London’s Tube network was world pioneer
a template that would help form an integrated network. Over the following years a flurry of new lines, all built with private finance, were built above and below ground adding to the existing and growing Metropolitan and District and Circle lines.
The Waterloo and City Line, affectionately known as The Drain opened in 1898, while what would become known as the Central Line opened to passengers in 1900, with author Mark Twain among those travelling on the first service. It became known as the Tuppenny Tube thanks to a flat fare of two old pence, as the Underground began to break down class distinctions too.
By the turn of the century copycat underground railways or subways were popping up in Glasgow, Paris, New York, Berlin and even Budapest. New deep Tube lines continued to be added with the Bakerloo and Piccadilly Lines both opening in 1906.
After the system was brought together under London Transport in 1933 the Victoria Line would be added in 1968 and the Jubilee Line in 1979.
Trailblazing underground escalators had first appeared at Earl’s Court station in 1911 and air operated doors debuted in 1929.The Underground’s red-and-blue roundel logo, first introduced in 1908, had become iconic as had Harry Beck’s 1931 Tube Map, easy to read thanks to showing relative locations of stations rather than being exactly to scale. It inspired many imitations around the world. The Tube had not only revolutionised commuting but also housed Londoners during wartime bombing raids – up to 175,000 people a night during the Blitz. TV talk show host Jerry Springer was born in an Underground station, one of several children to have been born there. The depth of the Tube was an asset. Part of the Piccadilly Line was used to house treasures from the British Museum during the Second World War while the Central Line doubled up as a two-mile-long fighter aircraft factory. Down Street, one of 49 abandoned Tube stations, was sometimes used as a wartime bunker by Sir Winston Churchill. The Tube has seen some dark times, such as the King’s Cross fire of 1987 which killed 31 people and the 2005 London terror attacks which included bombings on the Underground. Yet it has survived and thrived. In normal times the London Underground carries 1.3 billion passengers a year, over 11 lines, between 270 stations. Only the Beijing Subway and Shanghai Metro are bigger. Tube trains travel 43 million miles every year and its escalators go the equivalent of twice around the world annually. Parts of the network are buried 200ft beneath street level.
Over the years the Tube has adapted and continued to expand. The Jubilee Line extension opened in 1999 with the £18billion Crossrail project to come.
It will see full-size trains travelling in 13 miles of 20ft-wide, twin-bore, tunnels at Tube depth for the first time.
Each of the £10million, 1,000-ton boring machines may be capable of tunnelling through 340ft of clay a week, compared to the 40ft a week during the construction of the Tower Subway, but the principles are the same as labours cutting tunnels. Sam Mullins, director of the London Transport Museum, explains: “All the big boring machines today on Crossrail essentially mechanise that process.”
Sadly the company behind the original Tower Subway went bust after a few months and, after briefly becoming a foot tunnel, it finally closed in 1898.
And while the subterranean sensation often frustrates Londoners and visitors alike, it is a testament to British engineering ingenuity. As Christian Wolmar, a historian of the London Underground, observed we should “learn to love” The Tube!