London Underground

No doubt, most people who have to use the Underground to get to work every morning will at least mention the small, overcrowded car­riages, constant delays, litter and expensive tick­ets. All those things are true but there is another story.

The London Under­ground, more commonly known as the Tube, was the world's FIRST electric underground railway. The City and South London Railway opened in December 1890 and was the first to use the new technologies of deep tube tunnelling and electric traction for power. Now, that's almost 115 years ago! And if that's not enough, for many years before that the London Underground worked on underground steam trains! Together, this makes the London Underground a fantastic example of brilliant Victorian engineering.

Of course, the technology was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today. Hydraulic (water powered) lifts transported passengers from ground level to the platforms. Trains con­sisted of only three carriages and were attached to electric locomotives. The locomotives were powered by the largest power generating station in the country.

The first carriages were long and narrow with padded high-cushioned seats, and no windows! The designers thought that passengers wouldn't have anything inter­esting to look at in the tun­nel. That is why people start­ed calling those carriages 'padded cells'. On platforms,

Did you know?

It is not just the London tube itself that is remarkable, the actual tube map also deserves a few kind words! Did you know that most underground systems all over the world use the London tube map designed by Harry Beck as the basis for design of their own maps?

Harry Beck was a draughtsman who worked for the Underground. The first Underground maps were geographic, showing Underground lines and stations in relation to the street plan on the ground. During the 1890s and 1900s the network expanded and different railway companies started producing maps which only showed their own lines. That made it even more complicated.

But in 1931 Harry Beck came up with a totally new idea. His map was not based on the street map, it was a schematic map. Beck displayed routes as coloured lines, stations as dots and interchanges as circles. At the time his idea was so radical that the Underground's publicity department refused to listen to him! However, in 1933 a trial version was published and became an instant success.

Today, Beck's map is now internationally recognised as a design classic.

M. Morris

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