Waterloo and City Line
The
Waterloo and City Line is a short underground
metro line in
London, formally opened on
11 July 1898. It has only two stations,
Waterloo and
Bank, between which it passes under the
River Thames. It exists almost exclusively to transport commuters arriving at Waterloo mainline station to the financial district of the
City of London (and vice versa), and does not operate on Saturday evenings or Sundays.
History
The line was designed by civil engineer W.R. Galbraith and
James Henry Greathead. Originally part of the
London and South Western Railway, it became part of the
Southern Railway in 1923. It was subsequently nationalised with the mainline railways in 1948, and did not become part of
London Underground until
1994, when it was sold for the nominal sum of one
pound.
It is colloquially known as The Drain. There are two main reasons for this: the smell of the marshy ground on which Waterloo is built, and the drain-like round deep-level tunnels, which were nicknamed "tubes" on the other lines.
In 2003 the Waterloo and City was closed for over three weeks for safety checks due to the derailment on the Central Line, which uses the same type of train.
Map
Geographical path of the Waterloo and City Line
Stations
in order from north to south