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The Development of London's Underground Railways

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The Development of London's Underground Railways THE DEVELOPMENT OF LONDON’S UNDERGROUND RAILWAYS Dennis O. Marsh CONTENTS PREFACE TRAVEL IN MID VICTORIAN LONDON THE TWIN LINES Early Days. This line is opened. Unforseen difficulties. The “Circle” completed. Interchange. Travel on the Metropolitan. Signalling. Manchester_Paris via the Metropolitan. Electrification. Early Stock. Attenda The Twin Lines in literature. LOCOMOTIVES ON THE MET. AND DISTRICT MORE TWIN LINES HISTORY CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY GREAT NORTHERN AND CITY RAILWAY CENTRAL LONDON RAILWAY Extensions TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAYS WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT OF THE STOCK APENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY MAPS The Metropolitan Railway The District Railway The Northern Line The Central London Railway and Central Line Lines incorporated into the London Electric Railway The Baker Sytreet and Waterloo Railway The Piccadilly Line Central Line Extensions. North East London Works. The Development of London’s Underground Railways By [Dennis O Marsh] Copyright © G&RM Clayton Ltd, 2017 Published by: G & RM Clayton Ltd, 33 Point Wells Road, R D 6, Warkworth, New Zealand 217] ISBN 978-0-9951013-0-2 (EPUB) ISBN 978-0-9951013-1-9 (MOBI/Kindle) ISBN 978-0-9951013-2-5 (PDF) \MAPS PREFACE In outlining the development of London’s complex system of sub-surface communications I have I believe “broken fresh ground”. Of necessity my account is sketchy, for within the compass of a few thousand words I can only convey the merest impression of the conditions which created a need for a revolutionary form of infra-metropolis transport to supplement the Hackney carriage and the horse drawn omnibus. The early days of the Metropolitan Railway have bequeathed a rich legacy of anecdotes with a character of their own. We may indeed dismiss jocularly the story of an elderly lady of ample proportions who found it necessary to alight from a narrow Third Class compartment in reverse. The guard saw her in this position, half in and half out of the compartment, and concluded that she was trying to board the train - so he gave her a helping push. It is said that she travelled the whole Inner Circle, being pushed back into the train at each station before the guard realised his mistake. An able raconteur in manipulating the above story to the detriment of the Metropolitan and the amusement of his audience can however scarcely exaggerate the engineering achievements which alone have made possible the rapid circulation of London’s ‘traffic throughout twenty-four hours of each day. Today the London Underground system is an indispensable factor in the life of the Capital. Over a quarter of a million use it daily as a means of getting to work and as many again take advantage of its speed as a convenience when shopping or going to the theatre. To the rustic and foreigner it remains ‘an inexhaustible source of mystery and confusion and there are some among them who will not venture on the Northern alone. It is perhaps justifiable to claim that the early development of the Metropolitan and the more recent extensions of the Northern, Piccadilly and Central Lines have influenced very considerably the structure of suburban society. For this reason alone London’s Underground Railways merit attention. St. Pauls, Cheltenham. D.O. Marsh. May l953 TRAVEL IN MID-VICTORIAN LONDON In the London streets of the eighteen fifties, slow moving horse-drawn traffic jammed the main thoroughfares, impeded the infrequent omnibuses and made a journey from the West to the East End of the City a trying ordeal of an hour or more. That great authority of Victorian travel G.A. Sekon says, “Many who remember the London streets before the motor era will have unpleasant recollections of their filthy conditions during and after rain, also during the lengthy period of drizzle and humidity. Despite the sweeping of the roads and shovelling up the liquid mud into vans, to cross the road meant getting splashed with mud, perhaps from head to foot, whilst the boots were invariably soiled.” There were no wooden blocks and no asphalt paving and although some of the chief arterias had granite “setts”, the ruling type of road was macadam which, in the absence of steam rollers was not of the best. For many years the main London termini at Paddington and Euston had been linked only with regular coaching inns which ran services to and from the stations in accordance with train arrivals and departures. However a sudden boon amongst the omnibus companies following the 1851 Exhibition saw the building of a great network of routes across London and by July 1857 there were bus services in operation on ninety-six routes in the Metropolis. In connection with daily city traffic, the L.G.O.C ran services from Paddington to London Bridge - a journey of an hour and ten minutes. An alternative route ran to London Bridge via Oxford Street. Although these omnibuses were scheduled to run in conjunction with train arrivals they were not nearly numerous enough or sufficiently rapid in transit to make them an-efficient means of conveyance to the commercial centres of London. In addition to the delays caused by traffic congestion, the horse-drawn omnibuses, which at most held twenty-two seated passengers, were by no means an acme of comfort. On the buses operated by the L.G.O.C. seating accommodation was narrow and cramped. The floor was generally covered with a thick layer of straw - dry and clean every morning, but in wet weather damp, dirty and smelly for the rest of the day. Those travelling on the outside had to climb to the roof by a series of iron rungs on the right of the door and endure the vicissitudes of a London winter without protection. There being but few stopping places, the bus’s progress was further impeded by aged or corpulent prospective passengers who, hailing the bus as it passed, proceeded to stagger heavily towards it with a complete disregard for the stringencies of the timetable. 1 Owing to the taxing nature of the work done the horses required to be changed at frequent intervals and this again involved at least another delay in the journey. Under these circumstances the growth of West London suburban dormitory towns such as Wembley, Harrow, Ealing and Hounslow in the l84O’s and l85O’s threw an increasingly heavy burden upon the already taxed resources of the numerous but poorly organised omnibus operators. What had caused this bottleneck at the terminii ? The is manyfold but several factors stand out as having considerable bearing on conditions. Since the Greenwich Railway had blazed the trail in 1836 from London bridge to Deptford, to be followed in l837 by the London and Birmingham from Euston, the Londoner had nurtured a decided taste for setting up house in the then country suburbs around London. On the latter line Harrow was originally the first station out of London but the Directors quickly saw the advantages opening intermediate stations at West London Junction, Willesden and Sudbury. The G.W.R. in 1838 had-opened a line from Paddington to Maidenhead with intermediate stations at West Drayton, Ealing, and Hanwell and later Southall., In the east the Eastern Counties Railway had constructed a terminus at Shoreditch and from thence ran two lines, the first to Cambridge via Lea Bridge, Tottenham, Marsh Lane and Edmonton. The other line ran to Colchester with intermediate stations at Mile End, Stratford and Ilford. In South London services had by 1840 been extended to Norwood and Croydon and other lines serving New Cross, Forest Hill, Sydenham, West Croydon and Epsom. And so the suburbia of Kipps and Mr Porter and all their kind so admirebly portrayed by Wells and Grossmith. In many parts of the Home Counties lines that were eventually to become predominantly used for the conveyance of suburban traffic were originally built as direct links with provincial towns and the suburban “halts” followed later. It was a case of the population following the railways and not vice versa. Later, as the bus companies extended their route tentacles further into Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey the railways retaliated by opening suburban lines “proper” to places such as Enfield and Ongar, Finchley, Caterham, Uxbridge, etc., etc. With competition maintaining the efficiency of the services provided both by road and rail the City clerk and his family moved into the comparatively open countryside around London and no longer did the legions of workers who quitted their City desks at five o’clock join their friends for the walk home. The pedestrian camaraderie of the 1830’s had vanished for ever and in its place were roads congested by streams of horse vehicles, a large number of which were plying between Terminus and terminus, terminus and City. 2 THE TWIN LINES Early Days. For the conception of a sub-surface connection between the main-line terminals and the City, thousands who daily use the Metropolitan and District Lines have to thank one Charles Pearson, a City Solicitor who first put forward this suggestion for “relieving the congestion of London’s Streets”. Previously a number of engineers had formulated a series of impracticable solutions among which were plans to build a great overhead Crystal Way of glass, and another to drain the Regents Park Canal and substitute a railway. These suggestions however included no solution to the necessity for having to remove a considerable amount of property in order to make way for the railway. Most of the proposed routes lay over built-up land and the compensation demanded by land and property owners for the demolishing of buildings was often exhorbitant and altogether prohibitive to the construction of a surface or elevated line.
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