The international terminal at Waterloo Station will be out of use for more than a year before the platforms are used by domestic rail services, the government has confirmed.
Living up the road from St Pancras and having all the disruptions whilst it was being upgraded for Eurostar, I am glad its now almost over nearly a decade. But await to see how it performs in it's new home.
I will dearly miss the tiny station on Pentonville Road formerly known as â€œKings Cross Thameslinkâ€� which had preferable queues to the mainline stations for getting cheap away day tickets to Brighton and other south east towns.
But I feel most sorry for the commuters who will have to wait for the disused facilities at Waterloo to be adapted for domestic use and for all the business who have located to Ashford only to have the continental service reduced/withdrawn, it will take a while to stop sniggering over â€œEbsfleet Internationalâ€�.
I walked past the eurostar platform yesterday night. it made me quite sad to see the massive goodbye waterloo sign up over the concourse, but thought it was odd that I can get to st. pancras easier than waterloo, depsite it being far nearer.
The whole development and regeneration in and around St.Pancras and Kings Cross is a lesson to those in SE1 responsible for areas such as Elephant and Castle, in how it should be done.