The Subterranean Railway (49 page)

The cover of the 1930
Metroland
booklet was still selling the suburban rural dream.

Animals killed by trains, as lines expanded into the rural surrounds of London, included otters and owls, displayed here at Charing Cross station in 1929.

Frank Pick, the administrative genius behind London Transport, using his famous green-ink pen.

A 1930 poster encouraging people to go to the cinema. The Underground was careful not to give free promotion to any particular venue or film.

A 1925 redesign of the famous roundel by Edward Johnston, with the characteristically expanded capital U and D.

Between the wars, air displays at RAF Hendon attracted huge crowds, most of whom travelled there on the Underground to nearby Colindale station.

At the height of the Blitz, the stations became so crowded that people had to spend sleepless nights on the escalators – the deep stations proved to be ‘the best shelters of all’.

Special refreshment trains were run to provide basic food such as buns and tea to thousands of shelters.

Thousands of West Indians were encouraged to come to Britain to take up vacancies on the Underground and the buses. Here, London Transport’s recruitment officer Charles Gomm signs up the first batch of applicants in Barbados, 1956.

The tradition of eye-catching posters on the Underground continued with the opening of the Victoria line, the first new tube line in central London since Edwardian days.

Several of the stations on the Jubilee Line Extension are architectural masterpieces like this one at Canary Wharf but, unlike those built by Green and Holden, are characterised by their contrasting styles.

The subterranean railway beneath Piccadilly Circus.

This 1908 map is the first to show all the Underground lines. It is largely geographically accurate, except for the Metropolitan, which, oddly, has been bent towards the west, presumably to accommodate the key above it.