The Subterranean Railway

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by Christian Wolmar


  10

  Donoghue and Jones, p. 121.

  11

  Ibid., p. 145.

  12

  House of Commons, 31 March 1931.

  13

  Financial News, 14 March 1931.

  14

  Donoghue and Jones, p. 145.

  15

  Jonathan Glancey, London bread and circuses, Verso, 2001, p. 38.

  16

  Indeed, this lack of integration still causes problems today. When Transport for London introduced the Oyster card in 2004, it could not be used on much of the suburban rail network for individual journeys and it took until 2009 before it could be generally used for all rail trips in London.

  17

  Menzler.

  18

  This was the first Lord Hailsham, the father of the one who was Lord Chancellor in the 1970s and 1980s.

  19

  House of Lords, 30 March 1933.

  20

  Donoghue and Jones, p. 114.

  21

  Barman, p. 155.

  22

  Ibid., p. 160.

  23

  Ibid., p. 155.

  24

  Glancey, p. 35. It was the financial framework which Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, would seek, unsuccessfully, in his battle with the government during 2001–2 over the Public Private Partnership.

  25

  Barman, p. 26.

  26

  Oliver Green and Jeremy-Rewse Davies, Designed for London: 150 years of transport design, Laurence King Publications, 1995, p. 13.

  27

  A term not invented until the 1960s.

  28

  Green and Davies, p. 15.

  29

  Quoted in Ibid., p. 15.

  30

  Nikolaus Pevsner, Studies in Art, Architecture & Design, Vol. 2, Thames & Hudson, 1968, p. 193.

  31

  It now includes other railways such as the Docklands Light Railway and the North London line. See Tim Demuth, The Spread of London’s Underground, Capital Transport, 2003.

  32

  But visitors may be deceived, too. Bill Bryson points out in his book Notes From a Small Island that a tourist might use Beck’s map to get from, say, Bank Station to Mansion House, which would involve a change and six stops, only to emerge 200 yards down the street from where he or she started.

  33

  A transport term to describe the share of each mode of transport – bus, rail, car, underground etc. – as a percentage of overall journeys.

  34

  To put this in perspective: even though there was for most people no alternative form of transport in those days, that total represents just half the numbers travelling on a system that is only slightly bigger, with two extra lines, today. Given that car journeys have soared, too, and that the population of the capital is now smaller, that reflects the massive increase in mobility today compared with sixty-five years ago.

  35

  Barker and Robbins, p. 282.

  Chapter Fourteen: THE BEST SHELTERS OF ALL

  1

  Daily Telegraph, 2 September 1940. Some of the newspaper quotes in this chapter are taken from the very comprehensive book, The Shelter of the Tubes by John Gregg, published by Capital Transport, 2001.

  2

  Daily Worker, 7 September 1940.

  3

  Gregg, p. 24.

  4

  South London Press, 1 October 1940.

  5

  Quoted in the Hampstead & Highgate Express, 3 January 1941.

  6

  Gregg, p. 24.

  Chapter Fifteen: DECLINE – AND REVIVAL?

  1

  Part of this chapter is based on Chapter 3 of my previous book, Down the Tube, Aurum Press, 2002.

  2

  Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London, the Unique City, MIT Press, 1934, p. 343.

  3

  At the enquiry into the new Arsenal stadium, the maximum capacity of a Piccadilly Line train was given as 1,056, while that of a Victoria Line train was given as 1,288.

  4

  There are, incidentally, also well-documented tales of pigeons deliberately hopping into a train for a stop or two, apparently knowing precisely their destination.

  5

  The figures are not entirely comparable with those in previous chapters because the BTC included those who had travelled on the Underground using British Railways tickets.

  6

  The first recruits came by boat but flying became the norm thereafter.

  7

  Interviewed by Felicity Premru at the London Transport Museum for the exhibition ‘Sun-a-shine, rain-a-fall’.

  8

  As Stephen Halliday points out in Underground to Everywhere, in the five years ‘1954–9 the value of the Underground’s fixed assets increased by less than 5 per cent before depreciation, which demonstrates that the assets were being run down rather than built up’. It was what economists call disinvestment. In 1955, the British Transport Commission launched a plan to modernize the national rail network and replace steam with diesel at a cost of £1.24bn (over £20bn at today’s prices) in the ensuing fifteen years but made nothing available for London Transport.

  9

  After three failed attempts to shut it, the line was finally closed in 1994 when there were so few passengers – 100 per day – that the drivers reportedly said they knew most of them.

  10

  T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, Vol. 2, George Allen & Unwin, 1974, p. 344.

  11

  A small pamphlet, London Transport Railway Signalling, papers on the life and work of Robert Dell 1900–1992, Nebulous Books, 1999, outlines his achievements.

  12

  Computers generally drive the trains in a more economical way, although the issue is quite complex. The frequent adjustments to the speed made automatically, compared with a human being who will make fewer changes, can increase the wear and tear on a train.

  13

  London Transport Executive, Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 1971, p. 22.

  14

  The exception was 1970 when the Tories retained it, but otherwise the GLC changed hands at every other election (1964 – 1981) for its whole existence.

  15

  Christian Wolmar, Down The Tube, Aurum, 2002, p 65, now available for Kindle at Amazon.

  16

  The only other accident of note, the first major tube disaster, occurred on the Central line in April 1953 in a tunnel east of Stratford. There had been a signal failure and trains were being allowed through on a ‘stop and proceed with caution’ basis, but the driver clearly went too fast and slammed into the rear end of the train in front. Twelve people were killed and forty-six injured, and safety procedures following signal failures were tightened up.

  17

  See C. Wolmar, Down the Tube, Aurum Press, 2002, Chapter 4, for a detailed account of the King’s Cross disaster.

  18

  Desmond Fennell, Investigation into the King’s Cross Fire, HMSO, 1988, Cm 499.

  19

  My previous book, Down the Tube, is an account of how the PPP scheme came about.

  20

  National Audit Office, London Underground: Are the Public Private Partnerships likely to work successfully and London Underground PPP: Were they good deals, The Stationery Office, 2004.

  FURTHER READING

  This is a list of books to which I have referred and which are likely to be of interest to the general reader. It is by no means comprehensive.

  Anthony Badsey-Ellis, London’s Lost Tube Schemes, Capital, 2005.

  Benjamin Baker, The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, Institution of Civil Engineers, 1885.

  Felix Barker, Edwardian London, Laurence King, 1995.

  T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, Volumes 1 and 2, George Allen & Unwin, 1963 and 1974.

  Christian Barman, The Man who built Lon
don Transport, David & Charles, 1979.

  John Wolfe Barry, The City lines and extensions (inner circle completion) of the Metropolitan and District railway, Institution of Civil Engineers, 1885.

  David Bennett, Metro, the story of the underground railway, Mitchell Beazley, 2004.

  David Bowness, The Metropolitan Railway, Tempus, 2004.

  Simon Bradley, St Pancras Station, Profile, 2007.

  J. Graeme Bruce, Tube Trains Under London, London Transport, 1968.

  J.E. Connor, Abandoned stations on London’s Underground, Connor & Butler, 2000.

  J.E. Connor, Stepney’s own railway, a history of the London & Blackwall system, Connor & Butler, 1984.

  Mark D’Arcy and Rory MacLean, Nightmare, the race to become London’s Mayor, Politico’s, 2000.

  Terry Farrell, Shaping London, the patterns and forms that make the metropolis, Wiley, 2010.

  John Franch, Robber Baron, the life of Charles Tyson Yerkes, University of Illinois, 2008.

  R. Davies and M.D. Grant, London and its railways, Book Club Associates and David & Charles, 1983.

  John R. Day and John Reed, The story of London’s Underground, Capital Transport, 2001.

  Tim Demuth, The Spread of London’s Underground, Capital Transport, 2003.

  Bernard Donoghue and G.W. Jones, Herbert Morrison, Portrait of a Politician, Phoenix Press, 2001.

  Hugh Douglas, The Underground Story, Robert Hale, 1963.

  Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, London’s Underground Suburbs, Baton Transport, 1986.

  Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram, The Romance of Metroland, Baton Transport, 1986.

  Andrew Emmerson, The Underground Pioneers, Capital Transport, 2000.

  Desmond Fennell, Investigation into the King’s Cross Fire, HMSO 1988, Cm 499.

  Clive Foxell, The story of the Met and GC joint line, self-published, 2001.

  Jonathan Glancey, London, Bread and Circuses, Verso, 2001.

  John Glover, London’s Underground, the world’s premier underground system, Ian Allan, 1999 (ninth edition).

  John Glover, Principles of London Underground Operations, Ian Allan, 2000.

  John Gregg, The Shelter of the Tubes, Capital Transport, 2001.

  Stephen Halliday, Making the Metropolis, creators of Victoria’s London, Breedon Books, 2003.

  Stephen Halliday, Underground to Everywhere, Sutton Publishing, 2001.

  H.F. Howson, London’s Underground, Ian Allan, 1962.

  Steve Humphries and Gavin Weightman, The making of modern London, 1815–1914, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983.

  Steve Humphries and Gavin Weightman, The making of modern London, 1914–1939, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984.

  Steve Humphries and Joanna Mack, The making of modern London, 1939–1945, London at war, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985.

  Mecca Ibrahim, One stop short of Barking, uncovering the London Underground, 2004, New Holland.

  Alan A. Jackson, London’s local railways, Capital Transport, 1999.

  Alan A. Jackson, London’s Metropolitan Railway, David & Charles, 1986.

  Alan A. Jackson, London’s termini, David & Charles, 1985.

  Alan A. Jackson, Semi-detached London, second edition 1991, Wild Swan Publications.

  Alan A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome, Rails through Clay, George Allen & Unwin, 1962.

  John Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.

  Charles Klapper, London’s lost railways, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.

  Peter Laurie, Beneath the City Streets, Penguin, 1972.

  Henry Mayhew, The shops and companies of London and the trades and manufactories of Great Britain, Strand Printing and Publishing, 1865.

  O.S. Nock, Underground Railways of the World, A & C Black, 1973.

  Mark Ovenden, Metro Maps of the World, Capital Transport, 2003.

  Ben Pedroche, Do Not Alight Here, walking London’s lost Underground and railway stations. Capital, 2011.

  Ben Pimlott and Nirmala Rao, Governing London, Oxford University Press, 2002.

  Roy Porter, A Social History of London, Penguin, 1994.

  Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London, the Unique City, MIT Press, 1934.

  Sheila Taylor (ed.), The Moving Metropolis, a history of London’s transport since 1800, Laurence King, 2002.

  Reg Thomas, London’s First Railway, The London & Greenwich, B.T Batsford, 1972.

  Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman, London under London, a subterranean guide, John Murray, 1985.

  H.P. White, A regional history of the railways of Great Britain, Vol. 3 Greater London, David St John Thomas, 1987.

  John Withington, Capital Disasters, Sutton Publishing, 2003.

  Christian Wolmar, Down the Tube, Aurum Press, 2002.

  Peter Zimonjic, Into the Darkness, an account of 7/7, Vintage, 2008.

  The line history pamphlets produced by Capital Transport and written by various authors are very useful. They now cover all the Underground lines and earlier versions for most were produced in the 1970s by London Transport.

  Underground News is a monthly newsletter produced by the London Underground Railway Society with a wealth of information about the system.

  INDEX

  accidents and disasters

  boiler explosions, ref1

  Charing Cross station collapse, ref1

  King’s Cross fire, ref1

  live-rail accidents, ref1, ref2

  Moorgate disaster, ref1

  Paris Métro fire, ref1, ref2

  tunnel collapses, ref1

  wartime casualties, ref1, ref2

  Acton, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Acton Works, ref1

  Addison Road, ref1, ref2

  advertising, ref1, ref2

  air raid shelters, ref1, ref2

  air temperature, in tunnels, ref1

  Albert Hall, ref1

  Aldersgate Street, ref1

  Aldgate, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  Aldwych, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Alexandra, Princess, ref1

  Alexandra Palace, ref1, ref2

  all-night services, ref1

  Amersham, ref1, ref2

  Angel, ref1, ref2

  Antwerp, ref1

  Archway, ref1

  Army and Navy Stores, ref1

  Arnos Grove, ref1

  Arts and Crafts Movement, ref1

  Ashfield, Lord (Albert Stanley), ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  flair for publicity, ref1, ref2

  and London Transport, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  and network integration, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8

  partnership with Pick, ref1

  and wartime, ref1, ref2

  atmospheric railways, ref1, ref2

  Austro-Hungarian empire, ref1

  Automatic Train Operation, ref1

  Aylesbury, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Baker Street, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  and Bakerloo Line, ref1

  Chiltern Court development, ref1, ref2

  and electrification, ref1, ref2

  and Jubilee Line, ref1

  and Metropolitan Railway, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

  and Underground history, ref1

  Baker Street & Waterloo Railway, see Bakerloo Line

  Bakerloo Line, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  construction, ref1, ref2, ref3

  extensions, ref1, ref2

  fares, ref1

  finances, ref1, ref2

  flood barriers, ref1, ref2

  improvements, ref1, ref2

  interchanges, ref1, ref2

  and Jubilee Line, ref1, ref2

  nickname, ref1, ref2

  passenger numbers, ref1, ref2, ref3

  stations, ref1, ref2

  Balham, ref1, ref2

  Bank, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Bank of England, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Banstead, ref1

/>   Barbados, ref1

  Barcelona, ref1

  Barking, ref1, ref2

  Barlow, Peter, ref1

  Barlow Commission, ref1

  Barn Hill, ref1

  Barnett, Dame Henrietta, ref1

  Battersea, ref1

  Bayswater, ref1

  Beck, Harry, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Beckton, ref1

  Becontree, ref1

  bedbugs, ref1

  Bedford Park, ref1

  Bedford Park Estate, ref1

  Bell, Col. John, ref1

  Belsize Park, ref1

  Bennett, Arnold, ref1

  Berlin, ref1, ref2

  Bermondsey, ref1

  Bethnal Green, ref1, ref2, ref3

  Betjeman, John, ref1, ref2

  Bevin, Ernest, ref1

  Beyer, Peacock locomotives, ref1, ref2

  Big Wheel, ref1

  Birkenhead, ref1

  Birmingham, ref1, ref2

  Birmingham, Bristol & Thames Junction Railway, ref1

  Birmingham New Exchange, ref1

  Bishop’s Road, ref1, ref2, ref3

  Bishopsgate, ref1, ref2

  Blackfriars, ref1, ref2

  Blackfriars Bridge, ref1, ref2, ref3

  Blake, Charles, ref1

  Blumenfeld, R.D., ref1

  Blumenthal, J.D., ref1

  Boer War, ref1

  boiler explosions, ref1

  Bonar Law, Andrew, ref1

  Bond Street, ref1, ref2

  booking clerks, ref1

  Borough, ref1

  Bounds Green, ref1

  Bow, ref1, ref2

  Bramwell, Frederick, ref1

  Brandon-Thomas, Jevan, ref1

  Brent, ref1

  Brent Valley viaduct, ref1

  Brighton, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  British Empire Exhibition, ref1

  British Freehold Land Company, ref1

 

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