The Waterloo and City line is one of those lines that is small in staure, but rather interesting in history. it was created by the Southern railway, to take commuters arriving at their Waterloo terminus into the centre of the City of London (the main financial district of London) This line had only two stations, with trains shuttling between Waterloo and Bank (as in Bank of England) stations. The Southern built new rolling stock in the 1940's to replace the originals, changeovers at this time happenned via a rail lift to the level of the main line in the small yard adjacent to Waterloo station. This was also used to remove cars for heavy maintainence, although everyday repairs could be done in a small workshop underground at Waterloo. By the 90's, the Eurostar terminal was being built alongside Waterloo, covering the site of the old lift, and by the early 90's, when the Southern Railway built cars were due for replacement a new way had to be found to change the cars over. Network Southeast was in charge of the suburban operations at this time, and tacked an order for new cars onto the order by London Transport's order for Central Line trains. A large opening was made in an access road to Waterloo, which was right above the small yard at the Waterloo end of the line. In this pic the opening is in the lower left, note the big grating that lifts up to allow access. The massive crane has lifted one of the Southern cars out, and has swung it across the road towards a waiting truck. The crane lowers one of the new cars down through the hole to the yard below. In the road outside, Southern design cars are lined up on the left, whilst the new cars are on the right. All the new cars are marked B and W (Bank and Waterloo) on the ends, as once they are underground there is no way to turn them! Old meets new... Cab end of one of the new cars, this location gave an interesting chance for checking out the equipment in a different way! These were (to my knowledge) the only BR owned items of stock to run without the obligatory yellow end panels! [ 30. November 2002, 15:02: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Postcript: The W&C line passed to London Transport on privatisation, as it had far more in common with the tube network than the national network by this time. The four sets of new trains continue to shuttle commuters from Waterloo into the city... Most of the Southern cars were scrapped... ...but one of the motor cars survives in the National Railway Museum at York. It is seen here in company with a prototype HST power car, the prototype Deltic loco, and many other interesting items. The left hand end is the motor end of these cars, they have high floors over the powered truck, with a big electrical room above them which was full of noisy sparking contacts (from opening the door en route one time! ) These were run as two of these motor cars, which have a cab at both ends, sandwiching up to three trailers. At weekends they might only run pairs of motor cars! The new trains are in four cars sets, all cars are powered, with a cab at both ends of the set. [ 30. November 2002, 15:08: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Very interesting Martyn. Those pics give a different angle on those trains I never thought about how they got them down there!
