The original design of Waterloo Station is a throwback to
the days when a train terminal and its rolling stock would be both decorative and
functional.
The slowly disappearing legacy of this beautiful balance now lurks in the
shadows of a corporate cacophony of slick overdevelopment, snapshots of which are
available below for the benefits of your optical critique. Ah well... worse things
happen at sea.
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CLICK these CLICKABLES with CAUTION!
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| ARIEL VIEW |
At every expense spared, our intrepid author bravely ventured onto
the London Eye to
secure vertigo inducing shots for this hallowed site. Awesome! That
oversized Fairground wheel
is a super detour if youre a freshly disembarked tourist.
Check out Waterloo Station carving up the delightful London Landscape!
The blue snake like feature of the station is in fact the exoskeleton of the
Waterloo International roofing. Delightful modernism, but compared to the
original pre-1960's
Architecture, is quite frankly, crap. Ah well, were stuck with it now.
Still... nice view, aint it?
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| GRAND ENTRANCE |
Note; 'Big Issue' vender just out of shot. Visitors to Waterloo may
not chance upon this imposing visage. Worth delaying your journey by a
few hours just to savour the powerful prominence of this War Memorial,
one of the secret sights of the southbank
Lit nightly by its own gallery of searchlights. Stunning!
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| The WELLY |
Public House on Waterloo Road (Street Level): Important
Railwaymans watering hole.
Echoes of many a hedonistic happy-hour
here. Is that the rumbling of Waterloo East I hear? Or my Cognac
corrupted constitution? Enter this establishment, savour the Rail anecdotes,
gluttonate on the gormet gastronomy, drink lots of fine warm english ale,
get very very drunk, get arrested
by a real british police officer! Its a fair cop...
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| CLOCK & ARCH |
Monumentally Marvellous Masterpieces. The different time displayed
on each CLOCK
face only adds to the mystique of rail privatisation, and yet this gorgeous
instrument
remains the centerpiece of Waterloo, and people have typically arranged to
meet under
the clock for many a brief encounter. Shocking! Meanwhile, lurking in the
background
is the monsterously attractive ARCH, overlooked by many as a simple
coffee
house facade, it is a sculptured noble monolith of stone and glass, and only
until
recently was this Waterloo's main gate for the road that once bisected the
concourse,
so parcels or royalty could directly hit the platforms in regal style. It only
seems
like yesterday.... Sigh..... Anyway, this beautiful creation
is known as the VICTORY ARCH in commemoration of the First
World War. It was opened by Queen Mary in 1922 and really
is worth pondering over. This item should be preserved for
all eternity, or even longer.
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| INDICATOR BOARDS |
Merry hours spent by weary travellers,
neck angled into twisted board viewing position,
waiting for homeward service details to flutter into apparition.
Grotesque goings on when the cluttering boards finally revealed platform
numbers, so that hundreds may scramble at full speed
through the same narrow gate,
all heading for that same favourite seat. Phew!
Developments in 2002 saw new Digital Indicator Screens,
a hopeless design, unviewable in the midday
sun. This inspired our stupid rail masters into covering the
glass roof to stop the natural light. How dumb was that?
2003 saw the appearance of sensible canvas light shields instead,
but then they moved some boards, and the shields disappeared!
What the hell is going on here? I wish they would just reconnect the old
mechanical boards. At least they were easier to read.
This has all been a complete cack handed cock up!!!
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| LOWER MARSH & ANGELOS |
Lower Marsh is Waterloo Station's very own personal Street Market, and like
most local traders it presents a great alternative to the overpriced antics of
the Station concourse. Apart from the Market itself, this bit of old London
is a marvellous run of unusual shops, the spearhead of which was the world
famous Freshly Maid Cafe, once renamed 'Angelos' after its amazing
owner. This Cafe is now no more, and the WATERLOO DELI now takes
its place. These photos might take you back to better days,
which, for many years, I shared with Angelo and son and their pleasant
conversation. And then there was the Angelo cuisine, where
tea was made so strong,
you can stand a spoon upright in it. And the cook was so fast, he did a 3
minute egg in 2 minutes. Wonderful. Great days.
By the way, this little lane is also home to the
former Spanish Patriot pub (See below).
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| SPANISH PATRIOT |
Sweet little bar-room brawling boutique down in the Lower
Marsh at street level. Recently ruined, refurbed and renamed the 'Ruby
Lounge', the new owners have crushed a notable venue in CTEB history.
The regulars in this former hooligan haven
once had lager coming out of their ears,
thanks to years of practised pissartistry and vodka abuse. Nowadays,
thanks to a false passport, they're able
to unleash their skills, drinking their retirement away on the railwaymans
riviera. I'm sure they'll make a comeback, once the heat is off.
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| CHANNEL TUNNEL TRAINS |
Note; Little leaf on the line. These old boneshakers
leave Waterloo only to
reappear in Paris only 3 Hours later. Astounding! But just too exciting to
contemplate. Air tight containers that ride like a trans Atlantic Jumbo.
You wouldnt think that
you were at full speed only yards under the sea bed! Sickening...
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| TRAINS & PLATFORMS |
Awaiting sacked driver. Not since the last Class 50 rustbucket
coughed its way out
towards railway heaven has anything glamourous graced a regular Waterloo
timetable, although the little yellow fronted beauties
that you see here will no doubt become
classics themselves, but like the motor car, successive designs get more bland
in character. See how the nauseous Networkers
are shamed by the salubrity of the slam door.
Only on retirement will some latter lamentable loco's be worthy
of a trainspotters notebook.
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| EUROSTAR TURNSTILES |
Anything to declare, luv? These rather drab turnstiles might make
you think you
were at Heathrow, and not within the confines of the proud British Rail
Southern Region flagship.
Still... for a moment you can can relish the fact that here, amongst
the former foundations of the Area Managers Office, you can catch an express
shuttle to Brussels! Ghastly!
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| PANORAMIC CONCOURSE |
Seductive throng of commutations. I took this rather nice shot from
the
the restaurant balcony, a delightful place to take Cream Tea and Scones,
and to dream of those long forgotten halcyon days of Steam Railways
and the British Empire. Oh Blimey!
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| TAXI RANK |
If you exit via the central ARCH, you hit the twilight world of the
Taxi Rank.
And it is here, 0830 weekdays, in the doom and gloom of the station's access
road, where the fight is on, and city bound minions battle for pole
position in the cab queue sweepstakes. You too can draw
umbrellas at 5 o'clock and duel to secure your place
in one of London Town's finest Public Carriages. Where to, Guv??
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| WATERLOO EAST |
The route towards Waterloo's satellite platforms begins here on the concourse,
where some rather ugly escalators, seen here on Royal Ascot day, takes one
onwards and upwards to a scenic walkway. This ghastly moving staircase is of
note, only because its constuction, around 1991, meant the destruction of the
beautiful Staff Restaurant and Carvery, a lovely set of panelled
dining rooms on the first floor. I remember some diabolically great lunch
break sessions there with 'His Lordship'. Salad days indeed. This photograph
shows what replaces those once opulent interiors.
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Email: uncledeathshead@yahoo.co.uk
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Waterloo Station 
