Whitehall dithers over Waterloo platforms

What better evidence do you need that the Department for Transport is an obstacle to better operation of the railway?

This from the Evening Standard...

Commuters will have to wait until 2014 before the former Eurostar platforms at Waterloo station are adapted for suburban trains, it emerged today.

What a scandalous waste of capability on the already vastly overcrowded and congested South Western.

UPDATE: This from a Mr Dixon...

Interesting post about Waterloo.

Less than a week ago, the ORR set Network Rail a deadline for making Waterloo International Terminal operational by the 2011 timetable change

See 15.01 on page 4 of this document.

Which relates to page 57 of this.

Interesting to say the least.

UPDATE: This from Driver Potter...

Now, now FC. Play nicely.

I have been told, and this is something that you are in a position to confirm or deny, that should the International side be brought back into service, the signalling arrangements do not conform to current standards.

According to this source, if the platforms were to be brought back into use then the whole Waterloo to Vauxhall stretch would have to be resignalled.

So it might not just be down to DaFT....

Benefit of the doubt and all that.

Now lets see what your vast pool of railway brains has to say.

UPDATE: This from Dreadnought...

I would agree that the signalling in and around the international platforms at Waterloo does not conform to current standards but then neither does the rest of the station.

Requiring resignalling is just plain daft (or perhaps that should be DaFT) when the rest of the station (and numerous other places) operates with signalling designed to the same standards.

What a way to run a railway

PS I understand that at least one empty train has been into the international station in recent weeks so perhaps technically it is not out of use at all?

Sadly it was a VSOE train, so doesn't count.