Three weeks of ‘severe’ disruption atWaterloo

THREE weeks of severe disruption to rail services has begun at the UK’s busiest station.

Nearly half of London Waterloo’s platforms were closed on Saturday until August 28 to enable a major engineering project to take place.

There is a significant reduction in South West Trains services from popular commuter locations such as Woking, Guildford and Surbiton.

Some stations are closed and others will be much busier than normal.

An average of 270,000 journeys are normally made to or from Waterloo every day.

The project to extend the station’s platforms will allow longer trains to operate on suburban routes from December.

To ease some of the impact of the work the old Eurostar platforms are being used at Waterloo for the first time since the cross-Channel train service relocated to London St Pancras in 2007.

Rail chiefs urged passengers to consider taking a holiday, working from home or travelling earlier or later than normal while the project is under way.

Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne has previously admitted he is “worried there will be challenging days” and accepted that “there are going to be days when the service is very difficult for people”.

First Group and Hong Kong-based MTR will take over the South West Trains franchise from Stagecoach on August 20.