tube steak

Back at it after a week off on helping my employer out. Had to fly over to a new office and get the staff started on the right foot. Good to be back at my own desk and cosy bed.

Saw a nifty little video on the CBC web site about a London designer who has recycled old London subway carriages into office space. He's plucked then from the scrap heap and dropped on top of existing buildings. You may have noticed a soft spot for trains on this blog and particularly the goofier side of transport, (remember trains sucked through rubber tubes don't you?) so I'd thought I would dig up stuff on the the London Underground.

Anyway, the 1840's saw what was to be called the Railway Mania in England. Railways were where it's at then and everyone was tripping over themselves to by a stake in some new railroad. Speculative investing in new railways was crazy. Now it turned out that many never got off the ground, were gobbled up by bigger companies or were simply bogus, but the rage over railways was here to stay.

No wonder, compared to other investments there was a buck to be made. And more important, there was a middle class to invest their earnings. Propelled by the industrial revolution the railways were in demand and tracks needed to be laid and locomotives needed to be built. Not only was there an insatiable need to move goods, people had to be moved to. England was rapidly urbanizing and workers had to get to their jobs.

So back to the London Underground. There has been attempts to link suburban train stations in the 1840's by using shallow troughs but these never took off. The City was simply in the way. No one wanted hundreds of homes and roads destroyed to get even the beloved trains into downtown. Some lines were constructed, most notably to connect Paddington Station, but these were basically trenches that were covered over.

Lets jump ahead a few years and have a look at the first real tube train. The tube train could only exist once deep tunneling could be accomplished safely (sort of for the time- the construction of some of the shallow trenches, the so-called "cut and cover" was crazy. At one point they dug through the Fleet Ditch Sewer system near Farringdon). By 1970 tunnelling shields allowed deep excavation to proceed and a tunnel was bored under the Thames near Tower Hill. This was barely a railway in the true sense, just one car hauled back and forth on cables, but it was a start.

More improvements and access to electric locomotives made subways practical, and the first one showed up, The City & South London Railway in 1890. It was powered by an electric locomotive and had some 5+ kilometers of track in service. The ride was no hell and for some reason, probably due to the dark tunnels, the carriages had no windows. Could not imagine a weirder little ride. Patrons called them padded cells.