150 FACTS FOR MORE
THAN 150 YEARS OF
THE LONDON TUBE
The visionaries
One of the leading visionaries of underground railways was
Londoner Charles Pearson (1793-1862), who first envisaged
a Fleet Valley rail tunnel in 1845. Pearson also campaigned
for the removal of an inscription on the Monument blaming
the Great Fire of London on Catholics and the overturning of
the ban on Jews becoming brokers in the City of London.
John Fowler (1817-98) was the man tasked with designing
the engineering solutions to Pearson’s idea for the first
underground railway. Fowler’s other works include the Forth
Railway Bridge.
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Oxford Circus station was designed by Harry Bell
Measures (1862-1940), who established his career by
designing some of the grandest homes in the capital.
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The architect who engineered most of the District line
was John Wolfe-Barry (1836-1918), who also designed
Tower Bridge.
In 1843 the Thames Tunnel was completed and opened. It
was designed by Marc Brunel (Isambard Kingdom’s father)
and was the first tunnel ever to be built under a navigable
river. It’s now part of the London Overground line.
Tube Firsts
The journey of the first Tube train took place on 9 January
1863.
The first Tube line was built and financed by a private
company, the Metropolitan Railway.
The Tube’s first escalator was installed at Earl’s Court in
1911, featuring a diagonal finish to the stairway, meaning
the right foot reached the top moments before the left.
In 1907 a spiral escalator opened at Holloway Road.
Getting bigger
In 1884 there were over 800 trains running around all or part
of the Inner Circle every day.
A full journey on the City and South London Railway (now part
of the Northern Line), from Stockwell to the City, took just 18
minutes.
Between 1891 and 1893 five more Tube railways under
London were authorised by Parliament.
In 1896 the Glasgow District Subway opened. It was the only
complete underground railway opened in the UK outside of
London.
The Waterloo and City line was the only other line to be built
before the turn of the century.
The Great Northern and City line (between Moorgate and
Finsbury Park) was mostly completed by 1902.
The tunnels on the Central line twist and turn because they
follow the curves of London’s medieval street plan.
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There is a prevalent north/south divide on the Underground;
less than 10 per cent of stations are south of the Thames.
The Underground was funded entirely by private companies
until the 1930s.
Building works
It took 21 years (from 1863 to 1884) to complete the Inner
Circle of tube lines in central London.
London’s current Crossrail development is Europe’s
biggest construction project, as well as its most
expensive.
If completed on time it will have taken nine years for
Crossrail to be completed. Just 70 years after it was first
proposed.
Each tunnel-boring machine for Crossrail costs £10m and
the trains will cost another £1bn.
Kennington is the only surviving City and South London
Railway station that remains close to its original condition,
still featuring a domed roof.
Funding for a deep-level “Route C” line, better known as
the Victoria line, was approved in 1955.
The grand opening of the Victoria line, or “London’s
Pride”, was on 7 March 1969.
Queen Elizabeth II was the first reigning monarch to take
the Tube, when she took the inaugural ride on the Victoria
line from Green Park.
Accidents and incidents
The first accidents on the underground occurred within a
couple of months of opening in 1863, involving slow-moving
collisions at Farringdon Street station.
The space below tube tracks are colloquially known as
“suicide pits” as they help reduce the chance of death or
serious injury should someone jump in front of a train.
Around 50 passengers a year commit suicide on the
Underground, however the Jubilee line is the only line to
feature protective screens along the platforms.
Smoking was finally banned across the Tube network
following the King’s Cross fire in November 1987, which killed
31 people.
Nicknames
When the Circle Line opened in 1884, the experience of riding
it was described in The Times as “a form of mild torture”.
The “Tube” became a proper name for the first time in the
early 1900s, after the Central London Railway (now the
Central Line) was nicknamed the “Twopenny Tube”.
The “Twopenny Tube” nickname was conceived by the Daily
Mail, five days after it opened.
The claustrophobic carriages on the early underground trains
became known as “padded cells”.
Going both ways
In 1903 the Central London line became the first railway in
Britain to be worked entirely by multiple-unit trains – meaning
the trains no longer needed to be turned around when they
reached each end of the line.
By 1905 all the Tube lines had adopted multiple-unit trains.
Shopping
The “Twopenny Tube” line significantly boosted profits to
shops based around Oxford Street and Regent Street.
In 1909 Selfridges department store lobbied (unsuccessfully)
to get Bond Street station renamed after itself.
More successful was Brent Cross. Brent station was named
after the shopping centre when it opened nearby in 1976.
The Central London Railway released a ladies only Christmas
shopping ticket as a special promotion in 1912.
First World War
During the First World War, women began to make up staff
shortages on the Underground.
When Maida Vale station opened on 6 June 1915 it was
entirely staffed by women.
By the end of 1917 the Metropolitan Railway had 552 women
on its staff.
Police reports of German bomb raids on London in 1917
estimated that 300,000 people were taking shelter in Tube
stations.
A white marble memorial at Baker Street station
commemorates the 137 Metropolitan Railway employees
killed during the First World War.
The extension of the Piccadilly line northwards was largely
down to passenger pressure; In 1923, a 30,000-signature
petition was delivered to the Ministry of Transport.
Design
In the 1860s only basic signage – the station name and
exit – was provided on the Underground.
One of the first rail maps, produced by the District line in
1892, featured the slogan “Time Is Money” on the cover.
The Tube’s world-famous red circle logo, known as the
“roundel”, first appeared in 1908.
Around 60 stations had the Metropolitan line’s red
diamond instead of the “roundel” between 1919 and the
1970s.
The Underground Sans font, still used in a modified form
for all the Tube’s posters and design, was created by
Edward Johnston in 1916.
In 1907 a photographic survey was taken of all station
exteriors in order to establish ways in which a more
uniform design style could be achieved.
Etiquette posters warning people to move down the car
and to let passengers off first have been produced since
the early years of the Tube, some by celebrated cartoonist
George Morrow.
The Victoria line commissioned artists to produce original
tile motifs for each station, including the seven trees
which give Seven Sisters its name.
The map
The first free Underground map was released in 1908, a joint
marketing enterprise produced collaboratively by the various
private companies which ran the separate lines.
The classic diagrammatic Underground map designed by
Harry Beck was first produced in 1933, inspired by electrical
circuit diagrams.
The map was originally offered to the Underground by Harry
Beck in 1931, but it was rejected as it was considered too
radical for the public.
Harry Beck was paid 10 guineas, or £10.50, for his Tube map
design.
Beck spent two years pestering the Underground to print a
trial run – which was enthusiastically received by Londoners.
Beck remained very involved with changes and updates to his
map for over 25 years until eventually falling out with London
Transport.
In 1959 his name was removed from the map, until the
1990s, when he was once again acknowledged as its creator
and “H.C. Beck” reappeared on the large-format station
maps.
In 2006 the London Underground map came second in a BBC
competition to find the public’s favourite British design of the
20th century.
In 2009 the angular representation of the river Thames was
briefly removed from the map, but quickly replaced after a
public outcry.
Property
Chiltern Court, the largest apartment block in London, was
opened over Baker Street station in 1929. You can buy a
three-bed flat there today for £1.1m.
From 1933, London Transport was responsible for an area of
2,000 square miles within a 20- to 30-mile radius of Charing
Cross.
Once formed, London Transport inherited an underground
railway network covering 227 miles and carrying some 415
million passengers each year.
Mind the gap
The original recording of “Mind the gap” was made in 1968
featuring the voice of sound recordist Peter Lodge.
While most lines still use Peter Lodge’s recording of “Mind the
gap”, others use a recording by voice artist Emma Clarke.
The Piccadilly line uses the voice of Tim Bentinck, better
known as David Archer from The Archers.
Art
Scottish sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi designed the mosaic
murals at Tottenham Court Road station, which were
completed in 1984.
In the 90s, due to a boom in graffiti, the “silver” tube trains
were replaced with the red, white and blue painted ones still
seen today.
Southwark Station’s blue cone wall, built as part of the Jubilee
line extension’s new generation of stations, was inspired by
an 1816 stage set for The Magic Flute.
Since 2003, musicians require a licence to busk on the Tube.
The ceramics on the City and South London Railway (now part
of the Northern line) were inspired by the designs of artist
William Morris.
Architects
Charles Holden is perhaps one of the most prominent station
architects. He based Arnos Grove on Stockholm Public Library
and Gants Hill was inspired by the Moscow Metro.
All 46 stations designed by Leslie Green have distinctive tile
patterns to help regular customers recognise them.
Green’s stations – such as Covent Garden – were all steel-clad
to allow premises to be built on top of them.
Sir Norman Foster designed Canary Wharf station, which
opened in 1999 as part of the Jubilee line extension.
Prices
The original trains had three different classes, costing three,
four and six pence for a single journey. l A single cash journey
in Zone 1 now costs £4.50.
The Oyster card touch ticketing system was introduced in
2002.
If you paid a full cash fare between Covent Garden and
Leicester Square (0.16 miles) it works out at over £28-a-mile.
Biggest, longest, lift-iest
Each year, every Tube train travels 114,500miles/184,269km.
The average speed of a train is 33km/20.5 miles per hour.
Only 45 per cent of the network is actually in tunnels.
There are 426 escalators. Waterloo has the most: 23.
The total number of lifts, including four stair lifts, on the
Underground network is 164.
The deepest lift shaft is at Hampstead station and is 55.2m.
The shortest lift shaft is at King’s Cross and is just 2.3m.
The total number of carriages in the Underground’s fleet is
4,134.
The total number of stations currently served is 270.
The total number of staff on the Underground is
approximately 19,000.
Baker Street is the station with the most platforms: 10.
The long and short of it
The total length of the Tube network is 402km/249 miles.
The longest continuous tunnel runs between East Finchley
and Morden (via Bank) and is 27.8km/17.25 miles long.
The longest distance between two stations is between
Chesham and Chalfont and Latimer on the Metropolitan line,
which are 6.3km apart.
The shortest distance between two stations is from Leicester
Square to Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line, which are a
mere 300m apart.
The longest journey you can take without a change is 59.4km
from West Ruislip to Epping on the Central line.
The longest escalator on the network is at Angel and is 60m
long, with a vertical rise of 26.5m.
The shortest escalator is at Stratford, taking passengers up
just 4.1m.
The deepest station below street level in central London is
Bank, which is 41.4m deep.
In outer London, Hampstead is the deepest station below
street level, at 58.5m.
Passenger numbers
The first-ever day of public service was enjoyed by 40,000
passengers.
In 1908, the first full year of operation for all three lines, the
Hampstead Tube (now part of the Northern Line) carried 25
million passengers, the Bakerloo 28 million and the Piccadilly
34.5 million.
Passenger numbers grew rapidly and by 1918 the
Underground was carrying 70 per cent more people than in
1914.
Currently 1,107 million passengers are carried every year.
The busiest station in London is Waterloo, which has 57,000
people entering during the three-hour morning peak.
82 million passengers travel through Waterloo each year.
During 2011/12, London Underground carried a record
number of passengers, with 1.171 billion journeys made. This
is 64 million more than in 2010/11.
Speeds
In central London, trains cannot drive faster than 30-40mph
because of the short distances between stations.
The Victoria line can reach speeds of up to 50mph because
the stations are further apart.
The Metropolitan line has the fastest train speeds, sometimes
reaching over 60mph.
Ghosts
A prototype smokeless locomotive built in 1861 by Robert
Stephenson and Co never made it into service, earning it the
nickname “Fowler’s Ghost”.
Disused stations, known as “ghost” stations, such as those at
Aldwych, Down Street and Lord’s, often find alternate work as
film and TV sets.
A ghost named Annie Naylor, a dead milliner, aka the
“Screaming Spectre”, is said to haunt Farringdon station.
Likewise, actor William Terris “haunts” Covent Garden.
Second World War
Rapid expansion of the Underground services into
London’s suburbs throughout the 30s were brought
abruptly to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World
War.
The Underground was central to evacuating children and
expectant mothers from London to the countryside in
1939.
Within a couple of days, London Transport successfully
evacuated 600,000 vulnerable Londoners.
Brompton Road station on the Piccadilly line, which was
closed in 1934, was converted into an underground
Operations Room for London’s anti-aircraft control during
the war.
During the war, signs warning passengers to carry their
gas marks were on display at every Underground station.
Despite having been previously used as shelters in 1917,
the government felt that the Underground should be used
for transport, not shelter. Posters were put up warning
passengers that Underground stations “must not be used
as air-raid shelters”.
On 7 September 1940, the East End experienced the first
of many heavy bombing raids. People rushed to the
Underground stations and staff were unable to resist.
Many people got round the Tube sheltering ban by buying
cheap penny travel tickets and then refusing to leave the
platforms.
Trains continued to run throughout the blitz, leading to
especially crowded stations mixed with travellers and
those seeking shelter.
The press described those sheltering in the Underground
as “Tubites”; London Transport called them “squatters”.
It wasn’t long before around 177,000 people were
sheltering in the Underground’s deep-level stations every
night.
“Droppers” would get into the station early and drop items
of clothing against the wall to reserve the prime spots,
which would then be sold for up to half a crown each.
Some communities of shelterers on the Underground set
up committees and newsletters to campaign for better
facilities.
On 8 October 1940 the government announced a U-turn
and ended the unenforceable ban on sheltering in the
Tube.
For Christmas 1940, London Transport staff distributed
over 11,000 toys, presented by America’s Air Raid Relief
Fund to children sheltering in stations.
Numbered bunk beds and a ticketing system were quickly
installed to reduce queuing and stop “droppers”.
By the end of the war there were over 22,000 beds
installed in Underground stations.
A popular war-time addition to the Underground was the
“Tube Refreshment’s Service” which distributed seven
tons of food to those sheltering every night.
Between September 1940 and May 1941, 198 people were
killed when Tube shelters were hit directly by bombs.
One of the worst bombing incidents to affect the
Underground shelters was on 14 October, when a bomb
pierced the road surface, killing 64 people sheltering on
the platform below.
On 13 January 1941, Bank station was hit, killing 56
people. Details of the incident were strictly censored.
The worst single incident to occur in London during the
war was on 3 March 1943, when 173 people were crushed
to death in a stairwell at Bethnal Green station – not a
single bomb was dropped on the capital that night.
Around 200 London Transport workers were killed on duty
during World War Two.
Despite a ban on geographic transport maps during the
war, the Tube map was still permitted, presumably
because it wouldn’t have been much help to Nazi
paratroopers.
Nature
London Underground manages about 10 per cent of green
spaces in London, playing host to everything from deer to
grass snakes.
It has been estimated that around half a million mice are
living across the Underground network.
The mosquitoes that live in the Tube tunnels have evolved
into a unique species known for its voracious biting. They
were named Culex pipiens molestus by biologists.
The website “Animals on the Underground” has made 35
different animals shapes from Beck’s Tube map.
Events
In 1956, to fill staff shortages, London Transport began to
directly recruit in Barbados and Jamaica.
By 1969 over 4,000 staff from the West Indies had been
recruited by London Transport.
The Tube celebrated its centenary in 1963 with a series of
events including a parade of underground trains at Neasden
depot.
In 1978 Hannah Dadds became the first woman to be
employed as an Underground train driver.
The Tube usually only runs for 24 hours during New Year,
however it also stayed open all night for the 2012 Olympic
opening and closing ceremonies.
