NEW RAILWAYS

Southland Times, Issue 25305, 7 June 1935, Page 7

NEW RAILWAYS

LONDON’S TRANSPORT' r EXPANSION OF TUBE SERVICES £35,000,000 TO BE SPENT (British Official Wireless.) _ Rugby, June 5. A big programme of railway and other transport improvements in the London area involving an expenditure of £35,000,000, the loans for which will have an Exchequer guarantee, is to be undertaken at once and completed in five years. These vast schemes of work have been decided upon as the result of many months of negotiations between the Government and representatives of the railway companies concerned, and cover the electrification of suburban lines in North-East London and some in North London, in addition to the construction or expansion of tube railways to give new connections between these electrified lines and the City and the West End.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Neville Chamberlain, in announcing the proposals in the House of Commons, said that owing to the high level at which Government credit stood, the Exchequer guarantee of the loans would enable the authorities concerned to proceed at once with the whole programme, much of Which would otherwise have to be deferred. The necessary legislation would be introduced as quickly as possible after the recess. The programme involves the building of about twelve miles of new tube railways, the electrification of approximately 44 miles of suburban railways and the doubling and electrification of about 121 miles of further suburban railways and, on the roads, the substitution of trolley buses for tram cars on 148 route miles.