TUBES UNDER LONDON

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 August 1929, Page 5

TUBES UNDER LONDON

SCHEME TO COST £40,000,000. LONDON, July 12. It is reported that a vast scheme for the construction of an underground railway, for goods only, under the London area is being considered by Mr J. H. Thomas, Lord Privy Seal. The estimated cost of the scheme would be £40,000,000, and it would give employment to 60,000 men for four years. According to Lord Elibank, who is ■associated with the scheme, there would be 75 miles of standard gauge railway track running underground from the docks and wharves to every important point in the West End. There would be 54 public stations for the reception and delivery of goods all designed according to the requirements of the areas they serve, and at many points powerful electric lifts would be constructed for conveying trucks from the underground trains to the surface, whence they could be shunted on to goods trains leaving London for provincial centres. “It would be possible also foi’ goods to be run directly under the great London stores, as has been done for years in Chicago, with narrow gauge railways. Lifts would take the goods to the surface. These stores receive hundreds of tons of goods daily.” Starting with a' loop line at the West India Docks, the system would the whole of the congested Central London area. A branch line would be built, also, as far as Mi 11 wall, and there would be stations on the surface at Hammersmith, Euston, King’s Cross, Chalk Farm, Stratford, and South Lambeth. The Act of Parliament required before the scheme could be begun had already been drafted, and Lord Eli-' bank expressed the hope that the assent of both Houses would be secured in time to enable the scheme to be begun by the end of the year.