Read Online Underground, Overground by Andrew Martin - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew Martin
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Mixtureâ to soothe the coughing fits of regular passengers. On the other hand, a certain John Bell described how his own health problem â quinsy â had been eased by the disinfectant effect of the âsulphurous acid gasâ so freely available on the platforms. John Bell was the General Manager of the Metropolitan Railway. A doctor testified to the effect that the atmosphere on the Metropolitan was âconcentrated fogâ. But there was plenty of polluted fog above ground as well. (In the 1920s the Underground Group issued a series of wordy posters entitled âA Guide to the British Weatherâ. The first was headed âNo. 1: Fogâ. It explained that fog included soot, ashes and sulphur impurities before proceeding to the triumphant punchline: âThere is no fog on the Underground.â)
Further air shafts were installed, but âelectrivisationâ was coming, and in 1897 everyone knew it. Perhaps there
was
something in the companyâs persistent contention that the atmosphere could be beneficial, however. At the London Transport Museum a tape loop plays an interview with George Spiller, a fireman on the steam-powered District Railway in the early days: âWe worked ten hour days, eight times around the Circle. In the summer you could hardly breathe going through the tunnels.â He lived to be 102.
Steam engines survived on the cut-and-cover lines until 1971, pulling maintenance wagons at night after the electricity had been switched off. This was three years after the abolition of main-line steam, and people would write letters to the newspapers saying theyâd seen, or heard, a ghost train. A recent post on the excellent âDistrict Daveâs London Underground Siteâ ran as follows:
In 1968/9 as a callow youth, I moved into digs ⦠in a house with a long garden that backed onto the Met between West Harrow and Rayners Lane. Strange noises woke me in the wee hours of my first night there. Looked out of the window, and saw a ghostly silhouette of a steam loco standing there, complete with eerie glow from the cab. Scared the cr**p out of me, since I had lived in Cornwall for years, and had no idea there was still steam on LT.
The railway author John Scott-Morgan is in regular touch with a man who drove those trains. He, like George Spiller, said the atmosphere was beneficial, and at the time of writing he is ninety-six.
A CLASS-CONSCIOUS RAILWAY
At the time of his death Charles Pearson was campaigning for a workmenâs estate to be built a few miles west of Paddington. That didnât happen. He also campaigned for cheap workmenâs fares on the Metropolitan, and that did come about. At first, the Metropolitan provided cheap trains voluntarily. Later, a legal requirement to provide workmenâs fares would be laid upon the company in return for the right to extend its lines. The early workmanâs fare was a 3d. return ticket usable in third class on trains departing at 5.30 and 5.40 in the morning. The usual thirdfare was 5d. return, so the saving was a shilling a week, or a pint of beer every day of the six-day working week. (A first-class return was 9d.)
In a pamphlet of 1865 called
The Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain
Henry Mayhew interviewed workmen who had availed themselves of the fare. He presages his account with a eulogy of the Met: âThis subterranean method of locomotion had always struck as being the most thoroughly cockney element of all within the wide region of Cockaigneâ, which is humour (albeit not of a funny sort), and which reminds us that the tireless chronicler of the London poor had also once been the editor of
Punch
. Early one morning he stood on the platform at Paddington, which was âa bustle with men, a large number of whom had bass-baskets [wicker baskets] in their hands, or tin flagons, or basins done up in red handkerchiefs. Some few carried large saws
Further air shafts were installed, but âelectrivisationâ was coming, and in 1897 everyone knew it. Perhaps there
was
something in the companyâs persistent contention that the atmosphere could be beneficial, however. At the London Transport Museum a tape loop plays an interview with George Spiller, a fireman on the steam-powered District Railway in the early days: âWe worked ten hour days, eight times around the Circle. In the summer you could hardly breathe going through the tunnels.â He lived to be 102.
Steam engines survived on the cut-and-cover lines until 1971, pulling maintenance wagons at night after the electricity had been switched off. This was three years after the abolition of main-line steam, and people would write letters to the newspapers saying theyâd seen, or heard, a ghost train. A recent post on the excellent âDistrict Daveâs London Underground Siteâ ran as follows:
In 1968/9 as a callow youth, I moved into digs ⦠in a house with a long garden that backed onto the Met between West Harrow and Rayners Lane. Strange noises woke me in the wee hours of my first night there. Looked out of the window, and saw a ghostly silhouette of a steam loco standing there, complete with eerie glow from the cab. Scared the cr**p out of me, since I had lived in Cornwall for years, and had no idea there was still steam on LT.
The railway author John Scott-Morgan is in regular touch with a man who drove those trains. He, like George Spiller, said the atmosphere was beneficial, and at the time of writing he is ninety-six.
A CLASS-CONSCIOUS RAILWAY
At the time of his death Charles Pearson was campaigning for a workmenâs estate to be built a few miles west of Paddington. That didnât happen. He also campaigned for cheap workmenâs fares on the Metropolitan, and that did come about. At first, the Metropolitan provided cheap trains voluntarily. Later, a legal requirement to provide workmenâs fares would be laid upon the company in return for the right to extend its lines. The early workmanâs fare was a 3d. return ticket usable in third class on trains departing at 5.30 and 5.40 in the morning. The usual thirdfare was 5d. return, so the saving was a shilling a week, or a pint of beer every day of the six-day working week. (A first-class return was 9d.)
In a pamphlet of 1865 called
The Shops and Companies of London and the Trades and Manufactories of Great Britain
Henry Mayhew interviewed workmen who had availed themselves of the fare. He presages his account with a eulogy of the Met: âThis subterranean method of locomotion had always struck as being the most thoroughly cockney element of all within the wide region of Cockaigneâ, which is humour (albeit not of a funny sort), and which reminds us that the tireless chronicler of the London poor had also once been the editor of
Punch
. Early one morning he stood on the platform at Paddington, which was âa bustle with men, a large number of whom had bass-baskets [wicker baskets] in their hands, or tin flagons, or basins done up in red handkerchiefs. Some few carried large saws
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