The Waterloo and Whitehall Railway was a proposed and partly constructed 19th century Rammell

pneumatic railway An atmospheric railway uses differential air pressure to provide power for propulsion of a railway vehicle. A static power source can transmit motive power to the vehicle in this way, avoiding the necessity of carrying mobile power generating eq ...

in central London intended to run under the River Thames just upstream from

Hungerford Bridge The Hungerford Bridge crosses the River Thames in London, and lies between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. Owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (who use its official name of Charing Cross Bridge) it is a steel truss railway bridge ...

, running from

Waterloo station Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of t ...

to the

Whitehall Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea. It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Sq ...

end of

Great Scotland Yard Great Scotland Yard is a street in the St. James's district of Westminster, London, connecting Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall. By the 16th century, this 'yard', which was then an open space for the Palace of Whitehall, was fronted by buil ...

. The later

Baker Street and Waterloo Railway The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR), also known as the Bakerloo tube, was a railway company established in 1893 that built a deep-level underground "tube" railway in London. The company struggled to fund the work, and construction di ...

followed a similar alignment for part of its route.

Origins

Authorised by the ''Waterloo and Whitehall Railway Act 1865'', its route was:

A Railway commencing in the Parish of St Martin's-in-the-Fields in the County of
Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbour ...
in the Street or Place known as Great Scotland Yard at or near the Western End thereof, and terminating in the Parish of Lambeth and County of Surrey in a Piece of Land belonging to the London and South-western Railway Company, and in the Occupation of Edwin Benjamin Gammon, near to and opposite the Arches under the Waterloo Station of that Railway numbered respectively 249 and 250.

The period was extended by the ''Waterloo and Whitehall Railway (Amendment) Act 1867'' and ''Waterloo and Whitehall Railway Act 1868''.

Technical information

The pneumatic pressure was to have been in a diameter tube, with the engine at the Waterloo end sucking and then blowing 25 seat carriages acting as pistons. Edmund Wragge was resident engineer. The railway was intended to cross the river in a tunnel formed of four prefabricated sections of tube, each long, laid in a trench dredged across the river. The sections were to be joined by introducing their ends into junction chambers formed in brick piers constructed below the level of the existing riverbed. The piers were also designed to bear the weight of the sections, which were made of three-quarter-inch boiler plate, surrounded by four rings of brick work, firmly held in place by cement and flanged rings riveted onto the metal. Each section (of which at least one was completed) weighed almost 1,000 tons. Prefabrication began at the

Samuda Brothers Samuda Brothers was an engineering and ship building firm at Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs in London, founded by Jacob and Joseph d'Aguilar Samuda. The site is now occupied by Samuda Estate. Samuda Brothers initially leased a premise ...

shipyard, at Poplar, five miles downstream. If completed, it would have been the first Tube railway.

Decline and abandonment

The line was hit by the 1866 financial crisis caused by the

Overend, Gurney and Company Overend, Gurney & Company was a London wholesale discount bank, known as "the bankers' bank", which collapsed in 1866 owing about £11 million, equivalent to £ million in . The collapse of the institution triggered a banking panic. History Ear ...

bank collapse. On 2 September 1870 the Board of Trade used the ''Abandonment of Railways Act 1850'' and the ''Railway Companies Act 1867'' to declare the railway should be abandoned by the company.

Further developments

A further railway, the

Charing Cross and Waterloo Electric Railway __NOTOC__ The Charing Cross and Waterloo Electric Railway (CC&WER) was a railway company established in 1881 to construct an underground railway in London. The CC&WER proposed a line between a station under Trafalgar Square and the London and South ...

, was incorporated by an Act of 1882 but was abandoned by an Act of 16 July 1885. A third company, the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway, secured an Act in 1893. This project was also put on hold, but eventually became the

Bakerloo line The Bakerloo line () is a London Underground line that goes from in suburban north-west London to in south London, via the West End. Printed in brown on the Tube map, it serves 25 stations, 15 of which are underground, over . It runs partly ...

Remains

Parts of the works remained and at some stages there were tubes at the bottom of the Thames and piles protruding from the river. The trench excavated at the northern end is said now to be the wine cellar of the

National Liberal Club The National Liberal Club (NLC) is a London private members' club, open to both men and women. It was established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882 to provide club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners among the newly enlarged electorate ...

. Some works appeared during construction of the

Shell Centre The Shell Centre in London is the global headquarters of oil major Shell plc. It is located on Belvedere Road in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a prominent feature on the South Bank of the River Thames near County Hall, and now forms ...

on the South Bank.

References

{{Coord, 51, 30, 21.75, N, 0, 7, 35.88, W, scale:3125_region:GB, display=title Transport in the London Borough of Lambeth Transport in the City of Westminster Tunnels underneath the River Thames Abandoned underground railway projects in London Pneumatics Railway companies established in 1865 Railway companies disestablished in 1867 1865 establishments in England 1867 disestablishments in England