As regards the cost of this novel undertaking, our Liverpool friend had beforehand ascertained that the capital had been fixed at £2,800,000, and that an average of eight persons per train would more than cover the expense of the enterprise.
Swiftly leaving Warrington in the distance, the express shoots onwards—past Eccles, Pendleton, and Salford—and reaches the terminus at the west side of Deansgate, in the busiest part of Cottonopolis, where, again using the lift, our honest broker speeds to the Exchange in another eight minutes, and in forty-five minutes after leaving Liverpool is in deep business conference with his principal at Manchester.
Contrast this with the existing facilities of the old system for rapid transit between the two places; and those who know their Manchester and Liverpool well, will at once be able to decide whether or not the electric express better meets the requirements of those to whom every minute is of consequence.
The London and North Western Railway (which has a perfectly straight bit of track to Manchester, unequalled, except on the Great Eastern between Littleford and Lynn—21 miles—and on the South Eastern between Nutfield and Ashford—32 miles) runs expresses without stopping from Lime Street and Edge Hill to the Exchange Station, Manchester, doing the journey in forty minutes.
The Great Central Railway, by an indirect route, viâ Garston and Widnes, runs expresses from their Liverpool station (St. James’s) direct to the Manchester Central, in from forty to forty-five minutes; but on neither line is there such a thing as a ten minutes’ service, the intervals between the direct expresses ranging from forty-five minutes to so much as four hours.
Plans, it is said, have been submitted to the Board of Trade for a mono-railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The proposed construction is similar to that of the Behr mono-railway between Liverpool and Manchester. It is quite unlike the canny Scot to rush into sensational experiments for a speed of 117 miles per hour, especially as a few years’ waiting for the completion of the Liverpool line would prove or disprove the possibility of the scheme.
“So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”—Ps. ciii. 5.
CAN anything be satisfactorily rejuvenated? Is there any truth in the Medean story that old age can revert to the vigour of young manhood?
In 1903 the usual reply is “No.” If a theatre becomes dilapidated, it is pulled down. If a railway-station gets much out of repair, the company proceeds to reconstruct, and not to patch up. If a macadamised thoroughfare gives signs of too much wear and tear, it is broken up and relaid with wood blocks.
In fact, rejuvenation on a large scale is so seldom attempted that the scheme for renovating and electrifying the Inner Circle Railway may be regarded as something remarkable.
For convenience we will call it the Inner Circle, but, as we all know, it is a dual concern controlled by the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District, both of them old enough to have a respectable history.
Fifty years ago railways within the boundaries of Inner London were non-existent, the nearest points approached by the country lines being at Battersea, Euston, St. Pancras, Shoreditch, Paddington, London Bridge, and Waterloo—miles away from the central districts.
It was an ideal time for omnibus companies, who charged pretty well what they liked: and for cabmen, whose fare was nominally restricted to eightpence a mile, but who were masters of the situation when passengers with luggage had to be conveyed from the termini. Yet, although many suggestions were made, including that of a great central station where all the lines might converge, the travelling world was considerably startled in 1854 by a proposition laid before Parliament to construct an underground line from Farringdon Street to Bishop’s Road, Paddington; and so astonished were capitalists that although the bill passed, the money was so slow in coming in that work could not be begun until six years later!
In planning the route a golden opportunity was lost of anticipating the Twopenny Tube; but the opposition of Oxford Street was so fierce that the line had to be poked away beneath the Marylebone Road in the north-west of London, convenient for residents in Paddington and Bayswater, but useless to other districts, and, what was more important, it did not go to the Bank, the centre of the business world.
However, we, then as now, were but a slow people, therefore really comprehensive schemes found little favour in the “fifties” and “sixties.” For three years the Marylebone and Euston roads were closed to traffic, and presented the appearance of a besieged city’s outskirts where deep trenches and fortifications were being made. The roadway was removed to a great depth; pipes and sewers were taken away and replaced; foundations were underpinned, and a series of solid brick tunnels were slowly and laboriously constructed and covered up. The plank pathways, the noise, and the smells, drove householders along the route to desperation; and, on nearing the City, the problem of dealing with the old Fleet Ditch was at one period thought insoluble. No wonder that, what with compensation to owners of damaged property, the acquisition of necessary land, and engineering difficulties, the cost of the line at some points mounted up to a million sterling per mile!
At last the first section was completed; and in September, 1862, a trial trip was made. A contemporary picture represents the train passing Portland Road Station, its open trucks in the rear full of enthusiastic guests waving flags and tall hats—after luncheon probably—evidently delighted with the success of the undertaking. But at the formal opening, January 9th, 1863, a grand banquet was given in the Farringdon Street Station, three long tables occupying the rail and platform space, with a [ shaped table on a daïs for the principal guests.
The following day thirty thousand passengers journeyed over the line, and everybody in London talked about the Underground as somewhat of a marvel. But people exhibited strange ignorance on the subject, nervous people preparing for wonderful possibilities, imagining that the cellars would collapse as the trains thundered by, or that the houses would tumble through on to the line, flinging their occupants before some passing engine!
Yet, after all, the Underground was only an ordinary tunnel (such as pierce a score of hills), placed in an exceptional position in the midst of London.
Bit by bit, as years went by, the Metropolitan Railway extended itself eastward and westward to High Street, Kensington, whence the District Railway that had sprung into existence went ahead and got as far as Westminster, its line being partly open and partly tunnelled. There the District stuck for three years, and then found its way into the City (a great boon as an alternative route). At the Mansion House Station it seemed determined to rest for a long period; the Metropolitan showing the same propensity at the Moorgate Street sheds, until City men began to give up all hope of the two ends ever meeting.
It came about at last, however, and the year 1884 witnessed the completion of the irregular Inner Circle—a total length of about 12½ miles—by way of Bishopsgate, Aldgate, Mark Lane, the Monument, and Cannon Street, without any serious disturbance of the traffic, but with much wonderful underpinning of warehouses and offices (a notable instance of this operation being beneath King William the Fourth’s statue, which weighs over 250 tons!).
At first there were no smoking-carriages, but the numerous complaints on the subject induced the directors to alter their rules, and they went to the other extreme, so that now non-smokers think there seem to be more smoking-carriages than any others.
In its young days the Metropolitan was clean and its atmosphere tolerable. In fact, it had been proposed to use smokeless engines, but for some reason the idea was abandoned, and, as the main railway lines began to send out feelers towards the inner districts of London, they sought for, and obtained, running powers over the Underground, junctions being made with the Great Northern Railway and Great Western, the London and North Western, and the Midland. Consequently, the number of trains immensely increased, and the smoke nuisance was intensified. Ventilating shafts were adopted, and afforded some relief, but the imprisoned fog of winter precipitated the “blacks,” and summer weather only made the atmosphere still more stifling; while Baker Street, Gower Street, and King’s Cross stations and tunnels were positive infernos, and for how many deaths from asthma and bronchitis they were responsible no one knows!
The rolling-stock of the Metropolitan became dirtier and dirtier, grime and disfigurement settled down upon it, and everybody’s experience of it resembled that of Mrs. Lilian Rosamond, described in Chapter VIII.
Just opposite St. Mark’s College, Chelsea, is a narrow thoroughfare called Lot’s Road, leading to a creek that separates the Borough from Fulham. Tradition says that the locality was formerly known as “The Lots” (about four acres in extent), and was granted to a Sir Arthur Gorges by the lord of the manor, in lieu of certain rights over land which he gave up for the formation of the Kensington Canal; but incredulous old folk dismissed this tradition with contempt, and maintained that there was a Chelsea personage named Lot, very distantly related to the patriarch’s nephew, who pitched his tent in the fertile Jordan Valley, and that the dismal Chelsea wastes so much resembled the desolateness of the fatal plains, that diligent search therein might even result in the discovery of the Pillar of Salt, brought over to this country at some remote period by a pious descendant! But whoever, or whatever, the name Lot may represent, it is now associated with one of the greatest electrical undertakings of the age—the huge generating station of the Underground Electric Railway Company of London, Limited, who, as at present arranged, will supply the District and other railways with power.
At the bottom of Lot’s Road, and at a point on the Middlesex bank of Battersea Reach, facing the ugly parish church of St. Mary, is the mouth of Chelsea Creek, filled twice a day by the muddy waters of the Thames, and here the Electrical Works are being erected. They are in sight of an obscure cottage in Cheyne Walk where the painter Turner lived in concealment, and where he died. The building, with its four great chimney-shafts, is unæsthetic to a degree, and Turner would probably have thought it ruined his favourite landscape. But it represents something more valuable than æsthetic effect.
When Matthew Doulton, in the infancy of steam, took the Russian Prince Potemkin round the works at Soho, Manchester, the distinguished visitor inquired, “What do you sell here?” “We make and sell here,” replied James Watts’ partner, “that which all the world wants—Power.” And this, on a scale undreamt of by the famous engineer, is what the Underground Electric Railway Company of London will produce, in view of the river scenery so much admired by the chief of impressionists, and which he never wearied of depicting.
This temple of electric force will be the largest in the Old World. In New York, the Manhattan and the Metropolitan companies both have power stations slightly smaller. The Rapid Transit Commission have projected one that will be bigger, while the Waterside station of the Edison Illuminating Company (partially completed) is on a still larger scale. It has, however, been stated that the biggest power scheme on earth will be at Massena, on the St. Lawrence River, Canada, where there will be fifteen Westinghouse machines, equal to a total of 75,000 kilowatts.
Within the temple there will be turbo-generators fifty feet in length and ten feet high, constructed by the British Westinghouse Company at their Trafford Park
FIG. 8. ELECTRICAL POWER HOUSE (THE LARGEST IN THE OLD WORLD) LOT’S ROAD, CHELSEA, TO SUPPLY THE METROPOLITAN DISTRICT AND OTHER RAILWAYS WITH CURRENT
By permission of the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London, Ltd.
Works, Manchester, capable of producing the prodigious quantity of 60,000 electrical kilowatts, at a pressure, or force, technically speaking, of 11,000 volts. In other words, about 100,000 horse-power could be sent out, theoretically equal to the lifting of over 1,000,000 tons a foot high every minute.[3] Six such power stations could, therefore, move the great pyramid of Cheops (over 6,000,000 tons weight), and carry it bodily off on colossal rails, and dump it down anywhere to order.
For condensing purposes, an enormous quantity of water will be required, and every twenty-four hours 19,000,000 gallons of water (at times mounting up to 40,000,000 gallons) will be drawn from the creek for use in the power house.
The force of 11,000 volts will be much too powerful for direct application to the purposes of locomotion. It requires reducing by transformers and rotary converters into the safe and ordinary current of about 550 volts, which will be effected at sub-stations—Earl’s Court, South Kensington, Victoria, Charing Cross, Mansion House, and other places along the line. To these the current will be sent from the power house, and reduced by the transformers into ordinary low-pressure voltage, and the fiery O.P. spirit tamed to a pleasant and portable “under-proof” standard! The current will then be distributed to two conductor-rails, one located between the present running rails, and the other outside them. The motors on the trains will receive the current from one rail by means of a sliding contact-shoe, and return it to the other rail in the same manner. In passing through the motor the electricity causes the armature to revolve, which motion, by means of gearing, is communicated to the carriage axle.
So much for the driving-power of the trains. But what kind of trains do the public expect?
FIG. 9. A 2,000 H.P. WESTINGHOUSE STEAM TURBINE, RESEMBLING THE TURBO-GENERATORS (EACH OF 7,500 H.P.) IN THE CHELSEA POWER HOUSE.
By permission of the Westinghouse Companies, Ltd., London
Surely not the old carriages cleaned up and re-upholstered—made “to last a little longer,” until broken up for firewood and old iron. The public will not be disappointed in the new cars, nothing as yet having been seen in London to equal them.
The trains will be run on the principle of the multiple unit. That is, each will be made up of seven coaches—three long motor-cars and four trail-cars—with a motor-man’s cab at each end, and one in the centre. These eight-wheeled coaches will be rectangular at the sides—not sloping like those of the Waterloo Tube Company—and very roomy, 52 feet long and about 8 feet 2 inches wide inside, and about 8 feet 7 inches from the floor to the middle of the roof.
FIG. 10. A NEW METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY CAR
By permission of the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London, Ltd.
The arrangement of the seats will be somewhat different from that of the Tube. There will, of course, be corridor cars, which will be entered from the platforms, through telescopic doors; there will be also sliding doors. The gain in leg-space will be great, the centre gangway giving a clear 4 feet, and there will be fewer cross seats. Each train will hold about 338 passengers; the ventilation of the cars will be perfect; and the height sufficient for a giant. As the District tunnels are 25 feet in diameter, and 15 feet 9 inches from the rail level to the crown of the arch, there will be about 2 feet of head-room, about 2 feet 6 inches between each train, and the same between the trains and the sides of the tunnels.
Compare this with the present Inner Circle trains that carry about three hundred passengers, with gangways that, even in the first-class compartments, leave no room for incomers to avoid a leg entanglement, and whose height will hardly admit a tall man in a tall hat to stand upright. Also compare it with the dimensions of the Central’s cars, which are 39 feet long, 8 feet wide, and whose height to the middle of roof is only 7 feet 5 inches, the gangway narrow, with seats in each car for forty-eight people. The space in the cars of the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City, is still more exiguous.
It is proposed to run about twice as many trains as at present, each journey to be made in about two-thirds of the time now required; that is to say, the trains that now run about ten miles an hour will, it is anticipated, work up to at least fifteen miles; the total carrying capacity being estimated at 70,000,000 per annum, increasable, if necessary, to 100,000,000. There may be an all-night service, for the convenience of people engaged at Covent Garden market, and for journalists and others whose work lies in the vicinity of Fleet Street. A somewhat novel and economical feature will be that the trains, during the stock hours of the day, can be run in short lengths, as in the City and Waterloo Railway, and, with their triple motors divided, will resemble those strange Naidæ worms of the Annelida class that possess the power of increasing by mechanical division. They will also be able to go forward and backward without reversing the motor engines.
Brilliant will be the lighting of the cars and stations; the tunnels, too, are to be illuminated. Fresh air will be obtained by the frequent movements of the trains through the tunnels, while smoke and smuts will, of course, become things of the past. The stations, with their wide and roomy platforms, will in some cases be lengthened by fifty feet to accommodate the three-hundred-and-fifty-feet-long trains, and be thoroughly cleansed and repainted, and the tunnels may possibly be whitened by means of “spraying”—the principle adopted at the Chicago Exhibition for the finials of the pavilions.
The question of classes, fares, and tickets has not yet been settled, but we may assume that the system adopted will be somewhat like that of the Tube. The entire project closely resembles the Metropolitan Underground Railway of Paris, and the Boston Subway. Lifts are not at present contemplated, and probably their absence will be no great loss to active travellers, nor even to the “old, subdued, and slow,” for trains will so quickly succeed one another that the missing of one will involve no serious delay. Possibly, however, as time goes on, some new and convenient form of sloping footway may be adopted.
But alas! for the lovers of the beautiful, the directors, we are told, “have not decided that they will be warranted in sacrificing, on æsthetic grounds, the revenue derived from advertisements.”
Then, again, as there will be little or no waiting, even the most impatient of voyageurs will hardly need the diversion obtained by a trial of the omnipresent penny-in-the-slot machines, or the contemplation of the numerous works of art displayed on the station walls. They will not even need the bookstalls, much less to gape at the contents-bills of the daily paper.
And, provided the glass roofs be kept clean, and the atmosphere innocent of smoke and gas, might not the stations—sheltered as they are from the vagaries of weather, and brilliantly lighted—be transformed into modified winter gardens, with sturdy flowers and shrubs filling up nooks and corners, and bold paintings (frequently renewed) of distant lands, seascapes, and historical subjects, in the recesses now covered by “Reckitt’s Blue,” etc.? The frequent stopping of trains would be actually welcomed, and people would travel by the “Circle” for the sake of seeing the novelties! In fact, every station might be converted into a thing of beauty.
One other suggestion for the directors of the new Inner Circle. Cannot something be contrived in the new cars to effectually deaden the sound of the closing and opening of doors, so irritating to modern nerves, and unpleasantly associated with the “banging” in the old carriages, and the “clashing” of the telescopics in the Tubes.
The Metropolitan Railway will be electrified in a very similar manner to the District Railway, the system being the same, i.e. alternating three-phase, converted at sub-stations into continuous current. Access to the platforms will be by short staircases, and not by lifts. It is said that when steam is abolished the appearance of the stations may possibly be improved, but the advertisements are too important a source of revenue to be removed, and, as the Company says, “they act as a relief to the bare walls, and their withdrawal would answer no good”! An effort will be made to cleanse the tunnels, but it has not yet been decided what method will be adopted.
There exist an abundance of open spaces, ventilating-shafts, and holes, and the frequent passing of trains in contrary directions will necessarily keep the air in motion, and thus, as in the District, the problem of ventilation will solve itself.
The cars will be of the corridor type, seven to a full train, each end car and the middle one having a motor, and if the contingencies of the traffic do not require a large train, it will thus be possible to divide it and run it in two parts. The seating will be both transverse and longitudinal, and considerably over four hundred passengers it is said can be accommodated in each full train. As to day and night services, their frequency, the fares, and the distinction of classes, nothing has yet been decided.
About a mile from Wembly, where “Watkins’ Folly,” as it is locally called—at one time aspiring, like Babel’s, to “reach unto heaven”—shows gauntly against the skyline its first stage of only 150 feet, is Neasden, where, on land belonging to the Metropolitan Railway, is being erected its power house (the most extensive in the kingdom owned by a single railway company), capable of producing some 14,000 kilowatts. Water in abundance will be obtained by means of artesian wells now being bored in the chalk; and coal can be readily supplied. The current will be applied to cars, as on the District, by a conductor-rail placed in the near side of the permanent way, with a return fixed in the centre of the running track. By the end of 1903 it is hoped that the work will be sufficiently advanced for some trains to be run by electricity. Finally, as the Metropolitan’s engineer-in-chief remarks, there will be no marked novelties, but “the very conversion from steam to electric traction will prove a great novelty and an attraction. New cars of the latest type will be introduced, the stations will be bright and cheerful, the atmosphere pure; travel will be undertaken with a greater degree of comfort, and freedom from disagreeable odours. In short, nothing that can reasonably be expected to be performed in the interests of the public will be left undone.”
A good deal has been said in reference to the source whence the necessary capital has been obtained for rejuvenating the Inner Circle, patriotic people objecting to the so-called Americanising of this great undertaking, though it is hardly a logical objection.
If British capitalists are lacking in enterprise, there is no reason why London should wait until they evince it. The world will not go to sleep while Lombard Street hesitates. As Mr. Perks, M.P., Chairman of the District Company has said, out of the five millions sterling invested in the new Underground Electric Railway Companies of London, Limited, less than two millions were held in America, and three millions on this side the Atlantic. “I do not care,” he said, “where the money comes from, so long as it is good money”—a wise remark, like the non olet of Suetonius. What matters it whence the materials of a sovereign have come? They cannot be ear-marked, and whether its gold is Brazilian, Australian, South African, or American, is of no consequence. It is a legal tender, and worth twenty silver shillings.
Another matter that has engaged public attention is the apparent difference of opinion between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District Companies, as to the control of the Inner Circle. Nature has designed them to be one, and but for vested and promoters’ interests, they probably would have been one from the first. They are not merely brother and sister, but are united by a closer tie, therefore their motto surely ought to be Quis separabit!
Let us hope that long before the scheme is completed there will be a reconciliation, and a satisfactory working arrangement made “out of court” between these two parties to an unnecessary divorce suit.
The two lines have carried their millions of passengers, and the rejuvenated Inner Circle during its new and beneficent career is destined to carry very many millions more, and prove a great boon to the metropolis.
“Tell by what paths, what subterranean ways.”—Blackmore.
WHEN those electric traction pioneers, the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City Railways, were opened respectively in 1890 and 1898, they were regarded by the public with a certain amount of apathy. But when, in July, 1900, the Central London Railway, inaugurated by the Prince of Wales, was opened for traffic, and it was realised that the line was laid literally in the centre of London, beneath one of the greatest street routes in existence, viz. Cheapside, Newgate Street, Holborn, Oxford Street, Bayswater and Uxbridge roads, and was capable of dealing with a gigantic stream of passengers at a uniform fare for any distance, it arrested universal attention, and for a time nothing was talked about but the deep-level system for metropolitan railways; and by general approbation the Central was forthwith dubbed “The Twopenny Tube,” a name it will always retain.
Like most great enterprises, the Tube Railway had to contend against considerable opposition before legislative sanction could be obtained for its construction. It was incorporated on August 5th, 1891, after a great battle with Parliament and local authorities, in which affray the late Mr. J. H. Greathead, M. INST. C. E. (deviser of one of the methods of shield-excavating for driving tunnels), took a conspicuous part, and the principle of a “free-way-leave” beneath the streets was successfully confirmed.
The original directors were Mr. Henry Tennant (at one time General Manager of the North Eastern Railway Company), Lord Colville of Culross (Director of the Great Eastern Railway Company), Sir Francis Knollys (Director of the Great Northern Railway Company), the Hon. A. H. Mills (of Glyn, Mills, Currie, and Co.), and the Right Hon. D. R. Plunket (Director of the North London Railway Company). Thus the railway element was strongly represented; the financial to a small but very important extent, and Court influence by two prominent members of the households of the Prince and Princess of Wales.
The Company was authorised to construct a double underground line from Liverpool Street to Shepherds Bush (about 6½ miles); but the plan was modified, and the Bank of England became the City starting-point. In their prospectus the directors modestly predicted an annual passenger traffic of some forty-two millions (or seven millions per mile of line); but this estimate has been largely exceeded, the average being about fifty-two millions per annum, or one million per week.
The Company’s capital ultimately reached the sum of nearly four millions sterling, so the line can hardly be called a cheap one in point of construction; for, although the “way-leave” beneath the streets was free, land had to be bought for the surface booking-offices, costly shafts had to be sunk to the requisite depth, and tunnels driven, and numerous subterranean stations had to be built. Thus, apart from the cost of the rolling-stock and installation of a large current-generating station, the initial expenses soon mounted up.
All the booking-offices and stations are built on one principle, each with its great electric lift; but special interest attaches to the City terminus.
It was necessary to make use, somehow, of the open space between the Mansion House, the Bank, and the Royal Exchange—an ideal spot for a central railway station. But how was it to be effected? For years the Civic Fathers had contemplated the construction of subways for the safety and convenience of foot-passengers at this, which has been termed the busiest—as it is almost the most dangerous—spot in the world, though I doubt whether in the year 1903 Piccadilly Circus does not run it hard.
The Central Railway Company approached the Corporation on the subject, and eventually it was agreed between the parties that the Railway Company, in return for being allowed the privilege of constructing their station beneath the open space, without payment, should make the public subways, and hand them over in perpetuity to the City.
So for many months the pavement in front of the Royal Exchange was disfigured by a lofty wooden hoarding, which completely concealed a shaft, wherein some mysterious work was progressing. But beyond this there was no outward indication of what was going on below; and, although the entire roadway in front of the Mansion House was being undermined, the vast traffic continued as usual.
Arranging this station proved to be one of the stiffest bits of engineering work ever attempted. Drain-pipes were ubiquitous—a perfect tangle that had to be diverted. There were old disused and long-forgotten pipes, electric cables, hydraulic power pipes, pneumatic tubes, gas and water mains—a maze and wilderness of underground communications. These were all rearranged in a special pipe-tunnel, 14 feet wide. Then, at a depth of about 20 feet, the booking-office was built, bit by bit, of steel-work, which had previously been temporarily put together in a field to ensure its fitting exactly into the excavation prepared for its accommodation—an area 145 feet one way and 75 feet the other, its outline being on the curve. Its roof, consisting of girders supporting steel troughing, was filled up with concrete, and finally with asphalte, upon which thousands of people pass daily without realising what is below them. Access to the booking-office is gained by numerous entrances viâ the public subway: two on the Royal Exchange pavement, two at the bottom of Mansion House Place, one at the Poultry corner, and one at Walbrook, one in front of the Safe Deposit City buildings, two each at the corners of Princes Street and Cornhill, and one at St. Mary Woolnoth Church. The entire arrangement reminds one of a mole’s subterranean fortress, with its galleries for entrance and exit branching off in various directions.
These subways, immense conveniences which should be adopted at every rond-point in London—though it is a strange fact that habitués of the City seldom use them, they being patronised chiefly by the “work-girl” and by casual visitors to the central “square mile”—are 15 feet wide and 9 feet high, are lined with glazed brick, and have electric-lighted stairways at the above-mentioned places.
Some fifty feet below the Bank of England Station are the twin-tunnels and their platforms, approached by five lift shafts of twenty feet, and one stairway shaft of eighteen feet diameter; at a deeper level still are the tubes of the City and South London Railway, crossing the City en route to Islington.
These great passenger lifts work with wonderful smoothness (facile descensus Averno est), and without them no fewer than ninety-three steps would have to be painfully descended.
We are all familiar by this time with the other ten surface stations of the Twopenny Tube (at the Post Office, Marble Arch, etc.). They are nearly all alike, and look as if they were waiting for a substantial and lofty building to be erected upon them, and have little claim to architectural beauty. The platforms, necessarily rather contracted in area, are clean and bright, owing to the extensive use of opalite tiling and glazed bricks, ever spotless, and practically indestructible. Each train consists of six eight-wheeled bogie-cars, 45½ feet long, with well-upholstered seats, arranged longitudinally and crosswise, for forty-eight passengers. The lighting is effected by means of eight sixteen-candle-power incandescent lamps, supplemented by small shaded electric lights, excellent for reading by. The windows, of course, do not open, but practicable ventilating louvres are arranged above them. Entrance is obtained at each end of the car, and the telescopic gates are cleverly and expeditiously manipulated by the attendants. Straps are placed along rods on each side of the roof to aid passengers in traversing the cars, and above the seats are racks for parcels, etc.
The electric locomotives[4] are curious in shape, with the driver’s cabin in the middle, and a backward and forward slope for the apparatus looking like gigantic coal-scuttles back to back. They have eight wheels, and are fitted with motors, one for each axle. The current is collected from a central third rail by means of two cast-iron shoes which rub along it, and is led through an automatic circuit-breaker and switched to the controller in the driver’s cabin, thence to the motors, returning to the track rails through the wheels. The total weight of a locomotive is about forty-four tons, and the average speed is about fourteen miles an hour, the running time from the Bank to the western terminus being twenty-four minutes.
At Shepherd’s Bush—once, as its name implies, a rural suburban hamlet, suggestive of pastoral pursuits, flocks of sheep and lambs, washings and shearings of fleeces—is the chief power station of the Central, sub-stations being situated at the General Post Office, Marble Arch, and Notting Hill Gate.
The premises cover sixty-eight acres, with plenty of room for locomotive and car sheds, shunting tracks, boiler and engine houses, the latter most impressive from the size of their six Corliss compound horizontal engines, each rated at 1,300 horse-power, though, as in so much American machinery, the somewhat rough exterior detracts from the appearance, especially in the eyes of British engineers, accustomed not only to internal mechanical perfection—as in the Central’s engines—but to nicety of finish throughout. These giants are coupled direct to Thomson-Houston dynamos, with the capacity, if required, of 5,100 kilowatts, or 6,800 indicated horse-power.
Amongst other contemplated improvements is that of loop-lines between Liverpool Street and the Bank, which will materially help to accelerate the traffic.
FIG. 11. A TYPICAL ELECTRIC POWER GENERATOR—TWO DYNAMOS, EACH OF ABOUT 1,600 H.P.
By permission of Dick Kerr and Co., London
Some remarkable results, not very satisfactory to those interested in vehicular traffic, have arisen from the opening of the Twopenny Tube. The standard of travelling has gone up steadily; improvements in ’buses are constantly demanded (garden seats, spiral spring cushions, etc.) and—somewhat slowly—conceded. Yet, to quote the words of an omnibus official, “they (the public) want more!” And this at a time when fares have steadily decreased, and the cost of fodder and maintenance have seriously increased. Worse still, the Tube’s existence has been keenly realised all along the line of its route, ladies especially preferring to go on a shopping expedition by means of the well-lit Tube than by the not over-clean, and decidedly slow and stuffy, omnibus. The London Road Car Company’s returns along Oxford Street and Holborn showed last year a decrease nearly equivalent to the Tube’s increase, and the London General Omnibus Company’s report for the half-year—December 1st, 1901—was so disappointing, owing to dear forage and decreased passenger traffic, that its stock fell at one bound ten points, from 105 to 95—a grave depreciation in value.
The Tube, during the six months ending December 31st, 1902, carried 22,425,776 passengers, a daily average of 121,879, out of which big total 2,770,854 were workmen at a penny per traveller. On Coronation Day 202,000 people journeyed by the Central.
At the commencement of its career the Tube’s atmosphere and temperature were remarkably sweet and equable, not varying much from 62° either in summer or winter. During a spell of hot weather it felt delightfully cool, and when east winds blew it was warm compared with the atmosphere outside.
Trips in the Tube were at one time seriously suggested for the cure of various maladies as a modification of that usual last resource of the medical profession, “change of air.”
Before the advent of the Tube, however, many fond mothers with little faith in the pharmacopœia regarded the Underground as a sanatorium for children’s complaints. Tunnel air, they affirmed, was good for croup, whooping-cough, and various other ailments. A doctor travelling on the Metropolitan once noticed a woman in the same compartment pull down the window upon entering a tunnel and hold outside a child she was carrying, so that the youngster might get the full benefit of the foul atmosphere. When the doctor inquired the reason for this extraordinary performance, she told him that “tunnel air” had been found to be a complete cure for croup. And only the other day an East End mother was discovered by a guard giving her baby two rounds on the Inner Circle because she had been told by a herbalist and bone-setter that a sulphurous atmosphere was good for whooping-cough.
But the ideal state of things in the Tube did not continue, and accusations respecting its ventilation began to be whispered about and finally proclaimed from the housetops (vide Chapter XIX). However, practical steps were taken to ensure its efficiency, and at the last meeting of shareholders the chairman said that the Company had now a better character for ventilation than any other company in London.
At Bond Street Station a powerful fan has been placed at the base of the lift shaft, which, under ordinary pressure, removes the vitiated atmosphere from the permanent ways, fresh air taking its place at the various halting-places. The fan, forty-eight inches in diameter, and electrically driven, displaces 30,000 cubic feet of air per minute, and is capable of entirely exhausting the tunnels in a fraction over three minutes. The fan is worked every night after the trains have ceased running, and travellers by the early trains literally breathe the freshest of fresh air.
If a train in the Central should break down and come to a stop in the tunnel, though it would not, of course, be run into—the block system making that all but impossible—it might be necessary for the passengers to get out. The question naturally asked is, “How shall they alight? And where shall they go when they have alighted?” A fact that not every traveller knows is that a narrow path at the side of the rails leads to the nearest station, which cannot be more than a quarter of a mile off, so that no serious athletic feat is required to get out at the rear of the train and walk along the Tube.
Like the great trunk-lines, the Central has an annual sale of articles left in the carriages and not claimed; but the collection differs considerably from the miscellaneous assortment brought together by, say, the Great Northern or Great Western. Heavy impedimenta are, as might be expected, absent; but who could have been the owners of the 25 bottles of whisky, the 13 boxes of cigars and cigarettes, the 300 ladies’ umbrellas, and the 264 gentlemen’s umbrellas, the walking-sticks innumerable, the 150 pairs of spectacles and eyeglasses (showing that the light is so good that reading is a favourite way of passing the time), the 44 fur necklets, 920 pairs of gloves and 14 muffs, the 166 empty purses, and the multitude of books, chiefly fiction? While every week someone very mysteriously leaves behind a spirit-bottle—evidently recently emptied of its contents—enclosed in cardboard and done up in a neat parcel.
How the Twopenny Tube, and others like it, were constructed will be described in the next chapter.
LAST year there were sounds of strife in that financial atmosphere where dwell Titan capitalists, who think and talk and dream in millions; a battle of giants, like the conflict imagined by Milton, when the satanic host levelled “triple-mounted rows” of deadly tubes with such effect against seraph and seraphim, “that whom they hit none on their feet could stand, though standing else as rocks.” But the conflict now past, concerned tubes of another kind—iron railway tubes, that seem to be the destiny of underground metropolitan travellers. The Morgan group, the Yerkes’ combination, and other great coalitions, mustered their battalions for the fray. The London County Council, following the policy of Lord Stanley’s army at Bosworth field, hovered aloof ready to take advantage of the defeat of either; the Corporation of London anxiously watched from afar; the great suburban railway companies shivered in their shoes; a parental Legislature held the balance impartially between the combatants; while the people whom the matter most concerned—some six millions of Londoners—had to sit down with folded hands and, patiently or impatiently, await their fate.
Recollecting this tangle and uproar of conflicting interests, it behoves everybody to have some notion of the subject of the Tubes and their construction.
Like many other things in the world, there is nothing new in the idea of boring a hole through the earth and lining it with brick or iron. As Pope suggests, mankind doubtless learnt the art from Nature, though the correctness of the poet’s zoological knowledge is hardly shown in the examples heading this chapter. For ages past—before London existed—that skilful excavator, the mole, tunnelled through the earth, making roads and galleries, the friction of his fur, set perpendicularly on his skin, lining his tube so that the soil did not fall in. The larvæ of the humble caddis-fly covered the inside of their cases with fine silk; and the trap-door spider lined its 12-inch long shaft with similar material to prevent the tumbling in of loose particles and to afford itself a foothold in climbing up; while the ant constructed her galleries and stuccoed them with the finest grains of soil, so that the inner walls presented a smooth, unbroken surface.
With the advent of man and his civilisation came the extensive use of furs, and in these the grubs of the moth—in the abstract the most engaging of creatures—made galleries whenever they got a chance, lining them with their own silk, wherein to undergo their transformation into the pupa stage.
Well-experienced engineers, such as the vine, beech, pine, and bark-boring beetles, are all tube-makers; but it is the pholas, or teredo navalis, who is the arch-borer, so skilled an expert in lining, that, though only the size of a quill and “soft in body,” he pierces the hard timbers of ships and quay-piles, lining the tubes as he proceeds with a saliceous substance as hard as china. The body of the Teredo is like a long white worm, varying from a foot to two inches and a half in length, and about the width of a finger. From him, it is said, the elder Brunel took his idea of the shield which he employed in constructing the tunnel beneath the Thames after the shaft had been excavated.