Author: Cyril Richert
“A second south London rail operator has announced plans to use longer trains on local commuter services. Southern Railways has now confirmed it is ordering extra carriages for rush hour services in December 2013 meaning thousands more Wandsworth residents can now look forward to a more comfortable journey to work.” according to Wandsworth Council’s press release.
South West Trains (SWT) was the first operator to announce last months plans to lengthen (from eight to ten carriages from May 2013) some of its rush hour services on routes from Windsor, Hounslow and Weybridge to and from Waterloo. These services stop at Putney, Wandsworth Town, Clapham Junction and Queenstown Road Stations and are used every weekday by thousands of local residents. Extra trains will make use of platform 20 at the former Waterloo International Terminal (former Eurostar platforms)
It follows confirmation from Wandsworth Council that prior approval applications for lengthening platforms 3 and 4 (October 2010), and 1 and 2 (2011) have been determined and they are still expecting this to be completed by 2014 to enable 10 car local services to be operated as planned (in the original plans Network Rail was talking about platforms 11/12 and 13/14 but decided to cancel the work).
But many Clapham Junction users won’t find any relief to their daily agony as trains to Waterloo on platform 10 are not part of the plan, while the queue to board the carriages is frequently extending now to the stairs accessing the platform!