Facts to fascinate about the London Underground

Nick Curtis
29.10.09

Though we take it for granted, and frequently curse it to high heaven, the London Underground is a wonder.

The Tube network is the oldest and longest underground railway system serving a major city. Its history goes back to 1863, its conception even earlier.

The Tube has driven engineering developments and creative design. It has featured in countless books, songs, films and poems.

It has been the site of births and deaths, and bombs planted by everyone from pre-war anarchists to suffragettes, the IRA to the Islamist suicide bombers of 2005.

Yet this venerable railway system keeps going, keeps growing and keeps enabling more than one billion Londoners a year to make their daily commute.

Here, extracted from David Long's The Little Book of London Underground, are some facts to fascinate about the Tube.

A Metropolitan tunnel visionary
In 1845 Charles Pearson, MP and Solicitor to the City of London, proposed alleviating congestion for London's 250,000 commuters by inventing an “arcade railway” underground in the shallow tunnels of what was once the bed of the Fleet River, from Farringdon to King's Cross.

Pearson, who never received a salary for his endeavours, also proposed rehousing 50,000 City slum dwellers in seven new suburbs, and redeveloping the land they vacated to offset the cost of the new railway. Sadly, Pearson died a month before his vision became a reality in 1863.

Earl's Court goes up in the world
The first escalator on the Underground was installed at Earl's Court in 1911. A one-legged man, “Bumper” Harris, was employed to ride on it and demonstrate its safety. Unlike modern “comb” escalators, the original “shunt” mechanism ended with a diagonal so that the stairway finished sooner for the right foot than for the left.

Anyone not wishing to walk on the escalator was therefore asked to stand to the right to allow others to pass, leading to Britain's unique flouting of escalator etiquette which dictates in most countries that escalators tend to match the rules of the road.

No dead ends on the Jubilee
In 1926, “suicide pits” were introduced beneath the tracks because of a rise in numbers of passengers throwing themselves in front of trains.

Uniquely, the eastern extension of the Jubilee line — the only line on the London Underground to connect with all others — features glass screens to deter “jumpers”. Still, approximately 50 passengers a year kill themselves on the Underground.

Torture comes full Circle
The Circle line opened in 1884 and was described in The Times as “a form of mild torture which no person would undergo if he could conveniently help it”. Conditions haven't improved much in the intervening century or so, with a House of Commons report published in 2004 claiming that commuters face “a daily trauma” and “intolerable conditions” on the Tube.

The Northern's highs and lows
The Northern line includes the deepest tunnel (at Hampstead) and the highest elevation (the Dollis Brook viaduct). Its ticket office at Bank was originally situated in the Crypt of St Mary Woolnoth. The first crash on the Tube occurred on the line in 1938 when two trains collided between Waterloo and Charing Cross, injuring 12 passengers.

Early birds catch the Piccadilly
The Tube runs 24 hours a day only at New Year and major events — such as the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics — because most lines have only two tracks, one in each direction. It closes at night for cleaning and maintenance. The earliest trains, such as from Osterley to Heathrow on the Piccadilly line, start from 4.45am, with the rest operating by 5.30am and continuing until about 1am.

Digging deep for the Victoria
The Victoria line was built to link King's Cross, Victoria and Euston and proposed names included Viking line, for Victoria to King's Cross, and Walvic (Walthamstow to Victoria). Tunnelling close to Buckingham Palace and major government departments, 2.500 miners excavated an estimated one million tons of earth, uncovering fossilised marine molluscs and human bones from an old plague pit along the way.

New arrival on the Bakerloo
In 1924, the first baby was born on the Underground, on a train at Elephant & Castle on the Bakerloo line. Twenty years later, US TV host Jerry Springer was born at East Finchley, where his mother had taken shelter from an air raid. The Bakerloo line was the creation of two notorious wheeler-dealers, James Whitaker Wright and CT Yerkes. Builders working on it suffered from the bends while tunnelling under the Thames.

Grand Central passengers
The inaugural journey of the first Central line train in 1900 had the Prince of Wales and Mark Twain on board. The tunnels beneath the City curve dramatically because they follow its medieval street plan. The Central line also introduced the first flat fare: tuppence.

Distance no object for map genius
Harry Beck produced the first version of his famous diagrammatic Tube map while working as an engineering draughtsman at the London Underground Signals Office, and was paid 10 guineas (£10.50) for his efforts.

He believed that once underground, passengers were less bothered about relative distances between stations — the blueprint for the original Tube maps — and more interested in how to get from one station to another and where to change.

First submitted in 1931, his map was considered too radical but the public embraced it and it became official in 1933.

Beck's design classic has been altered many times since; last month TFL was forced to return the River Thames to a new “decluttered” map after outrage over its removal.

Ah, look at all the familiar buskers
Busking has been licensed on the Tube since 2003, but before that Sting and Paul McCartney both allegedly plied their trade on the Underground, in disguise.

Every tile tells a story
The tiles at Leicester Square depict film sprockets; Baker Street has Sherlock Holmes, Oval cricketers, while Eduardo Paolozzi's abstract mosaics at Tottenham Court Road celebrate musical Denmark Street.

Tragedy stubs out smoking
A discarded match was thought to be the cause of the King's Cross fire in November 1987 which killed 31 people. The blaze started in a shaft by a wooden escalator serving the deep-level Piccadilly line and spread to the ticket hall above. Although smoking had been banned on Tube trains three years earlier a similar ban was not enforced on platforms or within stations. The escalator running track was covered in grease and rubbish, causing flames to spread rapidly.

Smoking was then banned throughout the Tube network.

Everyday warning for city folk
The recording of the phrase “Mind the gap” dates from 1968, and is voiced by Peter Lodge, who owned a recording company in Bayswater.

He stepped in apparently when the actor hired to record the lines insisted on royalties. There have been several books, a gameshow, two theatre companies, several films and lots of songs called Mind the Gap.

While Lodge's recording is still in use, some lines use recordings by Manchester voice artist Emma Clarke, while commuters on the Piccadilly line hear the voice of Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer in The Archers.

Famous logo still doing the rounds
In 1908 the Tube, while not yet a unified service, was officially rebranded as the underground and the “roundel” logo was adopted. The bar-and-circle was used as part of the name boards at stations and the distinctive red and blue design enabled them to be easily identified.

Lonely outposts south of the river
Fewer than 10 per cent of Tube stations lie south of the Thames.

7/7: London's date with terror
On 7 July 2005 a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks during the morning rush hour killed 56 people and injured 700. Three bombs exploded within 50 seconds of each other at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King's Cross and a fourth exploded an hour later on a bus in Tavistock Square.

Just squeaking into the records
An estimated half a million mice live in the Underground system.

Camera, lights, action stations
Famous “ghost”(ie disused) stations include Aldwych, British Museum, Down Street, King William Street and Lord's and are used many times a month as sets for films or TV programmes, although none featuring vandalism, firearms, fare evasion, smoking, terrorism or nudity.

Writer goes underground
The Little Book of the London Underground, by David Long, £9.99