Thank You For Not Smoking

Much has been made by the Mayor’s office about the great age of the Underground system in order to justify the current heinous amounts of engineering work. Not that I disagree, mark you, I appreciate that the system is very, very old. Ironic, really, given that when it was built it was actually slightly ahead of its time.

Sometimes, you see, technology gets a bit ahead of itself. In the case of the Underground in the 1860s, the problem was that while they could dig a tunnel just fine, they couldn’t find a clean way to send a train through it. Steam engines, as you are no doubt aware, produce the Dickens of a lot of smoke and steam. A number of solutions were tried. Those pipes you see on the front of the engine above left, the ones running from the cylinders up, you see those? Those are condensers, which collect the waste steam and, yes, condense it for re-use. Every so often, the tunnels were fitted with large ventilation shafts – including one that was ingeniously disguised as a pair of fake houses. The Metropolitan, unusually for a Victorian railway, allowed its drivers and firemen to grow enormous ZZ Top-style beards in the hope that said shrubbery would act as a kind of air filter. They even tried brazening it out, claiming that the smoky air was actually really good for bronchial complaints (although at least one chemist sold “Metropolitan Mixture,” a cough medicine targeting regular Underground users).

The only known photo of Fowlers Ghost.

One solution was proposed by John Fowler – remove the fire altogether. He suggested an engine with an “egg-ended boiler” – in reality a storage receptacle for steam produced by a stationary boiler. This engine was never built, but what was eventually produced was a strange locomotive known as “Fowler’s Ghost,” and I can give no better explanation of it than that offered by the Museum of Retrotech.

Clockwork powered Underground loco. I think I may have made a mistake.

On the same site, I came across an interesting little snippet about a concept tested at the Metropolitan District Railway’s Lillie Bridge Depot (that’s the District Line to you) in 1875. The idea was a clockwork tram. I know, right? Now, I’d heard a vague rumour that such a thing was tried, but no more than that. Was this trial carried out in the hope of finding a smokeless alternative to steam on the Underground? Sadly, the indices of the various Underground histories I have list “clockwork tram” under “piss, taking the” and offer little further information.

There were various other possibilities, none of them all that great. Isambard Kingdom Brunel had been something of a champion of the atmospheric railway – as seen left, this was powered by a piston in a vaccuum pipe. I’ve not come across any evidence that this was ever suggested for the Tube, though see the Pneumatic Dispatch for a similar idea that actually was tried. Ironically, Brunel himself, when consulted early on about the proposed Metropolitan, suggested that there was no need to worry, as the smoke from a steam engine would surely not be a problem in the first place.

Another was cable haulage. This was employed on the Glasgow Subway and, less successfully, on the London and Blackwall Railway in its early days. When it came to constructing the City and South London Railway (now roughly the City Branch of the Northern Line) in the 1880s, this was the favoured choice. Unlike the earlier Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, the C&SLR was constructed entirely below ground in very narrow tunnels rather than being built by the cut-and-cover method (this, incidentally, is also why the former lines today have much larger trains than the latter). You can make excuses about a few coughing passengers, but full asphyxiation was generally frowned upon even back then.

However, by 1886, train technology had caught up with the Underground and the cable concept was dropped in favour of more flexible and easier to maintain electric trains, hauled by dinky little locomotives like that one there. However, there was still a little work to do – one of the early problems the system had was that the power plant wasn’t able to generate enough electricity to get trains up the gradient at Stockwell, which was a bit embarrassing. Nevertheless, once these teething troubles were ironed out, it was clear that finally there was a clean solution to the Underground problem, and the other lines soon followed in the adoption of electric power.

You know what’s ironic in all of this? The Metropolitan was one of the only railways not to ban smoking in its carriages. Was this a wangle to avoid taking responsibility for bronchial irritation? It is a mystery.

Seen (by someone else) at Notting Hill Gate

Check this link out, my droogs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/sets/72157624079183751/with/4695639446/

Posters from the 1950s uncovered at Notting Hill Gate. Alas, not accessible to the public, but this photoset by London Underground is the next best thing.

This train will not be stopping at…

A couple of entries ago, I got to talking about Tube stations that get used for filming. I briefly mentioned Vauxhall Cross, the abandoned station that appears in the mediocre James Bond movie Die Another Day. Which brings me to today’s topic. I call it “Tube stations that don’t actually exist that appear in films and on TV and that.”

Vauxhall Cross is one I’ve been asked about more than once, with one person being quite adamant that there genuinely was such a station. It appears, as I say, in Die Another Day as part of Q’s research facility. Bond is given the invisible Aston Martin Vanquish, seen by many fans as a bit far-fetched (actually, the technology used to make the car invisible genuinely was under serious consideration by the US military at the time). Not sure quite what they meant about it being far-fetched, it’s not as if the series was noted for its gritty realism.

The film did not make use of a real station, nor was there ever a Vauxhall Cross station. Although Aldwych was used for research purposes, the actual station was a very convincing mock-up. There is a station at Vauxhall Cross, and it’s called Vauxhall.

The station appearing in the movie is apparently on the Piccadilly Line, approximately where the abandoned Down Street is. Down Street is just off Hyde Park and, as I mentioned a couple of entries ago, was a government base during the Second World War. However, it’s nowhere near Vauxhall. The idea, according to the Underground History website, was that a fictional branch line was built from Green Park. This makes some sense – the Victoria Line hadn’t been built when the Piccadilly Line appeared, so there was no Underground interchange at Vauxhall until the 1960s. None of this explains why Bond reaches the station via Westminster Bridge, though.

Presumably in the James Bond universe the Victoria Line wasn’t built. Sorry, Brixton.

Probably the best known fictional Underground station in London is Walford East, seen left. This is the station that serves Albert Square in long-running BBC soap Eastenders. The station is a very convincing mock-up, and thanks to the wonders of CGI, can now even boast trains.

The station is on the District Line. In the Eastenders universe, Bromley-by-Bow doesn’t exist. Of course, if you’re going to be pedantic, you could point out that the distinctive red-tiled Leslie Green frontage wouldn’t be seen on a purely District Line station. This kind of architecture was only seen on the lines owned by Charles Yerkes’ Underground Electric Railways Company (roughly speaking, the Bakerloo Line, the Piccadilly Line and the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line). Fortunately, I’m not going to be pedantic, so you’ll just have to forget that last paragraph.

On the subject of the architecture, David Leboff notes that while this station doesn’t precisely match any real Leslie Green station, the designers are to be praised for both their imagination and authenticity in designing the Arts and Crafts-style frontage.

Yr. Humble Chronicler is not a regular viewer of Eastenders, but given the unrelenting horror that seems to be in constant progress throughout Walford, the sensible thing to do would be to abandon the station and shut the whole place off from the rest of the world. For the greater good.

Alistair McGowan once suggested that Walford East was not actually on the District Line, but was on its own “Eastenders Line.” This consisted of two stations – Walford East and Up West.

The last station on our quest is well known to fans of British sci-fi. It goes by two names – Hobb’s Lane and Hobb’s End. Hobb’s Lane was mentioned in the 1959 BBC science fiction serial Quatermass and the Pit, but never actually appeared. In this serial, construction workers uncover a Martian spaceship buried beneath the streets of Knightsbridge that begins to have strange and horrifying effects on the locals…

Presumably Hobb’s Lane was on the Piccadilly Line. For the movie version of the serial, made by the now-legendary Hammer Films, the Underground was more prominent. Indeed, the works that uncover the downed spaceship are in fact an extension of the Central Line into North Kensington.

Hobb’s Lane/End is often used in other works as a nod to the classic serials. The Tube station itself appears in the comics Caballistics Inc. and Scarlet Traces: The Great Game.

If you get the chance, the Quatermass serials are well worth catching. They were among the first science fiction shows on British television and are an obvious ancestor of Doctor Who – indeed, there’s even a popular fan theory that the two are set in the same universe, seemingly confirmed by a few minor lawyer-friendly references in Who.

So, just remember – this train will not be stopping at Walford East, Vauxhall Cross or Hobb’s End. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to your journey.

Further Reading

http://underground-history.co.uk/vauxhallx.php - Underground History on Vauxhall Cross.

http://underground-history.co.uk/walford.php - Underground History on Walford East.

London Stoned

Tolstoy was inspired to write Anna Karenina by hanging around railway stations. He believed that the new railways would more plausibly allow coincidences to take place, not that plausibility ever stopped a nineteenth century author from using astonishing coincidences five or six times in the space of a single novel. More on this later.

I had plans today – vague ones. But for some reason I’ve been feeling really sleepy today, so most of the really energetic stuff was just too much effort. I took the good old Northern Line up to Waterloo, did a bit of walking around Lambeth and Southwark and then, on an impulse, took a train from Waterloo East to Grove Park. No reason, I just had no idea what was at Grove Park. Turns out not much.

Lewisham, that latter-day Elysium.

Then I figured I’d take the train back to Lewisham, get on the Docklands Light Railway and explore the Docklands. But whaddya know, engineering works. Engineering works are the landmines of the deriviste’s world. You could smugly observe that I should have checked the TfL website before embarking on a crazy random expedition, but you would deserve a slap, I’m afraid. In any case, I don’t have access to the Internet.

Cannon Street. Those two towers are basically all that remains from this Victorian view.

Undaunted, I took another train into Cannon Street, a station I’ve never travelled into before. I’ve been through it on the Tube many times, and I’ve walked past on several occasions, but I’ve never used it for its intended purpose. So again, a little stroll was in order. At No. 111 Cannon Street I found a somewhat important piece of London’s psychogeographical history.

The London Stone, preserved within the wall of an abandoned building. Nice one.

The London Stone supposedly originates with Brutus of Troy who, according to certain medieval historians (I’m looking at you, Geoffrey of Monmouth), founded the city. It was, so the story goes, the altar-stone of a temple to the goddess Diana built by Brutus after she had guided him to this fair island. The temple was on Ludgate Hill, making it a direct ancestor of that eternal symbol of the city, St Paul’s Cathedral. Another suggestion for its origin is that it was part of a stone circle on the same site. A third is that it was the stone from which King Arthur pulled Excalibur, but if we’re honest, pretty much any pre-Tudor relic is going to have Arthur attached to it at some point.

The stone was originally kept in St Swithin’s Church before that building was destroyed during the Blitz in 1941. This was part of a series of attacks orchestrated by the Thule Society in Nazi Germany with the aim of winning the Second World War by occult means, destabilising the ley lines and points of power developed in the city over centuries. Other such buildings targeted included St Paul’s Cathedral, the Great Synagogue of London and Hawksmoor’s St George in the East. I would like to point out that all of this paragraph between the end of the first sentence and the beginning of this sentence is a lie. But it’s a pretty cool conspiracy theory and I’d like to lay claim to it. Screw you, Peter Ackroyd, this one’s mine.

Anyway, legend has it that ”so long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish.” So that’s cool.

Cannon Street, where it's 1972 every day.

I took the Tube towards Wimbledon. I considered getting the Circle to Kings Cross and Northern Line back, but decided I couldn’t be bothered to cross to the other platform. I planned to get on the front carriage, the best alighting point for Wimbledon, but couldn’t be bothered to walk all the way to the front of the train and so got on the second-to-last carriage. And found myself sitting three seats down from someone I was chummy with at uni. Which just goes to show that sites of occult significance have their uses.

Districtly Come Dancing

It’s a London Underground Saturday! Woo! Yeah! (exposes breasts)

Now you’ve had time to calm down, I’ll explain why I have declared this momentous occasion. Today was an open weekend at Upminster Depot on the District Line. Upminster is Terra Incognita as far as I’m concerned. Well, the District Line already has termini at Kensington Olympia, High Street Kensington, Wimbledon, Richmond and Ealing Broadway. I mean, I can’t visit every end of the line. It’s like Cthulhu or something. Besides, Upminster’s way out in Zone 6, I’m not Superman.

The Open Day was being held in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the depot, which was built as part of a major investment programme by London Transport. Therefore, this was an excuse for a big old display devoted to the District Line. The fact that they were holding engineering works between Barking and Upminster meant that a) the current was switched off, making the depot safe for visitors and b) that there was no District Line service to the depot. Ho hum. Instead, the Da and I took the c2c service from Fenchurch Street to Upminster Station. From there, classic buses were laid on to take us (not just us, obviously) to the depot itself.

RT bus. Predecessor to the Routemaster, as I have discussed previously within these pages.

We got the AEC RT seen on the left. In layman’s terms, this is the type of bus used in Summer Holiday and, with one or two modifications, as the Knight Bus in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Riding in it is a very different experience from a modern bus. It’s more cramped, but the seats are so much more

DO NOT SPIT: PENALTY £5. You've been warned.

comfortable. It’s also a rather noisier, bumpier ride and on the top deck there’s a distinct tendency for the bus to sway on corners, on bumpy roads or just for the hell of it. I quite liked it, but I can kinda see why modern buses don’t ride like that. Still, the growl of the engine is quite something.

RLH - like an RT, but with a flatter roof.

The depot was a lot cleaner than I imagine these things. But then, most of the working railway depots I’ve visited have been steam ones, with the associated soot and grime. I suppose Health and Safety wouldn’t allow that sort of thing today (n.b. the first person to use the term “nanny state” gets a clip round the ear ‘ole). The staff were very friendly and helpful, very willing to explain what everything was and how everything worked.

Under a District Line train. That boxy thing in the middle is the driver's air conditioning unit. Yes, the driver has air conditioning.

As I have said many times before, I live in Colliers Wood, near Wimbledon. I used to live in Twickenham, near Richmond. When I was born, I lived in a flat in Barons Court backing on to the Underground. I’m therefore no stranger to the District Line, which has used the same trains (give or take a refurbishment or two) since before I was born. I’ve come to take these things for granted – they’re just the not-very-interesting trains that go into London via the respectable suburbs.

A row of D and C stock. That's District Line trains in laymen's terms. At the far end is a battery locomotive, used for maintenance trains.

So the chance to look underneath one, to go into the cab and to watch the staff going over the various controls and equipment was something of an education. For instance, I never knew that the seats could be lifted up to access the various electrical gubbins that power the train – if there’s a breakdown, the driver can isolate individual systems in order to get the train going again. And you know when you’re on the train and it suddenly hisses really loudly?

The prototype Routemaster, RM1.

Turns out that what that actually is is the safety valve for the compressed air reservoir, the thing that powers many systems on the train. Looking in and around these trains, you come to realise that actually, they’re a pretty ingenious bit of kit. There are all sorts of odd little devices to ensure that the train can keep going or, if necessary, stop in an emergency.

R Stock, predecessor to C and D stock.

All this was related clearly and engagingly by the staff. The chap showing us the underside of the train apologised for not being sufficiently up on the technical side to go into massive detail, but he was informative enough for Yr. Humble Chronicler, who doesn’t know his brown boxy things from his brown cylindery things.

There was a display a bit further on of wheel-turning equipment, which I don’t think would be particularly interesting to anyone who isn’t as geeky as me. Suffice it to say that it is possible for a Tube train to get a flat tyre.

Early four-wheeled wooden carriage from the Metropolitan District Railway - what is now the District Line.

As well as the modern day-to-day equipment, there was a fine display of historic District Line equipment. On the right is a Metropolitan District Railway coach from around 1865. If it looks a bit familiar, that might be Thomas the Tank Engine’s coaches, Annie and Clarabel, look almost exactly like this.

The silver carriage above is R stock, which came before the C and D stock. For a while, London Transport decided not to bother painting their trains as a cost-cutting measure. The bodywork was aluminium and so didn’t need rust-proofing. A similar experiment with buses was a dismal failure, as on foggy days the buses became invisible. You’ll notice that the bodywork swoops outwards at the bottom – that was a safety measure to prevent people falling into the gap between the train and the platform. It’s the train that minds the gap for you.

Interior of a Q Stock carriage. Hell of elegant.

I couldn’t get a decent exterior shot of the Q Stock carriage behind the R Stock, so you’ll just have to make do with this interior shot. I absolutely love the interiors of these old Tube trains, and this one, with its inlaid wooden panelling, might be my favourite. The dark green is a pleasant contrast with the deep red exterior. The Q Stock, as you might guess from the decor, was built in the 1920s and 30s. It also has a rather old-skool clerestory roof.

On a siding outside was a 57xx. It’s an interesting fact that London Underground was still using steam engines for odd jobs long after most of the Underground had been electrified. In fact, not only that, but they were using them three years after British Rail had got rid of steam.

Great Western Railway 57xx class

The Underground used various types of steam engine, but in the later years the engine of choice was the 57xx pannier tank, so called because it carries its water in high-slung tanks that look, yes, like panniers. To return to Thomas the Tank Engine references, Duck is based on this type of engine. They were built by the Great Western Railway and were, simply, a damn good engine. Rugged and versatile, they were as at home shunting in a yard as they were on commuter trains. As the GWR sold them out of service, there was no shortage of willing buyers, and as a result several members of the class survive today – no fewer than six being ex-Underground. In London Transport service, they wore a rather handsome brick-red livery that suited them well.

Having shown us past and present District Line trains, it was only fitting that they should also show us some future stock. This took the form of a mock-up of the S Stock, seen on the right. The S Stock is currently under construction and, when complete, will replace the current trains on the District, Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City Lines. Probably its most notable design feature is that it’s open-ended, with corridors linking the carriages. What this means in practical terms is that passengers can move from coach to coach without having to leave the train. It also allows a little more room. The seating layout is rather similar to that on the Docklands Light Railway, if you’re familiar with that. For some reason, modern Tube and bus seating seems to have been designed with the express purpose of numbing the buttocks, and the S Stock is no exception. It’s a bad idea to let people sit down in historic stock before you’ve let them sit in your new train, those old seats were comfortable as the dickens.

The tour, coupled with the aforementioned purchase of a destination board formerly at Camden Town, left me with a feeling of immense goodwill towards the Tube. A sense of goodwill that evaporated on the way back as soon as I discovered that line interchange at Bank is still out. Still, that was a pretty positive fifteen minutes.

Further Viewing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slk1KCQPolE&feature=related - Some footage of the Underground in the 1960s, including a fair bit of Upminster.

Tube Wars

The Circle Line is a bit of an odd one. It has very little of its own track and no stations to call its own – it just slips in where it can between District and Metropolitan trains. It’s not so much a “line” as a “route”.

It was originally built by the Metropolitan Railway (now the Metropolitan Line) and the Metropolitan District Railway (now the District Line). The idea was to create a circular route that would link the main overground termini at Kings Cross, St Pancras, Victoria, Paddington, Liverpool Street, Charing Cross and Cannon Street. Waterloo would later be linked in via the Waterloo and City Line. Fenchurch Street and the now-closed Holborn Viaduct weren’t served, but were a short walking distance from stations that were. Broad Street, to which Paul McCartney gave his regards two years before its closure (coincidence?), was right next door to Liverpool Street.  Marylebone wasn’t served for the simple reason that it did not exist in 1884, when the Circle was completed.

It was, for a long time, known as the Inner Circle. There was also an Outer Circle, a Middle Circle and, briefly, a Super Outer Circle.

The Inner Circle was intended to be operated jointly by the Metropolitan and District Railways. The major problem with this plan was that the Metropolitan and District Railways hated each other’s guts. So much so that the District Railway at one point built its own track between High Street Kensington and Gloucester Road just so they wouldn’t have to use the Metropolitan Railway’s track. Given how relatively strapped for cash the District was at the time, you can see just how strong their hatred was.

It took thirty years to finish the Circle off, and problems arose almost immediately. The circle ran in two directions, trains going one way being controlled by the Metropolitan and those going the other way by the District. The companies had separate ticket offices and issued separate tickets.

Now, you may have spotted a flaw in this policy, and the passengers certainly did. Let’s say you want to go from South Kensington to Sloane Square. If you go to the District ticket office, they’d issue you with a ticket to travel one stop on their train. But if you go to the Metropolitan office, they’ll issue you with a ticket sending you right the way around the Circle, a total of 23 stops and a journey time ten minutes short of an hour.

If that wasn’t stupid enough, an incident that took place at South Kensington sounds like something out of Thomas the Tank Engine. There was a siding used by both companies whose ownership was disputed. Rather than, say, take the matter to Court, the District Railway decided to be proactive, and chained a train to the siding.

This is a Metropolitan train, but those used on the District were basically identical.

The Metropolitan tried to haul the train away with locomotives of their own, but were unsuccessful, and the dispute continued for several days. None of my sources state the outcome, but I like to imagine the Fat Controller told the District locomotive that it was a very naughty engine.