Waterloo Station is the principle mainline railway terminus serving Southern England and through the Channel Tunnel (Eurotunnel) to Continental Europe. The station is on the southern bank of the River Thames between Westminster and Waterloo Bridges roughly opposite Whitehall.

The original terminus of the 1838 London and Southampton Railway was at Nine Elms but the line was extended to Waterloo in 1848. The 1848 station was rebuilt 5 years later in 1853 and was the subject to numerous expansions. The station also housed the London terminal of The London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company, a platform dedicated to the dead and their greiving relatives and friends.

In 1922 Queen Mary opened the current station. This suffered severe bomb damage during World War II but the underground passages served as safe bomb shelters to many hundreds of people.

Waterloo International Terminal was built between 1989 and 1994 and earned the architect Nicholas Thomas Grimshaw the RIBA gold medal for this long, low, spacious structure in steel and glass. The first high-speed rail service to France started in 1994.