Waterloo & City line
A two-station shuttle under the Thames between Waterloo and Bank, run on weekdays for commuters heading into the City.
About the Waterloo & City line
The Waterloo & City line, known informally as “The Drain”, is a shuttle with just two stations, Waterloo and Bank, and no stops in between. An end-to-end trip takes four minutes. It is shown in turquoise on the tube map and is the only tube line that is entirely underground, depot included.
Its purpose has barely changed since it was built: most passengers are commuters from south-west London, Surrey and Hampshire who arrive at Waterloo main-line station and continue to the City of London’s financial district. Because of that, the line has historically not run on Sundays or public holidays, and since it reopened in October 2021 after closing during the COVID-19 pandemic it has run only on weekdays.
Both ends are major interchanges. At Waterloo, which had 77.39 million entries and exits in 2024, you can change to the Bakerloo line, Jubilee line and Northern line and to National Rail. Bank, with 40.07 million, connects with the Central line, the Northern line and the DLR.
History
The London and South Western Railway’s terminus at Waterloo was not within walking distance of the City, which the company saw as a serious shortcoming. After earlier schemes failed, the Waterloo and City Railway Act 1893 received royal assent on 27 July 1893, for an underground electric line backed by, but independent of, the LSWR. Contractor John Mowlem & Co began work on 18 June 1894, with J. H. Greathead among the consulting engineers, and the tunnels were driven with his shield under the river from staging near Blackfriars Bridge.
Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, formally opened the line on 11 July 1898, and it opened to the public at 8 a.m. on Monday 8 August 1898, with a flat 2d fare. It was London’s second electric underground railway, after the City and South London. The City terminus was not then called Bank. The LSWR worked the line from the start and absorbed the company on 1 January 1907.
From 1923 the line belonged to the Southern Railway, one of the “Big Four” main-line companies, so it was not taken over by the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933 – the only London tube railway to stay outside it, although it still appeared on most Underground maps. New trains were ordered after a 1937 review; when the line reopened with them on 28 October 1940, the City station was renamed Bank. On 1 January 1948 the line passed to British Railways, and on 13 April 1948 a shunt of coal wagons and a locomotive fell down the shaft of the Armstrong lift at Waterloo.
After a major refurbishment and new rolling stock from Network SouthEast in the early 1990s, operation passed to London Underground in 1994.
Trains and service
Trains shuttle between the two stations with no intermediate calls. TfL’s published timetable covers weekdays only, with no Saturday or Sunday departures. The first train leaves Waterloo at 06:00 and the last at 00:20; from Bank the first is at 06:06 and the last at 00:26. In the busiest hour 19 trains run in each direction. There is no Night Tube, so outside those hours, and at weekends, plan an alternative with the journey planner. The pattern reflects the line’s purpose: very soon after opening it was running at capacity in the business peaks and lightly used for the rest of the day. Full times are on our tube times page.
The trains
Because the line had no connection to any other railway and no section at ground level, carriages were lowered into and lifted out of the tunnel by the Armstrong lift beside Waterloo station, completed in April 1898. Off-peak traffic was light from the start, so in 1899 the company ordered five single motor cars from Dick, Kerr & Co, delivered in February 1900 to work the quieter hours alone. In 1921, 24 five-car trains an hour were running at the busiest times. The Southern Railway’s Art Deco trains, later classified as Class 487, arrived in 1940 along with a new conductor rail outside the running rails. The present trains were introduced when Network SouthEast replaced the rolling stock in the early 1990s.