The London and South-Western Railway - Waterloo Station

Arthur H. Beavan had this to say in Imperial London, published in 1901, about Waterloo Station:

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Once the Cinderella of London termini across the water, forlorn and difficult of access, Waterloo has taken a new lease of life, and by means of its electric railway, has connected the South-Western Railway, after a fashion, with its sister-lines in Middlesex.

Waterloo station is an exemplification of how such places develop.

Originally, and for many years, a mere shed propped up by arches, it has been added to bit by bit until now it is in extent inferior only to Liverpool Street; but this evolutionary process has left it an ungainly bulk with little or no definite plan.

To the uninitiated it remains a maze, and the approach to it from the country continues to be exactly like the elongated neck of a bottle.

With all its defects, however, Waterloo is the most "human" of London stations, which characteristic, during the South African war, was manifested in a remarkable degree.

Here some of the most pathetic phases in human life are witnessed, and all kinds of men and women may be studied; convicts on their way to Woking or Dartmoor; soldiers and sailors en route for distant lands; voyagers making for the mail-steamers starting for Southampton; invalids in search of health at Bournemouth, Weymouth, etc; officials bound for Portsmouth; volunteers for the Bisley rifle-ranges; and, throughout the summer months, swarms of excursionists and family parties off to all the lovely places along its comparatively short system of 882 miles.

There is also an annex-station, with a mighty volume of purely local traffic, extending to Hampton Court, Kingston-on-Thames, Richmond, etc.

The London and South-Western Railway is thoroughly enterprising and up-to-date, and is about to adopt the pneumatic mode of signalling, a reform by which it is expected a great saving of expense will be effected; the old cumbersome and complicated style of signal-boxes and lever will be done away with.

In the matter of record speeds, the London and South-Western Railway is well to the front; it runs its Bournemouth corridor-train (111 miles), without stopping, in two hours, six minutes, ie about fifty-two miles per hour.

Next: Locomotive London in 1900: The Great Northern Railway: King's Cross Station