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Authors: Christian Wolmar
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noise for any other sound to be audible’. He adds: ‘Curiously enough, an approaching train istotally unlike what one would imagine it ought to look like. A strong light bursts from the furnace if it chances to be open, and illuminates the tunnel overhead, the carriage windows and brasswork make lines of light that run off and die in the distance, but the engine itself is lost in the blackness through which it is rushing.’
At High Street Kensington, the engine is changed, No. 7 replacing No. 18. Jane explains how it is necessary to replace the engines because of the strain caused by the numerous stops and that in order to prevent the wheels on one side wearing down faster than the other, ‘engines halve their time run “backwards, forwards”, as they say in the West Country’.
Off he goes again, rushing past ‘men pasting bills on the advertisement hoardings that border on the line below South Kensington’ until reaching St James’s Park seventy minutes after leaving it, just a few minutes longer than it takes today with electric trains. This rapid progress was made possible, the reporter stresses, by the excellence of the brakes and of the block-system of signalling (which means the system is divided by the signals into blocks in which only one train is allowed at any time). While this timing might appear slow for a mere thirteen miles, he points out that there were twenty-seven stops on the journey and that without the stops it would have taken just forty minutes. Rather optimistically, he suggests that if the train were allowed to run full speed around the circle it would take a mere twenty minutes, for what would be a completely pointless trip.
Finally, Jane gives an example of the way that the passengers cause delays: ‘The length of the stoppages could not well be reduced; indeed, they are already too short if we are to believe the tale now current of a wandering Jew sort of passenger – a lady of advanced years who can only alight from a train backwards. Every time she begins to get out, a porter rushes up crying, “Hurry up, ma’am, train’s going” and pushes her in again.’ The apparent paucity of reports of passengers being injured getting on or off the trains seems remarkable, given that each compartment had a door and the station staff must have been underconstant pressure to get these all closed and the trains away again to keep to the tight schedule.
Another graphic description, an entirely negative one, was written in 1887 by the journalist and author R.D. Blumenthal. He recorded his impressions of a journey on the Underground in his diary 2 for 23 June 1887:
I had my first experience of Hades to-day, and if the real thing is to be like that I shall never again do anything wrong. I got into the Underground railway at Baker Street. I wanted to go to Moorgate Street in the City … The compartment in which I sat was filled with passengers who were smoking pipes, as is the British habit, and as the smoke and sulphur from the engine filled the tunnel, all the windows have to be closed. The atmosphere was a mixture of sulphur, coal dust and foul fumes from the oil lamp above; so that by the time we reached Moorgate Street I was near dead of asphyxiation and heat. I should think these Underground railways must soon be discontinued, for they are a menace to health.
For all the discomfort described by Jane and Blumenthal, the Underground was becoming a magnet for Londoners making all sorts of journeys, not just commuting to and from work. Economic growth, although spasmodic with periodic booms and busts, was transforming the lives of millions of people. This combined with the expansion of the London population, created markets for all sorts of activities, ranging from shopping and visiting fairs and exhibitions to attending sports matches. This was the genesis of the consumer society which only became possible through mass transportation systems. There was more holiday time at
At High Street Kensington, the engine is changed, No. 7 replacing No. 18. Jane explains how it is necessary to replace the engines because of the strain caused by the numerous stops and that in order to prevent the wheels on one side wearing down faster than the other, ‘engines halve their time run “backwards, forwards”, as they say in the West Country’.
Off he goes again, rushing past ‘men pasting bills on the advertisement hoardings that border on the line below South Kensington’ until reaching St James’s Park seventy minutes after leaving it, just a few minutes longer than it takes today with electric trains. This rapid progress was made possible, the reporter stresses, by the excellence of the brakes and of the block-system of signalling (which means the system is divided by the signals into blocks in which only one train is allowed at any time). While this timing might appear slow for a mere thirteen miles, he points out that there were twenty-seven stops on the journey and that without the stops it would have taken just forty minutes. Rather optimistically, he suggests that if the train were allowed to run full speed around the circle it would take a mere twenty minutes, for what would be a completely pointless trip.
Finally, Jane gives an example of the way that the passengers cause delays: ‘The length of the stoppages could not well be reduced; indeed, they are already too short if we are to believe the tale now current of a wandering Jew sort of passenger – a lady of advanced years who can only alight from a train backwards. Every time she begins to get out, a porter rushes up crying, “Hurry up, ma’am, train’s going” and pushes her in again.’ The apparent paucity of reports of passengers being injured getting on or off the trains seems remarkable, given that each compartment had a door and the station staff must have been underconstant pressure to get these all closed and the trains away again to keep to the tight schedule.
Another graphic description, an entirely negative one, was written in 1887 by the journalist and author R.D. Blumenthal. He recorded his impressions of a journey on the Underground in his diary 2 for 23 June 1887:
I had my first experience of Hades to-day, and if the real thing is to be like that I shall never again do anything wrong. I got into the Underground railway at Baker Street. I wanted to go to Moorgate Street in the City … The compartment in which I sat was filled with passengers who were smoking pipes, as is the British habit, and as the smoke and sulphur from the engine filled the tunnel, all the windows have to be closed. The atmosphere was a mixture of sulphur, coal dust and foul fumes from the oil lamp above; so that by the time we reached Moorgate Street I was near dead of asphyxiation and heat. I should think these Underground railways must soon be discontinued, for they are a menace to health.
For all the discomfort described by Jane and Blumenthal, the Underground was becoming a magnet for Londoners making all sorts of journeys, not just commuting to and from work. Economic growth, although spasmodic with periodic booms and busts, was transforming the lives of millions of people. This combined with the expansion of the London population, created markets for all sorts of activities, ranging from shopping and visiting fairs and exhibitions to attending sports matches. This was the genesis of the consumer society which only became possible through mass transportation systems. There was more holiday time at
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