The Subterranean Railway
Page 37
7
The Times, 14 December 1904.
8
For example, the Strategic Rail Authority estimated in 2002 that it would cost a staggering £154m to electrify, using the same third rail method, the twenty-five mile stretch of line between Ashford and Hastings.
Chapter Seven: DEEP UNDER LONDON
1
T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, Vol. 1, George Allen & Unwin, 1963, p. 307.
2
Widened in the 1920s to 11ft 8½in, later adopted as the standard tube tunnel size which is still too small for London’s needs.
3
Daily News, 5 November 1890.
4
The Times, 4 November 1890.
5
Railway Times, 8 November 1890, p. 545.
6
Conversation with author.
7
Barker and Robbins, p. 313.
8
The City & South London carried 5.1 million passengers in 1891, the first full year of operation, compared with nearly twice that number when the Metropolitan, which was a similar length line, first opened. And numbers increased only slowly over the subsequent decade, reaching only 7 million by 1899.
9
Hugh Douglas, The Underground Story, Robert Hale, 1963, p. 139.
10
Where trains run either side of one central, quite narrow, platform. Most of them on the system have been replaced for safety reasons as the Underground has become busier.
11
Later Lord Cowdray, who built up the Pearson company which now owns the Financial Times and who, like so many of the developers of the Underground, had strong connections with the USA.
12
In 1975, shortly after the Underground’s worst ever disaster, at Moorgate in which forty-one people died, the line transferred to British Rail. After a brief closure, it was converted back to take full-size trains and connected with the rest of the suburban network at Finsbury Park, achieving its original aim seventy years after opening.
13
Barker and Robbins, p. 42.
14
Railway Times, 10 November 1900.
15
J. Graeme Bruce and Desmond Croome, The Twopenny Tube, Capital Transport, 1996, p. 18.
16
O.S. Nock, Underground Railways of the World, A & C Black, 1973, p. 76.
17
Charles E. Lee, The Central Line, a brief history, London Transport, 1973, p. 17.
18
The Times, 29 August 1900.
19
The Times, 30 August 1900.
20
The Times, 1 August 1900.
21
The Times, 2 October 1900.
22
Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman, London under London, a subterranean guide, John Murray, 1985, p. 147.
23
Daily Mail, 30 July 1900.
24
Railway Times, 25 August 1900.
25
Nock, p. 82.
26
It is, today, the second busiest, after the Northern, of the tube lines with 600,000 users daily on weekdays.
27
The Sun, 30 July 1900.
28
From San Toy in The Emperor’s Own by Sidney Jones, 1905.
29
As a result of the large amount of US capital used to fund the line, the locomotives and the electrical equipment, including the power station at Shepherd’s Bush, were American-designed and built.
30
The Times, 29 September 1900.
31
The Times, 9 October 1900.
32
It was to be almost forty years before the name of Wood Lane station was officially changed to White City in recognition of the long-forgotten exhibition.
33
Lee.
Chapter Eight: THE DODGY AMERICAN
1
Trilogy of Desire.
2
From Tim Sherwood, a biography of Yerkes, unpublished, London Transport Museum.
3
Sidney I. Roberts, ‘Portrait of a Robber Baron: Charles T. Yerkes’, Business History Review, 1961, xxxv (3) pp. 344–71.
4
In the event he seems to have put in only $316,000, according to the University records.
5
Sherwood, op.cit.
6
Alan A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome, Rails through Clay, George Allen & Unwin, 1962, p. 64.
7
John Franch, Robber Baron, the life of Charles Yerkes, University of Illinois Press, 2008, p 284.
8
John Franch, Robber Baron, the life of Charles Yerkes, University of Illinois Press, 2008, p 286.
9
Mike Horne, The Bakerloo Line, Capital Transport, 2001, p. 7.
10
Ibid.
11
Detailed in David McKie, ‘The fall of a Midas’, Guardian, 2 February 2004.
12
A reasonable approximation of the financial figures in this chapter would be to multiply them by a factor of fifty to calculate what these sums are worth at 2004 prices.
13
T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins make an attempt to explain Yerkes’s method of raising money in the second volume of their seminal work, A History of London Transport, George Allen & Unwin, 1974 (pp. 71–2), but it is only partial and, not surprisingly, convoluted.
14
Barker and Robbins, Vol. 2, p. 72.
15
Quoted in ibid., p. 71.
16
Edwards and Pigram, p. 10.
17
Barker and Robbins, Vol. 2, p. 74.
18
Horne, p. 11.
19
Jackson and Croome, p. 107.
20
The far-sighted nature of this innovation is demonstrated by the fact that though the system has long been installed on all underground lines, the overground railways resisted installing a similar system, resulting in many fatal crashes – most notably Ladbroke Grove in 1999. Only in the early 2000s, nearly a century later, was a similar device called Train Protection and Warning System been introduced on Britain’s main lines, and even this is not 100 per cent effective at speeds above seventy mph.
21
An odd choice since there was no formal connection between the two bodies and, indeed, the LCC repeatedly refused to bail out the Underground in subsequent years.
22
Who wrote under the name Sekon, his name spelt backwards.
23
Daily Mail, 4 April 1906.
24
R.D. Blumenthal, Diary 1887–1914, Heinemann, 1930.
25
Jackson and Croome, p. 83.
26
Quoted in Barker and Robbins, Vol. 2, p. 82.
27
Quoted in ibid., p. 84.
28
House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 113, columns 1144–1154.
29
According to research by the London Transport Museum.
30
The Times, 2 October 1911.
31
Charles E. Lee, The Piccadilly Line, a brief history, London Transport, 1973.
32
By 1994, with only 600 daily users, the branch was doomed when the lifts needed replacing at an estimated cost of £5m and now it has a better role as the preferred location for any film requiring a scene in the Tube.
33
In fact, work was started on a station between Golders Green and Hampstead under the Bull & Bush pub. This adhered to the letter, if not the spirit, of the agreement with Hampstead Borough Council since it was sited outside its boundaries but although the platforms were completed, the work was abandoned, most likely because the Underground group realized it would never attract sufficient custom since much of the surrounding land was public open space as part of Hampstead Heath and Golders Hill Park.
; 34
In one of those historical confusions, some contemporary reports say three.
35
Hampstead & Highgate Express, 22 June 1907.
36
Edwards and Pigram, p. 10.
37
In fact, the Suburb, as it is known locally, soon became a middle-class enclave, because after the war houses were only built for sale rather than letting; but it still represents one of the best examples of early town planning and suburban domestic development with, today, 13,000 residents.
38
Jackson and Croome, p. 122.
39
Starting whistles were tried briefly on the Piccadilly in 1907 but were quickly rejected, probably because they made the noisy atmosphere even worse.
40
Quoted in Jackson and Croome, p. 121.
41
The practice continues today: there were massively over-optimistic projections of passenger numbers for both the Channel Tunnel and the high-speed link to the tunnel, without which they would not have been built. There have even been attempts to quantify the likely level of overestimate.
That does not mean these schemes do not benefit society but merely that the analytical tools to assess them are insufficiently developed. A financial assessment of the Victoria line made thirty years after the first section opened in 1968 still suggested that it was only a marginally worthwhile development even when taking into account the social benefits, such as savings on car journey times. Looked at purely financially, the Victoria line appeared to be a complete non-runner, destined for massive losses and with no hope of making a financial return. Yet the line is operating at virtually full capacity for much of the day and is a vital part of London’s infrastructure. Thus, even with the benefit of hindsight, private investment would not pay its way and this strongly suggests that the dream of Yerkes and Speyer to make high returns out of building tube lines could never be realized, especially given that the technology at the time was so much more primitive than that available to the contractors on the Victoria line.
Chapter Nine: BEGINNING TO MAKE SENSE
1
Indeed, local politicians were not to gain control of London Transport until 1970, and, after losing it in 1986 with the abolition of the GLC, did not regain it until 2003, a measure of the instability of the complex relationship between central and local government over London’s transport system.
2
A familiar complaint. Even today, London Transport receives around half the level of subsidy in relation to income compared with its counterparts in European cities – typically only 30 per cent of its money comes from subsidy, compared with twice that level in Paris or Berlin.
3
The Times, 24 June 1907.
4
By coincidence, both momentous years in the future history of London’s transport system: the creation of London Transport and its nationalization.
5
The family was originally called Knattriess.
6
Stanley told this story, for which there is no contemporary evidence, much later in life.
7
Much was well designed, such as the folding card for the Hampstead, which, when opened, revealed a tube train emerging from a tunnel.
8
The early maps all fall into the trap of trying to represent the real path of the Underground rather than the schematic illustration which Beck introduced.
9
The Times, 7 October 1908.
10
Alan A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome, Rails through Clay, George Allen & Unwin, 1962, p. 137.
11
Ibid., p. 149.
12
Ibid., p. 143.
13
John Betjeman, London’s Historic Railway Stations, John Murray, 1972.
14
Piers Connor, Going Green, Capital Transport, 1993, p. 40.
Chapter Ten: THE UNDERGROUND IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
1
Stephen Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, Sutton Publishing, 2001, p. 151.
2
Railway Gazette, 5 October 1917.
3
Cited in John Gregg, The Shelter of the Tubes, Capital Transport, 2001, p. 5.
4
Interestingly, work on that railway, with its little two-foot gauge trains and nine-foot diameter tunnels, continued despite the war until 1917, but it was not actually fully fitted out and opened for a further decade.
5
Alan A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome, Rails through Clay, George Allen & Unwin, 1962, p. 155.
6
Stanley’s talents had been spotted by the government which enlisted him in the war effort first as director-general of mechanical transport at the Ministry of Munitions in 1916 and then as President of the Board of Trade, a post which necessitated finding him a seat in the House of Commons and which he held until May 1919.
Chapter Eleven: REACHING OUT
1
He later became Lord Brabazon of Tara and had been a keen early aviator in his youth. His main claim to fame was that in 1909 he took a pig up in his aircraft in order to show that the saying about pigs not being able to fly was mistaken. The poor creature was strapped into a bucket on which the slogan ‘I am the first pig to fly’ had been written.
2
Alan A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome, Rails through Clay, George Allen & Unwin, 1962, p. 186.
3
Read out at a public inquiry held by the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee.
4
Christian Barman, The Man who built London Transport, a biography of Frank Pick, David & Charles, 1979.
5
Jackson and Croome, p. 206.
6
Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, London’s Underground Suburbs, Baton Transport, 1986, p. 38.
7
Desmond F. Croome, The Piccadilly Line, Capital Transport, 1998, p. 45.
8
O.S. Nock, Underground Railways of the World, A & C Black, 1973, p. 177.
Chapter Twelve: METROLAND, THE SUBURBAN PARADOX
1
Quoted in Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, The Romance of Metroland, Baton Transport, 1986, p. 24.
2
Quoted in Edwards and Pigram, The Romance of Metroland, p. 26.
3
Say, £40,000 to £80,000 today, but comparisons are difficult because house prices have risen much faster than the retail price index.
4
Edwards and Pigram, The Romance of Metroland, p. 26.
5
Thereafter, despite the annual cup final and a few other events, Wembley Stadium’s mainstay was its greyhound track, which attracted large crowds travelling by the Underground.
6
Some survived in a different form: the Palestinian one became a Glasgow laundry and the New Zealand one a dance hall.
7
Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, London’s Underground Suburbs, Baton Transport, 1986, p. 66.
8
Quote in Edwards and Pigram, London’s Underground Suburbs, p. 71.
9
Stephen Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, Sutton Publishing, 2001, p. 114.
10
Hugh Douglas, The Underground Story, Robert Hale, 1963, p. 162.
11
Mike Horne, The Jubilee Line, Capital Transport, 2000, p. 16.
12
Edwards and Pigram, London’s Underground Suburbs, p. 72.
13
Christian Barman, The Man who built London Transport, a biography of Frank Pick, David and Charles 1979, p. 247.
Chapter Thirteen: THE PERFECT ORGANIZATION?
1
T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, Vol. 2, George Allen & Unwin, 1974, p. 287.
2
Christian Barman, The man who built London Transport, a biography of Frank Pick, David & Charles, 1979, p. 205.
3
F.A.
A. Menzler, address to the Institute of Public Administration, Lord Ashfield and the public corporation, 1951.
4
Ibid.
5
Barker and Robbins, p. 285.
6
Lord Ashfield, ‘London’s Traffic Problem Reconsidered’, The 19th Century and After Review, August 1924, p. 4.
7
John Glover, London’s Underground, Ian Allan, 1999, p. 39.
8
Gavin Weightman and Steve Humphries, The Making of Modern London, 1914–1939, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.
9
It was originally published in the Daily Herald and is quoted in Bernard Donoghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, Phoenix Press, 2001, p. 116.