The Subterranean Railway (40 page)

1

Charles E. Lee,
The Metropolitan Line, a brief history
, London Transport, 1972, p. 22.

2

Parliamentary Papers,
Correspondence with reference to the proposed construction of a Channel Tunnel
, C3358, Accounts and papers, 17 (1882).

3

Clive Foxell,
The story of the Met and GC joint line
, Clive Foxell, 2000, p. 22.

4

Except at stations where there were two tracks.

5

Quoted in Dennis Edwards and Ron Pigram,
The Romance of Metroland
, Baton Transport, 1986, p. 16.

6

Now called Harrow on the Hill.

7

Quoted in Edwards and Pigram, p. 16.

8

Quoted in ibid., p. 18.

9

Quoted in ibid., p. 18.

10

Quoted in Foxell, p. 32.

11

Indeed, a century later, a similar idea was put forward to build a cheap version of Crossrail, the new underground railway between Paddington and Liverpool, using that same section of line. This was briefly and foolishly considered by the Labour government of 1997 but quickly rejected as unworkable as there are too many trains using it.

12

While that still remains true today, the development in London of many major shopping centres, often with associated leisure facilities, on the fringe of the metropolis means that the major source of traffic growth now is of such radial journeys. Croydon Tramlink, for example, a light railway which skirts around the fringes of south London from Wimbledon to Beckenham via Croydon, has been highly successful in terms of attracting large numbers of passengers; and many new bus routes have been introduced to serve this market.

13

Hugh Douglas,
The Underground Story
, Robert Hale, 1963, p. 98.

14

These are the modern names – all three, curiously, started off with different ones: Acton Green, Mill Hill Park and Ealing Common & West Acton.

1

Fred T. Jane, ‘Round the Underground on an Engine’,
English Illustrated Magazine
, August 1893.

2

R.D. Blumenthal,
Diary 1887–1914
, Heinemann, 1930.

3

Quoted in Roy Porter,
London, a social history
, Penguin, 1994, p. 213, from a contemporary but unspecified source.

4

Porter, p. 225.

5

O.S. Nock,
Underground Railways of the World
, A & C Black, 1973, p. 34.

6

The District briefly later tried a parcels service in East London using tricycles to carry the goods off the train to their final destination, but it was not a success as it did not really have a competitive edge over rival road services.

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.

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.

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.