Waterloo & City Line – Walk And Tube Station Visits

This post is part of my Randomly London v. The Tube Challenge. Get the latest about challenge updates here. Donate to Bowel Cancer UK here.

Waterloo Station

The Waterloo & City line is the amuse bouche of my 11 course tube challenge. The line itself is both the youngest* and shortest on the network. At only 1.5 miles (2.5 km) long and consisting of just two stations (Waterloo and Bank), I was able to walk the whole thing in about a half hour. A nice easy start.

However, everything did not quite go according to plan. The original idea was to both ride and walk the line on the same day. I set off on a beautiful sunny Sunday (Aug. 19th, 2012) walking to Waterloo from South Ken. Normally the Waterloo & City Line is closed on Sundays. However, Transport for London (TFL) moved to a 7 day a week schedule for the line during Olympics.

I naively assumed that this applied to the whole period from the opening ceremonies of the Olympics to the closing ceremonies of the Paralympics. Even TFL’s website seemed to indicate the line was going to be open. So I was somewhat surprised to find the whole thing shut down. Really not a big deal, but it meant I had to make a separate trip a few days later to ride the train.

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Waterloo Station – Start of Waterloo & City Line Walk

Waterloo Station

London Waterloo Station was the first station on my Tube Challenge and this was the first photo I took of the station. At this point 1 down 269 more to go. I will pass through this station twice more during the challenge.

My favourite piece of trivia about the station is the fact that Waterloo used to be the terminus for the Eurostar (subsequently moved to St. Pancras Station). This meant that French passengers had to disembark at a station named in honour of the battle where Napoleon was defeated. Not exactly the symbol of European unity.

New Video Featuring Area Around Waterloo And Canary Wharf

Hope you’re all having a great bank holiday weekend. I found this short video on reddit by user green_tito. It features some great random shots of London, primarily featuring the areas around Waterloo station (including Lower Marsh) and Canary Wharf. Do you notice how sunny everything looks in the video? Well that’s no accident as it was shot back in March, 2012 when we actually had a few weeks of nice weather.

Commuting Into Waterloo Station – Time-Lapse Video

I just found this wonderful video of people commuting to and from Waterloo Station. There are many great shots of the more mundane elements of commuting from people waiting for their train to commuters touching in to them finding a seat (if they’re lucky). However, the highlight for me are some the shots of the buildings you can see from the train including the ever popular Shard and Battersea Power Station among others.

Update 24-04-2012: Just found out this video was created by Iris Wu. You can see more of her work on her website: http://iris-manwu.com.