In Pictures: The Secret Bits Of Tower Bridge
In Pictures: Kinetica Art Fair
St Pancras...The LEGO Version
The London Dossier: A Rough Guide To London, Circa 1967
Diane Abbott Mulls Mayoral Bid
It's almost two years since the last Eurostar crawled out from beneath the Nicholas Grimshaw-designed Waterloo terminal, yet the platforms remain unused and unloved. Earlier reports had the cost of keeping the five platforms mothballed was £500,000, but it now appears that was an understatement, and the annual figure is closer to £2 million.
The cost has exercised Lord Adonis, the Transport secretary, to call for "early recommendations" on the platforms' future. But Waterloo wasn't included in Network Rail's five-year modernisation plan, and the Eurostar platforms will continue as pigeon paradise until 2013 at the earliest. For a station that already serves the most crowded train in London, it's a shameful waste.
Network Rail say converting the platforms and the tracks running into them would cost £54 million, something the Government will struggle to produce at the moment. Yet the move to St Pancras was known for years in advance; in happier economic times, it's surprising that a contingency plan for the Eurostar platforms wasn't signed off.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Um, the Network Rail bit is the key thing here - Waterloo isn't short of platforms, other stations on the line are too short *full stop*, in that they can't cope with the longer trains that are the real answer to overcrowding. Look up 'SWT 10 car' some time and you'll understand.
In fact it might be better to demolish WI, sell the air rights and use the proceeds to finance extension to 10 cars, but it's such a nice bit of architecture that's probably not possible.
Could it be used as an art space - by boarding over the platforms in some sort of temporary but strong substance - so if a railway use for it becomes available in the future it can used for that it must have loads of platform signage that can be used to hang pictures on.
Surely they could have used it for Olympic rowing, shooting, archery or swimming?!