The Subterranean Railway (48 page)

The designers of the first tube railway thought that windows were not needed on trains because there was nothing to see between stations. They also installed several of these rather perilous island platforms, most of which have now been replaced.

Right from the beginning the system was overloaded at peak times and when there were special events, such as this example of boat race day (probably) at Baker Street.

The Big Wheel at Earls Court, seen in the distance from Barons Court with the recently completed Piccadilly lines in the middle, was built on District Railway land in 1895 and attracted thousands of people onto the Underground system.

The builders of the Central London Railway made the mistake of hauling the trains with extremely heavy locomotives, which caused so much vibration on the surface that they had to be replaced in 1904, just four years after the line opened.

The tube lines were all dug out of the London clay using variations of the Greathead shield. Here, the excavation is larger than normal because the site is to be a station – Museum, now closed.

Yerkes used his architect Leslie Green to design his stations to a set formula, using the characteristic ruby-red tiles that still adorn many of them. This one at Down Street, Mayfair, was closed in 1932.

Charles Yerkes managed to obtain finance for the creation of three new Tube lines and built them in just seven years, an almost miraculous achievement of which few Londoners are aware.

A scene from Queens Park station in 1917 with a station assistant putting up a poster for an event at the Royal Albert Hall below one for a football match presumably at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground near Walham Green station, now called Fulham Broadway.

During the First World War, men called to the Front were replaced by women in many of the jobs on the system, including the opening and shutting of the gates at the end of every carriage which, in the early days of the tube trains, had to be hand operated.

Lord Ashfield and his daughter on the day of the reopening of the City & South London Railway following work to amalgamate it with the Hampstead section to create what would later become known as the Northern line.

Stations such as Sudbury Town designed by Charles Holden and opened in July 1931, were often the first substantial buildings in the districts they were intended to serve.

The Underground tried to create its own market, with posters such as this one encouraging people to move to the suburbs and selling season tickets which were cheaper, per mile, than those from stations nearer the centre.