LONDON’S TUBE RAILWAYS

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30058, 16 February 1963, Page 3

LONDON’S TUBE RAILWAYS

Rails Through Clay. A History of London’s Tube Railways, By Alaa A. Jackson and Desmond F. Croome. Allen and Unwin. 406 pp.

London’s tube railways are one of the great city’s wonders. But Londoners take the tubes for granted, and visitors soon learn to. Few give a thought to how this neat, orderly, efficient world below the streets came about. In this book the authors give a detailed history and descriptive account not only of the engineering and technical evolution of the tube railways, but of the social, political and financial influences and background.

Geology contributes the first of the factors that influenced their birth. The completion of the Metropolitan Railway’s Inner Circle route demonstrated that the conventional “cut - and - cover” subway lines built in other large cities had become far too expensive for London, where there was respect for private property and reluctance to confiscate in the public interest to a degree not encountered elsewhere. As property values increased and construction involved safeguarding an ever-increasing number of sewers and gas and electricity mains, it became apparent that something would have to replace cut-and-cover lines, which had become financially and politically impossible. Under London is an extensive area of blue clay, upraised from the floor of an inland sea; this offered a medium in which railways could be built and operated without disturbing the surface. As an engineer of the time observed, "the beautiful homogenous clay of London has been designed by Nature for the very purpose of having tunnels pierced through it, and it would be a pity to balk Nature in her design.” The development of shield tunnelling by Jdmes Henry Greathead provided a method by which tunnels could be driven economically through the day.

Entrepeneurs adopted the tubes as an avenue for capital that they thought would be lucrative; Most were disappointed, but it was the urge of the financiers that provided the impetus for the construction of the first tubes—yet the financiers left behind them a heritage not only of achievement, but of problems. Each promoter chose what he hoped would be a lucrative route across the city, paying little or no attention to rival lines, and not concerning himself in the least with the transport needs of London. The result was problems that have not been completely solved today. The pattern of coverage is uneven; some districts are well favoured by tile tubes, others must rely on different forms of transport

The strap-hanger of today who finds it difficult to adjust himself to occasional fierce curves as his train hurtles along is a sufferer—usually

unknowingly—from Victorian Britain’s highly-developed regard for the sanctity of private property. As law effecting the construction of tunnels evolved from various

acts of Parliament, it provided that free wayleave should be granted beneath public streets provided the railway company accepted an obligation to run an adequate number of ch eap and convenient trains. On the other hand, if the line were to run under private property, companies were required to purchase a wayleave, subject to compensation for damage. Such wayleaves were difficult and expensive to obtain because propertyowners were apprehensive of vibration and other troubles. As a result, the earliest tunnels followed the streets almost everywhere, and this led to some of the fierce curves that travellers notice on some lines today. As time passed, and tube railways were seen to be innocuous to property above, easements were less difficult to obtain, and it became practicable to design layouts with minimum curves of 20 chains radius instead of 15 chains—or even five in some extreme cases—in the early layouts. As they trace the financial

arrangements by which the tubes were built, the authors introduce some of the colourful characters whose vision, courage, and in some cases dexterity, created vast projects when private enterprise was at its most vigorous. Most notable was the American, Charles Tyson Yerkes, who abandoned a chequered career in Chicago to become the respectable and respected “father” of London’s tubes. He was followed across the Atlantic by a young man who came for a year to rescue one enterprise from the doldrums and stayed for more than 40 to become eventually the co-ordinator of all London’s transport and to be its chief controller when the railways were nationalised by a .Labour Government This young man who had beAi bom in Britain but whose family had emigrated to the United States when he was very young became one of the greatest administrators of his age and, as Lord Ashfield, a member of the peerage.

As they tell how the expanding tube railways became a commonplace of London life, the authors record in some of the book’s most interesting chapiters how the tubes entered . even more intimately into the lives of hundreds and thousands of Londoners during the great blitz. At first, sheltering in the tubes was forbidden because it was thought it would interfere with the operation of essential transport. But when the air assault began in the autumn of 1940, Londoners flocked to the tube stations just as they had done in 1917 and, short of fixed bayonets at each station entrance, there was little hope of stopping them. On the night of September 27, 1940, when the first rough count was made, 177,500 Londoners were estimated to be in the tube stations. Official policy, changed, and the tubes were recognised as shelters, and arrangements were quickly made to accommodate shelterera and provide amenities for them. Sleeping bunks, better sanitation, and a system of reservations received priority. At the request of the Ministry of Food, refreshments were provided for shelterers. Food was delivered to stations in trains labelled "Tube Refreshments Special.” Since the early days of haphazard development of London’s surface and underground transport, a great deal

of thought has been given to co-ordinating transport with the planning of London’s growth. The vital role the tubes have been developed to play is shown in this comparison: a single motorway lane used by private cars passes only about 2000 people an hour, but in the same lane buses could move up to about 19,000 if unrestricted by other traffic. High-capacity tramcars on private track can manage about 25,000 an hour, but in contrast a single track tube railway can carry at least 36,500, the equivalent of private cars on a one-way motorway eighteen times wider. The speed at which these passengers can be moved across the urban area of London is about three to eight miles an hour on the existing streets, but an average of over 20 miles an hour on the tube railway.

“Rails Through Clay” will appeal to many types of readers—to people interested in transport development, to students of town planning, to railway enthusiasts, as well as to the general reader who appreciates a comprehensive and detailed story of the building of a great enterprise. The authors tell their story succinctly, and they have assembled and ordered a mass of facts with great skill.