London Underground
London’s ‘underground’ network stretches for a total of some 250 miles, from Heathrow Airport in the west to Upminster in the east, although more than half of the network, outside central London, is actually above ground.
The first ‘underground’ service ran between Paddington and Farringdon along what is now the top of the Circle Line. This was back in January 1863 and the trains were steam powered, consequently the service ran close to the surface and has frequent ‘vents’. The beautiful brickwork on stations such as Great Portland Street is testament to the Victorians who built the route. Electric trains were introduced in 1890 allowing for longer enclosed journeys and so the network grew.
Many underground stations were used as air raid shelters during the second world war.
London’s soft clay soil means that tunnelling is less difficult than in many cities, and deeper tunnels are possible. The deepest line is the Northern Line, which runs at a depth of 220 feet below ground level (just outside Hampstead) and serves Angel Station, which is home to Britain’s longest escalator, nearly 200 feet long and rising some 90 feet to the surface.
The newest underground line is the Jubilee Line, the first part of which was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 1977 (the year of her Silver Jubilee). The line has been extended in recent years to serve Greenwich and Stratford (the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games), and is one of the few services to run south of the River Thames.
London Underground carries some 4 million passengers each week day, and up to 3 million at weekends. Most passengers use the ‘Oyster Card’ to provide travel on buses, underground and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which was built in the eighties and nineties to serve the new financial centre in London’s old docklands. Both the DLR and the Jubilee Line serve the heart of ‘docklands’ -Canary Wharf.
Inevitably, over the years, stations have closed and there are a number of websites dedicated to ‘ghost’ stations (here) such as Down Street on the Piccadilly Line and British Museum on the Central Line. If you look out of the train windows on the Central Line between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road stations you might observe a stretch with noticeably lighter walls, or where the tunnel wall drops away from the usual distance from the carriage – that is the old British Museum station.
Equally distinctive is London’s underground map. Harry Beck, an electrical engineer, designed the map, in its current form, in the 1930’s. His design, based on a circuit diagram was the first to make sense of the underground network by separating the network from its ‘real’ geography. Some early examples of Beck’s work can be seen in a case at St James’s Park station (the headquarters of the underground) and at London Transport’s museum at Covent Garden.
The map’s style has been copied by underground networks the world over and is truly iconic.