Waterloo–Reading line


The Waterloo–Reading line is a National Rail electric railway line between London Waterloo and Reading. The line runs west through a series of South West London suburbs to Reading, in central Berkshire. Its passenger operation is by South Western Railway, which also manage its stations.
The Waterloo–Reading line is the core of a group of lines and branches heading generally westwards from Waterloo, providing predominantly passenger services into London. All of the branches and connecting lines have direct services into a dedicated group of platforms at Waterloo, so most of the services using the line do not run the whole length of the line. After leaving Waterloo, the line runs parallel to the South West Main Line before diverging at Clapham Junction and heading westwards. Within Greater London, the Hounslow Loop Line diverges at Barnes and reconnects again near Feltham, whilst the Kingston Loop Line diverges at Twickenham to join up with the South West Main Line at New Malden. At Staines, the original route carries onto Windsor, whilst the 1853 route to Reading diverges to run via Egham. At Virginia Water, the Chertsey Branch Line provides another connection to the South West Main Line whilst at Ascot, the Ascot–Guildford line heads southwards towards Aldershot and Farnham. At Wokingham, the line is synonymous with the west end of the North Downs Line leading into Reading, to terminate in platforms 4, 5 and 6. The line also sees some freight services and special charters, which use the connecting line at Reading to join the Great Western Main Line or the Chertsey Loop/Branch Line to connect to the South West Main Line.
Due to the large swathes of suburbs served along the line and the drop from four to two tracks west of Barnes, services between Reading and London Waterloo are relatively slow compared to the two fast tracks between Reading and London Paddington. The line is predominantly used for commuter traffic into London with most of the traffic being generated by intermediate stations. To ease over-crowding, a roll-out is underway of 8-car trains being extended to 10 coaches and there have been calls to change the service patterns to provide some additional and faster services, cutting out some of the intermediate stops.

History

The London and Southampton Railway opened the first stretch of railway between Nine Elms and Woking Common on 12 May 1838, and renamed itself as the London and South Western Railway one month later. As the L&SWR continued extending its railway towards Southampton, the first branch was opened by the Richmond and West End Railway to Richmond on 27 July 1846. This branch line started at what is now Clapham Junction, although the station itself did not open until 2 March 1863. The terminus at Nine Elms was replaced on 11 July 1848 with a new station at Waterloo, originally named as Waterloo Bridge. The Richmond branch was extended further west by the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway opening as far as Datchet on 22 August 1848 and to Windsor on 1 December 1849. Both the R&WER and WS&SWR were purchased by the L&SWR before their respective lines had been completed.
The South Eastern Railway opened its line from Wokingham to Reading on 15 October 1849 under the auspices of the Reading, Guildford and Reigate Railway, which was then taken over by the SER in 1852. This was part of the SER line from London to Reading via Guidlford and terminated at Reading Southern railway station, which was adjacent to, but separate from the Great Western Railway station at Reading.
The line linking Staines with Wokingham was authorised in 1853 and built by the Staines, Wokingham and Woking Junction Railway, opening from Staines to Ascot on 4 June 1856 and onwards to Wokingham on 9 July 1856. Initial services on the line was 6 trains a day between Waterloo and Reading, building up to 14 trains a day by 1928.The line was operated by the L&SWR from the outset, who leased it from the owning company in 1858 for 50% of the gross profits, before purchasing it outright in 1878.
There were now three competing routes to Reading: the GWR from Paddington at 36 miles; the LSWR from Waterloo at 43.5 miles and the SER from Charing Cross at 69 miles. Despite the disparity, the GWR was not the obvious choice due to relative position of Paddington station, west of the City of London. This allowed intense competition between the three companies until in 1858 a new agreement between the three companies was made to fix prices and share fares. The agreement led to a connecting spur between the SER and GWR railways in Reading being opened for goods traffic on 1 December 1858 and to passenger traffic on 17 January 1859. A better placed link was opened on 17 December 1899, and a third link on 1 June 1941. The link is today used by special services such as luxury steam services.

Electrification

The line was electrified on the DC third rail system, initially at 660 volts, in sections:
Early on Sunday 15 November 2009 the bridge carrying the line over the River Crane, London, partly collapsed leading to service suspension. Services were restored eight days later on a temporary diversionary line with a 20 mph speed limit laid across the site of the disused Feltham Marshalling yard. The defective bridge was demolished and rebuilt.

Passenger services and rolling stock

In the current timetable, there are two trains per hour between Waterloo and Reading, every day of the week; the Reading service only calls at major stations Clapham Junction, Richmond, Twickenham, Feltham, Staines and then all stations to Reading. During peak hours, additional trains are run which skip Winnersh, Winnersh Triangle and Earley, and add stops at Vauxhall and Ashford.
Connecting lines add additional services on this line -
Services are mainly formed of Class 458/5s, but a few 450s also work the line.

Future

Due to high demand and overcrowding for a considerable part of many services enhancements are underway. The stations between Waterloo and Staines, unless prohibited by bridges, are having platforms lengthened for 10-coach trains, which use converted Class 458 units. Platform 20 at the former Waterloo International Terminal re-entered service in October 2013. Additional trains were purchased in the early 2010s. On 20 November 2014, Network Rail published a plan, the Wessex Route Study, for wide consultation; its recommendations are to abolish the running of trains shorter than 10 coaches to Reading except in very low usage hours and to open more of the platforms at the former London Waterloo International with a suggested target date of 2019.
In March 2014, the Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership published a report showing the economic benefits of improvements to the Waterloo to Reading line. This looked at the economic benefits of increasing services, speeding up services and adding access to Heathrow Airport, and concluded that the benefits exceeded the costs of such improvements.