Waterloo Bridge Station opened on this day in 1848. 177 years later, it is the largest station in Britain. Eliot Wilson takes us back to the beginning

By the summer of 1848, passenger steam railways were only 23 years old. The Stockton and Darlington Railway had opened in 1825 and, after a cautious first 10 years or so, the rail network exploded. The 1840s saw “railway mania” and by the closing years of the decade more than 5,000 miles of track had been built across Britain, more than half the size of Network Rail’s current infrastructure.

London had six terminus stations serving seven railway companies which approached the capital from all sides: Euston in the north, Paddington to the west, Bishopsgate and Fenchurch Street towards the centre and, south of the Thames, London Bridge – which served two companies, the London and Greenwich Railway and the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway – and Nine Elms.

Nine Elms, a handsome neo-classical station designed by the prolific Sir William Tite, an expert in railway architecture, had only opened in 1838. It was the end of the line for the passengers of the London and South Western Railway, arriving from Southampton,........

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