopping) on the Alton line[71]
2 tph to Salisbury via Basingstoke,  and 1 tph continuing to Exeter St Davids via Yeovil on the West of England main line[72]
2 tph to Weymouth via Basingstoke, Southampton Central and Bournemouth on the South Western main line[73]
1 tph (stopping) to Poole[73]
1 tph to Portsmouth Harbour via Basingstoke and Eastleigh[74]
4 tph to Guildford via Woking[75]
2 tph to Portsmouth Harbour via Haslemere, on the Portsmouth Direct line[76]
2 tph to Haslemere, with 1tph continuing to Portsmouth and Southsea[76]
16 tph to Wimbledon via Clapham Junction (Local), of which
4 tph to Teddington,[77] of which
2 tph to Shepperton, and
2 tph back to Waterloo via Richmond
4 tph to Epsom,[78] of which
2 tph to Dorking, and
2 tph to Guildford via Effingham Junction
2 tph to Guildford via Cobham[79]
2 tph to Chessington South[78]
2 tph to Hampton Court[80]
2 tph to Woking
12 tph via Barnes (Windsor Lines)
2 tph to Reading via Ascot[81]
2 tph to Windsor & Eton Riverside[82]
4 tph to Twickenham, of which
2 tph via Hounslow back to Waterloo,[83] and
2 tph via Teddington back to Waterloo[77] (the reverse of the loop detailed above in Local)
4tph to Hounslow via Brentford, of which
2 tph to Weybridge via Egham[84]
2 tph via Twickenham back to Waterloo[83] (the reverse of the loop detailed above)

Southeastern
Adjacent to the main station is Waterloo East, the last stop on the South Eastern main line towards London before the terminus at Charing Cross. Waterloo East has four platforms, which are lettered A–D rather than numbered to avoid confusion with the numbered platforms in the main station by staff who work at both stations.[85] Waterloo East is managed and branded separately from the main station. Trains go to southeast London, Kent and parts of East Sussex. All regular services are operated by Southeastern.[86]
River
London River Services operate boats from nearby London Eye Pier (also known as the Waterloo Millennium Pier) and Festival Pier, and run to the City and Greenwich.[87] The piers also provide access to corporate and leisure services.[88]
London Underground

There had been plans to connect Waterloo to the West End via an underground railway since the 1860s. The Waterloo & Whitehall Railway began construction of a line towards Whitehall, but it was abandoned in 1868 because of financial difficulties.[22] The first underground line to be opened at Waterloo was the Waterloo & City Railway to Bank, colloquially known as "The Drain" owing to its access via a sloping subway at the Bank end.[89] It opened on 8 August 1898, and was part-owned by the L&SWR, who took over full ownership in 1907. It is primarily designed for commuters and is not normally open on Sundays.[22]
The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (now part of the Bakerloo line) opened on 10 March 1906, and was initially accessed from Waterloo by lifts at the York Road end of the station.[18] The Northern line's station at Waterloo opened on 13 September 1926, as part of the overall extension from Charing Cross to Kennington.[33] The Jubilee line station opened on 24 September 1999 as part of the eastward extension to Stratford.[90]

Future
Platform lengthening
In May 2016, it was announced that platforms 1 to 4 would be lengthened to allow new ten-car Class 707 trains to run.[91] Work started on 5 August 2017, and was completed on 28 August.[92]
Former international platforms

Since the transfer of Eurostar services from Waterloo, the former Eurostar platforms 20–24 of Waterloo International have remained unused. Waterloo suffers significant capacity problems, and proposals have been put in place to convert the former international station to domestic use.[93] In December 2008 preparatory work was carried out to enable platform 20 to be used by South West Trains suburban services. However, the conversion of the remaining platforms was delayed as it would require alterations to the track layout outside the station.[94]
The project has been criticised for its delayed completion date; in 2009 the Department for Transport confirmed that Network Rail was developing High Level Output Specification options for the station, with an estimated date for the re-opening of the platforms of 2014, seven years after their closure.[95] The cost of maintaining the disused platforms up to late 2010 was found via a Freedom of Information request to have been £4.1million.[96] South West Trains subsequently confirmed that platform 20 would be brought back into use in 2014, hosting certain services to and from Reading, Windsor, Staines and Hounslow. These would be 10-car trains newly formed from refurbished SWT and former Gatwick Express rolling stock.[97] Platform 20 reopened in May, with access via platform 19, and platforms 21 and 22 in October after steps were constructed over the former Eurostar entrance to access the platforms.[98][99]
In 2016, Network Rail announced that platforms 20–24 would be fully refurbished in order to increase capacity at Waterloo by 30%. Communications manager Kevin Parker stressed that the international platforms were only designed to cope with six trains per hour, well below the expected capacity for commuter services. The platforms closed in September 2017 for the works, with a revised timetable to be published the following year.[100][101]
Heathrow Airport links
Waterloo station was to be the central London terminus for the proposed Heathrow Airtrack rail service. This project, promoted by British Airport Authority Limited (BAA), envisaged the construction of a spur, from Staines on the Waterloo to Reading line, to Heathrow Airport, creating direct rail links from the airport to Waterloo, Woking and Guildford. Airtrack was planned to open in 2015, but was abandoned by BAA during 2011.[102] That October, Wandsworth Council proposed a revised plan called Airtrack-Lite, which would provide trains from Waterloo to Heathrow, via the same proposed spur from Staines to Heathrow, but, by diverting or splitting current services, the frequency of trains over the existing level crossings would not increase. BAA's earlier plan had controversially proposed more trains over the level crossings, leading to concerns that they would be closed to motorists and pedestrians for too long.[103]
Crossrail 3
Crossrail 3, backed by former London Mayors Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson would include a 2-mile (4km) underground section in new tunnels connecting Euston and Waterloo, connecting the West Coast main line corridor with services to the south.[104]
Cultural references
In the 1990s, after Waterloo station was chosen as the British terminus for the Eurostar train service, Florent Longuepée, a municipal councillor in Paris, wrote to the British Prime Minister requesting that the station be renamed because he said it was upsetting for the French to be reminded of Napoleon's defeat when they arrived in London by Eurostar.[105] There is a name counterpart in Paris: the Gare d'Austerlitz is named after the Battle of Austerlitz, one of Napoleon's greatest victories (over the Russians and Austrians).[106]
The clock at Waterloo has been cited as one of the most romantic spots for a couple to meet,[107] and fictional examples include Derek "Del Boy" Trotter meeting Raquel in the British sit-com Only Fools and Horses[108] and Jack meeting Nancy in the film Man Up.[109]

Waterloo has appeared in fiction several times. In Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 comic novel, Three Men in a Boat, the protagonists spend some time in the station, trying to find their train to Kingston upon Thames. After being given contradictory information by every railway employee they speak to, they eventually bribe a train driver to take his train to their destination.[110] In Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne's 1889 novel The Wrong Box, much of the farcical plot revolves around the misdelivery of two boxes at Waterloo station, and the attempts by the various protagonists to retrieve them. In H. G. Wells' 1897 science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, the little used, and long since vanished, connecting track across the station concourse to Waterloo East station makes an appearance.[111]
The station is the subject of John Schlesinger's 1961 documentary film Terminus,[112] while the 1970 British Transport film Rush Hour includes several scenes filmed in the station.[113] The underground scenes in the 1998 romantic comedy Sliding Doors were partly shot at Waterloo tube station.[114]
Two well-received images of the station are the two Southern Railway posters "Waterloo Station – War" and "Waterloo Station – Peace", painted by Helen McKie for the 1948 centenary of the station. The two pictures show hundreds of busy travellers all in exactly the same positions and poses, but with altered clothing and roles. The preparatory sketches for these were drawn between 1939 and 1942.[115] In 1981, Shell UK ran a competition a work of art to be exhibited above Waterloo's Shell exit. The winner, Jane Boyd, went on to be Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge.[116] Other paintings of the station include the huge 1967 work by Terence Cuneo, in the collection of the National Railway Museum.[117] A statue of Terence Cuneo by Philip Jackson was installed on the concourse in 2004.[118]
In 2010, two of the disused platforms hosted a theatrical performance of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. The audience was seated either side of the actual railway track. The show included the use of a steam locomotive coupled to one of the original carriages from the 1970s film (propelled by a diesel locomotive). The performance moved to London after two acclaimed summer runs at the National Railway Museum in York.[119]
Waterloo and Waterloo Underground are the setting for the Kinks' song "Waterloo Sunset", recorded in 1967. It was originally titled "Liverpool Sunset" but changed as the band decided there were too many songs about that city.[55] Its lyric describes two people (Terry and Julie) meeting at Waterloo Station and crossing the river, and was also inspired by the 1951 Festival of Britain. The band's biographer, Nick Hasted said the song "has made millions contemplatively pause around Waterloo, a busy urban area the record gives a sacred glow."[120]

Citations

Sources

Further reading
Fareham, J., 2013. The History of Waterloo Station, Bretwalda Books.  ISBN1-9090-9972-4

 for Waterloo from Network Rail
 on Flickr
London Transport Museum Photographic Archive


The Pacification of Tonkin (1886–96) was a slow and ultimately successful military and political campaign undertaken by the French Empire in the northern portion of Tonkin (modern-day north Vietnam) to re-establish order in the wake of the Sino-French War (August1884 – April1885), to entrench a French protectorate in Tonkin, and to suppress Vietnamese opposition to French rule.
Background

Following their colonisation of Cochinchina in the 1860s, the French attempted to extend their influence into Tonkin.  A first, abortive attempt to intervene in Tonkin was made by Francis Garnier in 1873.  Nine years later, in April 1882, Henri Rivière seized the citadel of Hanoi, inaugurating the second French intervention.  Although Rivière's career ended in disaster a year later, with his defeat and death at the hands of the Black Flag Army at the Battle of Paper Bridge (19 May 1883), Jules Ferry's expansionist government in France sent strong reinforcements to Tonkin to avenge this defeat.  Although it would take many years before Tonkin was truly pacified, the second French attempt to subdue Tonkin was ultimately successful.
In August 1883, in the wake of Admiral Amédée Courbet's victory at the Battle of Thuận An, the Vietnamese court at Huế was forced to recognise a French protectorate over both Annam (French protectorate) and Tonkin.[1]  Efforts by the French to entrench their protectorate in Tonkin were complicated by the outbreak of the Sino-French War in August 1884, which tied down large French forces around Hưng Hóa and Lạng Sơn, and later by the Cần Vương uprising in southern Vietnam in July 1885, which required the diversion of French forces from Tonkin to Annam.  When the Sino-French War ended in April 1885, there were 35,000 French troops in Tonkin, but the area of French control was restricted to the Red River Delta.  Between April 1885 and April 1886 French troops closed up to the Chinese border, raising the tricolour and establishing customs posts at Lào Cai and other frontier crossings into Yunnan and Guangxi provinces, but large swathes of Tonkinese territory remained under the control of insurgent groups.
The Tonkin Campaign, a struggle by France since June 1883 against various opponents, including Vietnamese forces under the command of Prince Hoàng Kế Viêm, Liu Yongfu's Black Flag Army, and finally the Chinese Yunnan and Guangxi Armies, officially came to an end in early 1886.  On the recommendation of General Charles-Auguste-Louis Warnet (1828–1913), the commander-in-chief of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps, Tonkin was declared 'pacified' in April 1886, and this achievement was symbolised by the formal downgrading of the expeditionary corps into a division of occupation under the command of General Ferdinand Jamont (1831–1918).  This declaration, made for domestic consumption in France, where opposition to French adventures in Tonkin was growing, was purely cosmetic, and concealed the reality of a continuing, low-level insurgency in Tonkin.[2]
Character of the Tonkin insurgency

The Cần Vương insurgency against the French launched in Annam in July 1885 after Hàm Nghi's flight from Huế was portrayed by the insurgents as a patriotic, anti-French, struggle to 'aid the king'.  The insurgency in Tonkin was rather more complex.  Many of the insurgents fought for patriotic motives, but others simply wanted to exploit the anarchy that prevailed in much of Tonkin at the end of the Sino-French War.  The Chinese armies that had fought the Sino-French War dutifully withdrew from Tonkin in May and June 1885, but their ranks were by then full of Vietnamese volunteers or conscripts, and these men, unpaid for months, were simply disbanded on Tonkinese soil and left to fend for themselves. They kept their weapons and supported themselves by brigandage, in many cases sheltering behind the patriotic rhetoric of the Cần Vương insurgency.  The French, although reluctant to admit that any of the 'brigands', 'bandits' and 'pirates' in arms against them had noble motives, were well aware that they were fighting a range of enemies in Tonkin:
Throughout Tonkin hard-working law-abiding cultivators had always been left defenceless in the face of the exactions of the mandarins and the Chinese and Annamese pirates.  The reign of the mandarins was now ended, but force would be needed to deal with the pirates, whose number had increased in the past two years.  The ranks of the Black Flags and the other professional brigands who had been fighting us were swollen by discharged Chinese soldiers, other soldiers who had deserted with their arms and equipment because they had not been paid, Annamese ne’er-do-wells who preferred pillage to agriculture, and sometimes law-abiding peasants who had been forcibly conscripted.[3]

Liu Yongfu's Black Flag forces continued to harass and fight the French in Tonkin after the end of the Sino-French War.[4]
With support from China, Vietnamese and Chinese freebooters fought against the French in Lạng Sơn in the 1890s.[5] They were labelled "pirates" by the French. The Black Flags and Liu Yongfu in China received requests for assistance from Vietnamese anti-French forces.[6][7][8][9][10] Pirate Vietnamese and Chinese were supported by China against the French in Tonkin.[11] Women from Tonkin were sold by pirates.[12] Dealers of opium and pirates of Vietnamese and Chinese origin in Tonkin fought against the French Foreign Legion.[13]
The bandits and pirates included Nung among their ranks. By adopting their clothing and hairstyle, it was possible to change identity to Nung for pirate and exile Chinese men.[14] Pirate Chinese and Nung fought against the Meo.[15] The flag pirates who fought the French were located among the Tay.[16]
In 1891 "Goldthwaite's Geographical Magazine, Volumes 1-2" said "FOUR months ago, a band of 500 pirates attacked the French residency at Chobo, in 'l‘onkin. They beheaded the French resident, ransacked and burned the town, and killed many of the people."[17] In 1906 the "Decennial Reports on the Trade, Navigation, Industries, Etc., of the Ports Open to Foreign Commerce in China and Corea, and on the Condition and Development of the Treaty Port Provinces ..., Volume 2" said "Piracy on the Tonkin border was very prevalent in the early years of the decade. Fortified frontier posts were established in 1893 by the Tonkin Customs at the most dangerous passes into China, for the purpose of repressing contraband, the importation of arms and ammunition, and specially the illicit traflic of women, children, and cattle, which the pirates raided in Tonkin and carried beyond the Chinese mountains with impunity. These posts were eventually handed over to the military authorities."[18] In 1894 "Around Tonkin and Siam" said "This, in my view, is too pessimist an estimate of the situation, a remark which also applies to the objection that these new roads facilitate the circulation of pirates. Defective as they may be, these roads must, it seems to me, be of service to cultivation and trade, and, therefore, in the long run to the pacification of the country."[19] In 1893 "The Medical World, Volume 11" said "Captain Hugot, of the Zouaves, was inclose pursuit of the fnmous Thuyet, one of the most redoubtable, ferocious, and cunning of the Black Flag (Annamite pirates) leaders, the man who prepared and executed the ambuscade at Hue. The captain was just about to seize the person of the young pretender Ham-Nghi, whom the Black Flags had recently proclaimed sovereign of Armani, when he was struck by reveral ar rows, discharged by the body-guard of HamNghi. The wounds were all light, scarcely more than scratches, and no evil effect was feared at the time. After a few days, however, in spite of every care, the captain grew weaker, and it became apparent that he was suffering from the effects of arrow poison. He was removed as quickly and as tenderly as possible to Tanh-Hoa, where he died in horrible agony a few days later, in spite of the most scientific treatment and the most assiduous attention."— National Druggist.[20] The 1892 "The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review and Oriental and Colonial Record" said "The French port of Yen Long was surprised by Chinese and Annamite pirates and the troops driven out with loss."[21][22]
The 1892 "A REVUE SOCIALISTE" said "La vérité c'est que la piraterie est organisée systématiquement, c'est qu'elle se produit dans des conditions qu'il suffit d'énoncer, même rapidement, pour convaincre chacun de l'inefficacité des mesures répressives don't nous pouvons disposer là-bas à son égard. Il convient d'abord d'établir une distinction, car selon qu'elle est chinoise ou annamite, la piraterie change de caractère, d'organisation, de puissance.
Les pirates chinois sont groupés en bandes permanentes, armées de fusils à tir rapide, solidement équipées. aguerries – ce qui n'a rien de surprenant, l'étiquette de pirates désignant ordinairement dans ce cas des recrues chinoises qui passent continuellement la frontière.- Si l'on conservait le moindre doute à cet égard, il suffirait de considérer – leur œuvre, qui est à peu près exclusivement militaire. Ces bandes résident dans les régions montagneuses, dans les défilés, d'où elles peuvent harceler nos colonnes, faire le coup de feu avec les avantpostes, tuer quelques hommes et s'enfuir dans la brousse pour se reformer un peu plus loin. C'est par l'une de ces bandes qu'a été surpris, le 9 juillet, le détachement en route pour Lang-Son. Avec la piraterie annamite le groupement par bandes n'est plus permanent, il ne se produit que lorsque se présente une occasion favorable, il est plus fréquent lorsque la récolte est mauvaise. L'objectif est, le plus souvent, le pillage d'un village ou la capture des sampans chargés qui descendent les nombreux affluents du Song-Coï ou du Taï-Binh. Pour réprimer de telles exactions, les fonctionnaires qui ignorant généralement la langue et le pays, sont dans l'obligation d'avoir recours aux lettrés et aux fonctionnaires annamites. Or, ceuxci nous détestent cordialement, aussi est-ce avec beaucoup d'empressement qu'ils interviennent, non pour faire aboutir les poursuites, mais pour les faire avorter. Ils savent fort bien qu'une telle attitude n'est pas pour déplaire à leur gouvernement.
La cour de Hué est, on le sait, plus que jamais hostile à notre établissement au Tonkin, elle encourage secrètement tout ce qui peut l'entraver et nous déconsidérer aux yeux des populations. Ajoutons que souvent les fonctionnaires annamites sont matériellement intéressés à ce que la piraterie s'effleurisse librement. Les pirates en usent avec les mandarins comme les pirates financiers européens avec certains journalistes et politiciens, et cela leur réussit admirablement. La discrétion des notables annamites est telle, que les pirates, leurs méfaits accomplis, n'ont pas même à s'éloigner du village où ils ont fixé leur résidence. Ils dissimulent simplement leurs armes et, tels des travailleurs rangés, prêts à fournir des renseignements aux Commissions d'enquête, ils assistant tranquillement aux recherches.
ll n'est sans doute point besoin d'insister davantage pour que se dégage écrasante, irréalisable, avec les moyens actuels, la tâche assumée par M. de Lanessan. Sans effort l'on comprendra que, même avec des pouvoirs extraordinaires qui font de lui un véritable vice-roi, en dépit de son incontestable compétence en matière de colonisation, le gouverneur actuel de l'Indo-Chine n'ait encore réalisé aucune des promesses, qu'aux applaudissements enthousiastes des coloniaux, il formulait l'an dernier, avec sa belle exubérance de méridional."[23]
French and insurgent tactics

The terrain of Tonkin was ideal for the hit-and-run tactics used by the insurgents.  In the flat and fertile Delta, the insurgents were able to move much more quickly than the French from village to village along the dykes that separated the flooded rice paddies.  Most Tonkinese villages were encircled with earth walls, ponds and thick bamboo hedges, and were consequently difficult to attack. If a band of insurgents was detected by the French, it could choose either to disperse or to strengthen a village's fortifications and wear the French down by fighting a regular defensive battle.  In the mountainous regions of Upper Tonkin, the insurgents could exploit the scarcity of paths and the difficulties the French faced in supplying their columns to build strong lairs in nearly inaccessible spots.  From these hideouts they would fan out into the surrounding regions, laying ambushes for French detachments.  As the French troops they met were often sick and exhausted, these ambushes were sometimes successful.[24]
To counter these tactics, the French used 'shandy columns' (colonnes panachées), so-called because they normally contained a mix of white and native troops.  Typically, a column would contain legionnaires and marine infantry, supported by companies of Tonkinese riflemen.  To find the bandits, the French had to march into forests on the basis of imprecise and often misleading intelligence.  When they discovered their position, they attacked, but in most cases it had already been abandoned for another.  It was a tiring and frustrating struggle, which was not even interrupted during the stormy heats and the rains of summer.  The soldiers of the Foreign Legion soon learned that it was more merciful to shoot wounded comrades who could not keep up with the marching columns than to leave them to be captured and tortured to death by the bandits.
For several years the French had frustratingly little to show for the enormous military efforts they were making to crush the insurgency.  This was above all due to the duality of the command.  The regional commanders only had military powers, and in all their operations had to obtain the agreement of the native authorities and the residents of the administrative provinces corresponding to their region.  The residents themselves were assisted by merchants who improvised a transport business on which the supply of food and ammunition to the posts depended, and there was no recourse against these entrepreneurs if they failed to fulfil their engagements.  Military action under such conditions could be neither swift nor sure.  The insurgency resumed as soon as the columns had left, and the installation of posts in some important points did not, as had been hoped, win the French control of the country.  Nevertheless, the French did win some successes, and by the end of 1890 the Delta was almost pacified and the insurgent bands had been pushed back into Upper Tonkin.[25]
Progress of the pacification

Beyond the Delta, however, the French had much less to show for their efforts.  Their first major victory against the insurgents, at Ba Dinh in January 1887, owed more to the folly of the Vietnamese commander Dinh Cong Trang, who deliberately challenged the French to a set-piece battle near the Annam-Tonkin border, than to the skill of the French high command.  The Vietnamese defeat at Ba Dinh was a disaster for the Cần Vương movement in Annam, and cost the lives of many Vietnamese insurgents, but it did little to lessen the problems that the French faced in Tonkin.[26]
The collapse of the Cần Vương insurgency in Annam at the end of 1888 also did little to alter the state of affairs in Tonkin.  Only two months after the capture of the young Vietnamese king Hàm Nghi in October 1888 a French column of 800 men under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Borgnis-Desbordes incurred heavy casualties (95 men killed and wounded) driving a strong force of insurgents from the villages of Cho Moi and Cho Chu on the Song Cau River.
Nevertheless, though resistance continued behind their lines, the French were able to widen their zone of occupation slowly but surely.  In western Tonkin, a column under the command of chef de bataillon Bergougnioux advanced up the Clear River and occupied Bac Muc and Vinh Thuy in May 1886.[27]  On 1 September 1887 the French occupied Hà Giang.  A column under Colonel Brissaud penetrated almost as far as the border with Siam and dislodged a Siamese force that had taken advantage of the chaos in Tonkin to cross the frontier and occupy the small town of Dien Bien Phu.
In northern Tonkin Commandant Servière traversed the region between Lạng Sơn and Zhennan Pass at Cua Ai, and protected the operations of the Border Delimitation Commission set up under the Treaty of Tientsin to demarcate the frontier between Vietnam and China.  He dispersed several insurgent bands that had been operating around Lạng Sơn, and established a post at Chi Ma, on the Tonkin-Guangxi border.[28]  In November 1886 a large expedition under the command of General Mensier drove the insurgents from other localities near the Tonkin-Guangxi border and occupied the important frontier town of Cao Bằng.[29]
Considerable progress was also made in eastern Tonkin, a region that had seen little fighting during the Sino-French War and was still almost unexplored by the French.  Between 1886 and 1888 capitaine de vaisseau de Beaumont's naval division hunted down the pirates who still infested Along Bay and most of the Delta coasts and completed the work that Admiral Amédée Courbet had begun in 1884.  The wild country between Lạng Sơn and the Guangdong border that the French had been unable to subdue during the war with China was now tamed by the French occupation of Tien Yen, Ha Coi and Mong Cai.  A vital preliminary to these operations was the completion of the naval survey of the coast of Tonkin by the naval hydrographer La Porte, who took over the work begun in 1883 by Renaud and Rollet de l'Isle.  La Porte's moment of glory came when, as a result of this survey, he personally guided the French gunboats up the narrow river channels to Mong Cai, enabling the French to confront the town's defences with overwhelming strength.  Mong Cai was occupied by the French in December 1886.  La Porte crowned his career by making a general triangulation of Tonkin, from Haiphong to Hưng Hóa and to Phu Lang Thuong, drawing on a series of topographical maps produced since 1883 by military engineering officers.  Finally, a column of 600 soldiers and 400 coolies under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Alphonse Dugenne, the hero of the Bắc Lệ ambush in June 1884, marched along the coastal plain of eastern Tonkin as far as the Chinese border and explored the sparsely-populated and mountainous hinterland running back to Lạng Sơn.[30]  The French completed their penetration of eastern Tonkin in January 1887 by driving insurgent bands from the Pak Lung peninsula, a border region disputed between Vietnam and China.  In July 1887 the peninsula was awarded to China by the Border Delimitation Commission.[31]
A joint political and military solution

The tide finally turned in France's favour in Tonkin with the appointment of Jean-Marie de Lanessan as governor-general of Indochina in 1891. De Lanessan, an able, intelligent and energetic administrator, quickly put in place the administrative structures that would enable the military commanders first to contain and ultimately to master the insurrection.  He reversed the policy of his predecessors, recalling the unwieldy militia units to the Delta and returning control of the mountain region of Tonkin to the military.  He divided Upper Tonkin into four territories, centred respectively on Sept Pagodes, Lạng Sơn, Sơn Tây and Sơn La, and placed each territory under the orders of a military commander who was also entrusted (subject to his own oversight) with the civil powers of a résident supérieur.  This concentration of military and civil power in the hands of a small number of officers was potentially dangerous, but de Lanessan got on well with General Duchemin, the army commander in Tonkin, and was able to ensure that the commands went to the best officers available.  These men included Lieutenant-Colonel Théophile Pennequin, who developed the famous 'oilstain' (tache d'huile) tactics that were eventually to prove so effective in stamping out the insurgency, Colonels Joseph Gallieni and Servière, and chef de bataillon Hubert Lyautey.  De Lanessan was lucky.  Duchemin and his immediate subordinates were among the finest soldiers then serving in France's colonial empire.  Two of them, Joseph Gallieni and Hubert Lyautey, would distinguish themselves in the First World War and end their lives as Marshals of France.[32]

This galaxy of talented administrators and soldiers pursued French aims in Tonkin with a judicious mixture of political and military action.  Political action came first.  De Lanessan and Gallieni agreed that the most important task for the French was to win over the population to their side.  If the ordinary Tonkinese farmers could be persuaded that French rule was preferable to anarchy, they would cooperate with the colonial power.  The insurgents would eventually be isolated, and military victory would then follow as a matter of course.  Accordingly, the French set out to demonstrate the benefits of their rule.  Roads and paths were built to link up the French posts, enabling small French columns to move quickly from place to place.  As it became easier for the French to protect law-abiding villagers from the depredations of the bandits, confidence gradually returned.  Markets and schools were built in the villages, and the conditions were established in which agriculture, industry and commerce could once more flourish.[33]
Seeing that the French were there to stay, and that they were increasingly capable of imposing law and order, the Tonkinese gradually turned against the insurgents.  The French began to receive valuable intelligence on the whereabouts of guerrilla bands.  Eventually, they felt secure enough to form local militia units to protect the villages, at last certain that their rifles would be turned against the bandits rather than against themselves.  At this point the scales tipped decisively against the insurgents.  Once they had lost the sympathy of the local population, they could not hope to win.[33]
With the ground thus prepared politically, the French were able to implement Pennequin's 'oilstain' method with considerable success.  This method involved building a strong barrier of solid posts, judiciously placed, to push back the insurgents little by little, to occupy effectively the conquered terrain, and to establish new posts further forward.  The French did not enter a new troubled region until they had finished with the previous one.  The dispatch of attack columns became the exception, and was used only to achieve a clear objective that could not be achieved by political means.[32]
Gradual collapse of the insurgency
In this way, the French were able between 1891 and 1896 to reduce the final centres of resistance in Tonkin.  In November 1891 they finally secured control of the Dong Trieu massif, a thorn in their side since 1884, and dispersed the Chinese guerrillas who had operated there for so long.  Trouble in the region subsided immediately on the death of the insurgent leader Luu Ky a few months later.  In March 1892 the French destroyed the last bandit concentrations in the Yen The region.  This remote, wooded, mountain fastness between Tuyên Quang and Thái Nguyên had been colonised by guerrilla bands during the war with China and held against the French ever since by the bandit chiefs Ba Phuc, De Nam and De Tham.  Although French troops continued to skirmish with bandits in the Yen The until De Tham's death in 1913, they were no longer a serious threat to law and order.  With the removal of these two running sores, the French were able to scale down their military operations in Tonkin between 1892 and 1896 to a very low level.  The insurgents, once so formidable, were now reduced to kidnapping isolated French and Vietnamese officials and demanding ransoms for their safe return.  They had become a nuisance rather than a threat.  Routine sweeps and patrols by single companies now sufficed to police both the Delta and the mountain regions, and in 1896 it became possible for French politicians to speak of the 'pacification' of Tonkin with genuine conviction.[34]
Frontier security
As internal order was restored, the security of the border with China loomed larger.  The border had long been porous, and Chinese bands took advantage of the weakness of the French frontier garrisons to cross over into Tonkin, plunder as many villages as they could, then retreat back into China before the French could catch up with them.  In 1887 China and France had agreed on the delimitation of the frontier, but this agreement proved to be almost worthless in practice, because the Chinese authorities in the frontier districts actively connived at the activities of the raiders.  Indeed, the raiding bands often consisted of parties of regular soldiers of the Guangxi and Yunnan armies.  Some French commanders, notably Gallieni, raided villages on the Chinese side of the border in retaliation, or conducted 'hot pursuit' operations across the border into China to track down bands of raiders.  Formally, France and China now enjoyed the best of relations, and both the French and Chinese governments turned a blind eye to such incursions.  Frontier security for Tonkin was finally achieved in the closing years of the nineteenth century, after the French lined the border with China with blockhouses and stationed enough soldiers there to deter incursions.
Notes

Fourniau, C., Annam–Tonkin 1885–1896: Lettrés et paysans vietnamiens face à la conquête coloniale (Paris, 1989)
Fourniau, C., Vietnam: domination coloniale et résistance nationale (Paris, 2002)
Porch, D., The French Foreign Legion (New York, 1991)
Sarrat, L., Journal d'un marsouin au Tonkin, 1883–1886 (Paris, 1887)
Thomazi, A., Histoire militaire de l'Indochine française (Hanoi, 1931)
Thomazi, A., La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris, 1934)

What were the results of The Pacification of Tonkin?