Waterloo / Leake Street - 'marooned track'

[Sheepy1209]

I've recently been staying at the Park Plaza County Hall hotel, which overlooks Waterloo station, and I'm trying to make sense of a very short stretch of track, complete with colour light signals and some grey cabinets, which appears to be marooned between the hotel and Leake Street.

Google Aerial View

Picture from hotel window:

Can anybody tell me what those tracks were, and why they've just been left there?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Isn't that the throat to the old London Necropolis terminus?

The area was latterly used to park trolleys on when not being used for engineering, hence the short sideways bits of track.

 

[Railsigns]

It's obviously a training facility for signalling techs.

 

[swt_passenger]

Atkins Rail Training
Waterloo Training Centre
11 Leake Street
London
SE1 7NN

 

[Sheepy1209]

A-ha!!!

All makes sense now - ta - I wouldn't have slept tonight

(Edit: looks like its closure was planned in 2006, according to this link: http://www.railway-technology.com/contractors/project/atkins/press1.html)

 

[swt_passenger]

Isn't that the throat to the old London Necropolis terminus?

The area was latterly used to park trolleys on when not being used for engineering, hence the short sideways bits of track.

Wasn't the Necropolis station eventually on the south side of the main line? Although according to Vic Mitchell's book there were at least three different locations (as the main station was rebuilt over the years), so that might have been the first location - but would the site have lasted that long?

 

[Capybara]

I work close to there. Very close. And didn't know that was up there even though I walk past several times most days. As for Necropolis, it's on the other side of the tracks, behind COI. The old Necropolis building is on the right hand side of Westminster Bridge Road just after the Post Office as you walk down towards Lambeth North after going under the railway bridge.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Wasn't the Necropolis station eventually on the south side of the main line? Although according to Vic Mitchell's book there were at least three different locations (as the main station was rebuilt over the years), so that might have been the first location - but would the site have lasted that long?

That picture is on the south side of the main line isn't it?

 

[swt_passenger]

Immediately west of the Eurostar station, (always forget the tracks are physically north/south in this area!)

so this bit here:

 

[jopsuk]

There's facilities like that all over the places- ones I've passed often include one at Cheshunt, and one at the posh new training centre at Larbert that has a level crossing!

 

[Capybara]

The road on the right is the one taxis and other cars used to take after picking up or dropping off at the Eurostar terminal before leaving via the Leake Street tunnel. You can just see the top of the last signal from the other side of Leake Street (if you know it's there). I just did!

 

[ntg]

Necropolis is on the other side, see the spur here.

It could be part of the old Armstrong Lift siding that supplied vehicles to the Waterloo and City Line, but I thought that was completely removed to make way for the Eurostar terminal.

 

[Sheepy1209]

I'm sticking with the training centre - it would be lovely to think there was some piece of mysterious relic infrastructure up there, but I prefer the more prosaic explanation.

Has to be said though - how come the scrap thieves haven't swept it clean? (I hope nobody thus inclined reads this thread)