Work now underway on major rail works at Charing Cross and Waterloo East
A 22-day closure began yesterday of both Charing Cross and Waterloo East stations as a major engineering project began.
The £20 million project will see 1,800 metres new track and 16 sets of switches and crossings will be installed between London Charing Cross and Waterloo East, replacing the existing track and equipment that’s been in use for since 1990.
Whilst stations are closed some trains are terminating at London Bridge while many lines see service changes.
A trip through the area on Saturday showed a large number of engineering trains ready to start work. Hungerford Bridge is also part of the project while according to Network Rail “the country end of the platforms at Charing Cross station will be rebuilt with new foundations and surfaces to keep them safe and open for passengers to use.”
Train lengths
This probably means little now but perhaps in future may have more importance as originally many more 12-car Networkers were due to run on Metro lines back when trains were ordered in the early 1990s.
In order to stop at places that can only take 10-car trains such as Woolwich Dockyard and some Charing Cross platforms a rudimentary form of Selective Door Operation was proposed.
That never happened and along with changes to the original train order 12-car services have been rare ever since.
For many years stations had extended platforms for longer trains that didn’t run. Then in the 2010s Network Rail embarked on a project to upgrade power supplies and add new extensions for 12-car running.
Even stations like Abbey Wood saw works but no 12-car trains ran before everything was demolished for Elizabeth line works just a couple of years later.
Since then a select few 12-car trains have ran on Metro services but without Selective Door Operation ensuring Charing Cross had limited 12-car services. That and an overall lack of stock.
Which takes us to a potential new train fleet. It’ll almost certainly have SDO and if 12-car could potentially use those Charing Cross platforms currently unusable. Anyway it’s a very tangential point about the work and likely not a factor at all in work at the country end. They’re not being extended.
But if SDO was used more may use the country end to board and walk up – or they’d be more people alighting trains so an upgrade wouldn’t hurt.
Both stations are set to reopen on Sunday 16th August 2026.
Abbey Wood station has changed a lot since the old station was demolished and replaced by a new station. Before the Elizabeth Line was introduced in service in 2022. I do agree with Woolwich Dockyard that can’t accommodate 12-car trains but there is still plans to extend the platforms to accommodate the longer trains.
I had forgotten about these closures and my STUPID train app where all my favourite journeys are saved, makes no mention of this. I had to go to Paddington yesterday and was in a flap before I remembered that I can just take the bus up the road to Blackheath.
It’s good that Network Rail are replacing all 4 tracks between Waterloo East and Charing Cross since they were first laid in the 1990s. Such a shame that Woolwich Dockyard doesn’t accommodate 12-Car trains but hopefully the platforms could extend to accommodate the 12 car trains and much more.