Here's a fun fact that wasn't mentioned: most main line rail routes have a three letter engineering code to allow people to identify them - you often see them on bridge signs, so each structure has a unique code in case of emergency. Since the Waterloo & City was a main line railway, it has its own engineering code... and that code is DRN.
As an ex British Rail/Network Rail worker. It was called the drain even before 1970s. Some manuals used the nickname aswell. Plus the drain is from the WC initals. Some said that the mens toilets were above the line. So maybe thats where the answer is.
I can remember my first ride on the 1940s units down the Drain as a schoolboy in the 1960s. It smelt like a drain; not just a bit damp here and there, even the inside of the trains smelt like a waterworks railway. The smell lingered because the line was isolated and both ends were underground - ventilation was poor. Either that or City gents back in the 1960s had very odd tastes in aftershave.
I could definitely imagine whichever supervisor on the South Western Railway assigned routes to the drivers telling someone, "You will be working on the drain tomorrow".
Given that the W&C is so different from the rest of the SWR region both in style and train stock, I can't help imagining that even then those who drove the route were assigned as full-time drain drivers?
I first lived in London in 1968, a young kid from Canada dressed in rawhide, a jean jacket and wool checked shirt, guitar in tow. For some reason I had to get to Waterloo and took this train, at rush hour. The train was dull, dark and dirty with seats facing forwards. As I got on and tried to find a seat I passed maybe 50 gents in strange attire, bowler hats, brolly and a copy of the Telegraph or Times tucked under one arm or on top of a briefcase. They all glared at the intruder. It was a scene out of the movie Brazil. They looked askance at me and I looked back with a cocky look at all the worker drones. I loved London in those years!
I always figured on the metaphorical explanation just because, to a much greater degree than most Underground lines, it was almost exclusively a work-commute line that did huge business twice a day at rush hour and very little otherwise. Its sole function was to get City financial workers between Waterloo station and the office. At the end of the day, the drain opens and everyone rushes out. Add that to its unusually deep configuration and you have a powerful image.
And even during the rush hour it's a flood of commuters in one direction but a mere trickle in the opposite direction. I used to do that commute in reverse many years ago: hundreds of people getting off, and me and about six other people getting on.
Yes, this was my understanding too, told to me by my mother who moved to London in 1957 (and left again in 1962). I moved there in 1985 and left again in 1995 and always thought that was the "meaning" of "the drain". Also of course because it is just a single "tube" - there are no branches or intermediate stations, so the passengers just flow from one end to the other. But I must say, I do like the "WC" theory better. It just has that ring of plausibility about it.
I agree with you, Jay. As a BR railwayman, I can tell you, The Drain got its name, because of the fact it was the LSWR's underground, and therefore unique amongst LSWR lines. I know people today associate the Waterloo & City, as just another tube line, but historically this was not so. It was a BR line sold to LT in 1992, and the name Drain predates the change of ownership.
My uncle, who worked in the City most of his career and was an Alderman of the City of London, always told me that us commuters went down it like “Rats down a drain”. I am one of those rats….
@@mattevans4377 it felt like that in peak rush hour - like the marching hammers in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Four in line trudging down the ramps. It’s more free flowing post pandemic
Does anyone else make a game of trying to guess what the "You are the.... to my...." line is going to be, or just me? I can't help but feel a sense of personal accomplishment if I guess it right xD As a kid going round London for days out, I always knew it as "The Drain". My theory is just that it got it's name from being connected to Waterloo. Like a drain is connected to a 'loo'. Silly simplicity with no real reason other than 'well, why not?'
My late aunt worked in the City for a merchant bank in the 70s - 90s used to insist to us as kids that it was called 'The Drain' because it ran from the ''Loo to the Cesspits' that were the trading floors ( she was an early pioneer in the then very male world of merchant bank aquisition services and did not think much of her colleagues )
Actually there was another line that went under the Thames around the time the Waterloo & City Line opened! The original Northern line as the City and South London Railway had a section that went under the Thames between Borough and King William Street, and this opened in 1890! However, it was short-lived due to the line's inconvenient placement and was unable to cope with the traffic, so the line closed in 1900 and a new route to Moorgate via Bank opened that year. That being said, since Waterloo is a busy regional station, I think the commuters draining into the Tube station from the National Rail station to get to Bank would also make sense behind The Drain nickname.
It’s perhaps also worth pointing out that the Thames Tunnel had a poor reputation for bad odours, until LU tried to do something about them during the late-80s/early-90s.
I really don't get why he makes these sort of mistakes. I mean, he obviously knows what's right since he'd mentioned it in like a million videos. So, maybe it just slipped his mind?
I used to commute using the W&C during the hot summer of 1976. The explanation I learned at the time was that during the evening rush commuters entering Bank station and flowing down the travelators would have looked like (from a distance!) ants being washed down a drain after rain!
As someone who was a Station Supervisor at Waterloo, staff never refer to the W&C as the drain but then again they never referred to the underground as the tube either. It did once flood when I was on duty due to a burst water main and had to be closed. The punters were used to it closing so most knew alternative routes without us telling them.
To follow up on your literal drain analogy, back in the 90's when Waterloo was being spruced up for the Channel Tunnel traffic, the Waterloo and City also had a refurb, which I was involved in, I walked the tunnel many times, and right in the middle, under the river, there is a Sump room, with ancient Victorian water pumps which were still in use trying to keep the tunnel dry. The room is accessed via a very narrow opening which meant that the huge pumps were effectively walled into the tunnel and couldn't be replaced. As far as I know (retired now) they are still there.
Such pumps would have been powered by steam engines. It seems incredible to imagine coal fired boilers being maintained constantly in such a location , but the trains of the period were steam powered after all. The air would have been thick with smoke ! It is possible that the boilers were outside the tunnels and steam was brought in via asbestos lagged pipes similar to those which were once a common sight in the grounds of hospitals and other places of industry.
The Victoria line goes under the Thames too. Also I wonder if the stock going to the line via the old lift lead to people seeing it and not knowing about how they were sent to/from maintenance asking where it was going to got the comic answer "It's going down the drain."
Meanwhile the 7 (IRT Flushing Line) in NYC is called the International Express! This is because of two reasons. One is because of all the ethnic neighborhoods it goes through in the borough of Queens, especially along Roosevelt Ave. Queens is pretty much the Rosetta Stone of America, because this small area has up to 200 languages from Filipino to Uyghur, Danish, and Jamaican Patois! The other reason why is because it was the route people took to the NY World's Fair (both in 1939 and 1964)! The line was designated a National Millennium Trail (trails that reflect aspects of the country's history and culture) in June 1999 for its role in distributing large groups of immigrants in the early 1900s. NYC itself has many nicknames from Gotham (which it didn't get from Batman but rather by Washington Irving in his 1807 Salmagundi and the term itself comes from medieval England for "homestead where goats are kept") to The City that Never Sleeps (which first came from a Fort Wayne news article in 1912).
“The drain” is certainly something that overground rail workers would use to describe the Waterloo & City line. The avoider lines that go through tunnels at Crewe are called “The hole” or mucky hole
Hi Jago from Spain where it is a pleasant 22°. My first usage of the line goes back to 1966 when I was in the RAF. The place where I was stationed was miserable so I took every opportunity to get away from it at weekends and used to drive a minivan taking Priority 1 radio items to other RAF bases. I would stay from Friday evening until Sunday morning at the Union Jack Club, near Waterloo. To get to other places I would take the drain to Bank and go elsewhere from there.
I see they still spell the flat escalator thing “travolator”. I remember travelling on it in the mid-90s and the sign used to say “trav-o-later” which amused me. Some of the signs said “travolator”.
You show a brief shot of the entrance to the W&C line platform at 3:31. This is located in a corridor beneath the waterloo station platforms. In the morning rush hour, suited bankers would arrive here at a rate faster than the W&C line could wisk them off to the city. So in the rush hour, this area was full of bankers standing, patiently waiting to drain down the ramp and stairs and onto the platform, each time a train was loaded up with the next batch. I witnessed this in the 70s.
Hello Jago, your mention of damp and musty smells on the Waterloo & City reminded me of the description of the similar “atmosphere” experienced by passengers on the East London Line at the stations at the ends of the line under the Thames. In the item that I read it mentions perfumed air fresheners used on the trains and staff shooing (?) away the rats* from the platforms. * I don’t think that was a reference to certain passengers 🤣 . The drain reference to W&C lead me think of the slightly more amusing WC&P, the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Light Railway ( Col. Holman Fred Stephens - appointed manager in 1911. Col. Stephens died in 1931). The very last WC&P train ran on 18 May 1940.
As someone who has done promotional work at Waterloo, and stood through many a rush hour near the entrances to the platform ( particularly the entrance shown in the video at 3:31 - with the double flight staircase on one side and the ramp down on the other) I'd always assumed 'The Drain' name was based on the visual that occurs. Whilst waiting for the train to arrive, the platform, during rush hour, quickly fills up leaving commuters queuing out the door and up the staircase and ramp. Essentially looking like a sink (or toilet!) filling with water. When the train arrives the quick movement of people boarding, allowing others onto the platform, looks like water draining away down the hole when the plug has been pulled.
There used to be a musty smell at Aldgate, until the early nineties, when the station was renovated. I can also remember a musty smell coming from some of the underground tunnels that go under the Thames and at Bank, in that long corridor, they used to have, all before renovations were done.
And another thing: Water + Loo is inviting as a possibility, but the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary records the use of "loo" for the WC as mid-20th century. On another note, a Yorkshire uncle of mine used to use "closet" as a somewhat jocular synonym for "clot" or "idiot". "You closet" he would say to one of his daughters when they did something he thought foolish.
I'm honestly surprised the WC pun wasn't one of the widely adopted theories. That was the first thing my mind went to (Or at least a pun on the 'loo' part of Waterloo)
I used the line when I first started work in the City back in the 60s. I was firmly told by my elders that the “Drain” referred ONLY to the entrance subway at Bank not the train. In those days there was no big bright travelator, just this thin dark claustrophobic pipe down to the platforms, packed with people at rush hour.
Slightly off topic, but I was looking at board games involving London Transport, and I thought that "The LONDON Board Game" would be a fun thing for Jago and some fellow TH-camrs to get together and play "in real life" - for fun and to showcase the new lines and stations. If you're not familiar with the game, there's a nice brief tutorial on TH-cam (with hazard conveniently misspelt Hazzard!). The game was launched in 1972, so maybe play the game twice; once with the '72 map and the other with the modern day one.
Want odd industrial smells on an underground platform? Try Birkenhead Hamilton Square - oil, dust, and a hint of hot brakes. Pot fires are quite popular there. "The Drain" rings a bell up here also, but I can't place it. I do know that the old Platform 1 single track tunnel out of Lime Street is called The Rat Hole by drivers.
I always thought it was some combination of the WC initials, and the fact that it's uniquely twisty, going through sharp bends back and forth and up and down which always seemed to test the limits of the coupling between carriages, thus could engender the kind of nausea that one might feel from being flushed down a twisting drain... If it were built now perhaps it would be nicknamed the Flume instead.
As a child in the 1950’s I fondly 2:47 remember the quaint Southern Railway stock that used to run on the line. We always associated the name “The Drain” with the unpleasant smell of the tunnels and stations which incidentally was much stronger in those days than it is now…. and so the name has stuck with my family.
I recall my Mother telling me it was called 'The Drain' because it was dark, dirty and basically a dismal place to be. Her Father, my Grandad was a 'Southern Railway' man, but I can't recall him ever referring to it as that? Regarding the 'lift' used for the rolling stock access and egress, the one just off Baylis Road, by Spur Road was a later addition, there was a 'lift' up on the approaches to Waterloo main line station, I've seen some pictures of the lift, an Armstrong hoist apparently, it was removed to make way for the Eurostar platforms.
To which I would add: It's always been known as The Drain by commuters, possibly borrowed from the staff. Two reasons I'll give: When you approach from the main line commuter platforms, especially if you've used the centre platform steps, the feeling of going down a drain is a perfect way of describing it. You are on the move downwards for what can feel like an age at busy times, there is very little horizontal walking. Many of the passengers are in banking. "Where are you going?" "We're going down the drain." is funny, if in a dark way.
I like all the explanations. They have a certain degree of probability to them that make them quite acceptable. They should all ve considered as equitably valid. You could call that The Jago Postulum.
@@AtheistOrphan Huh! The last time I went on the W&C they were painted Southern Region green, and had ornate ventilator grilles with 'Southern' at each end of the carriage.
@@peterdean8009 - I remember those grilles Peter, and in fact planned to take a screwdriver and ‘liberate’ a pair during the stocks’ last few weeks of service (the carriages were largely empty outside of rush hour). In the end I bottled it and didn’t carry out my dastardly plan!
I recall as a nipper going with my mum into Waterloo in the 60s, we would either walk out of the station in the fresh air towards the Embankment or wherever, or we would go "down the drain" to take the train to Bank if we needed to go in that direction. Simple really. In those days through ticketing between BR/LT was not common, but we could buy a ticket all the way to Bank as it was BR.
Maybe Gareth Dennis knows of an archivist who can dig through official railway documents, to see if this was called The Drain by the railway companies that controlled it.
Just to confuse the issue, my mother, who used to travel on this line many years ago told me that it was commonly known as "The Slug". Anyone else heard that? I rode it with her once, in BR days, and I recall the trains being a dismal greeny colour. Could that have given rise to this other nickname?
Following on along the "WC" theme, there used to be a light railway that ran from Weston-super-Mare to Clevedon, and then on to Portishead - The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway. Inevitably, people would say that they were going to get on the "WC and P(ee)". The line closed in 1940.
Side note of workspace things leaking out: On the New York Subway, where I work, we call the letter lines by phonetic names Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Fox and so on… This originally was from radio communications, but it is not just how we talk amongst ourselves “I was working on the Echo last week, got stuck for an hour because of a stalled Mikey” (the M train) I constantly have to stop myself from using those names when speaking to the passengers when I’m off script.
@@hairyairey Fox is a million times more common. I almost never hear anyone call it “foxtrot” Are you really going to argue the point with someone who has actually worked the F in the last week? Where I had to ask for a “radio check 8 o’clock Fox 179 to Stillwell”
According to the British Transport Film "The Travolators", the "Drain" was the nickname for the passage down to the Waterloo and City Line platforms at Bank: a strange mix of slopes and steps in a tunnel.
1:38 - the original City and South London railway (i.e. the Northern line on its original route) opened in 1890 and passed under the Thames from Borough to King William Street, did it not?
Jago if only you had a time machine and could go back to the original station with it's long passage down the slope in dim lights at the end of the day you might have felt the chilled dam air coming up from a train entering the platform below just like walking down an oversized drain. My understanding the name was given by the passengers long before the travellator and modern lighting was installed!
You're describing the entry at Bank, and yes, I could imagine that would be true when the line was first opened. .... Which reminds me, that I have always wondered why the line stopped so far short of the entrances near the Bank of England and had the long sloping tunnels, rather that the more usual escalators, or lifts (I know today lifts would be inadequate for the passenger volumes at peak times).
Great Way Round for the GWR was only used by its detractors, to those of us who lived in the West Country and whose relatives worked on it, GWR stood for and always will stand for, God's Wonderful Railway. Most of those who worked for it, including one of my uncles and a cousin simply referred to it as 'The Company' even after it was nationalised.
The Northern line definitely passed under the river before the Waterloo & City did: the Northern was inaugurated in 1890, and the W&C in 1898. At that time, the Northern's current tunnels under the Thames were under construction, which may explain the confusion; but the tunnels to the old King William Street were in use since 1890.
The fact that thirty million litres of water has to pumped out daily is both staggering and alarming! Imagine if the system was temporarily abandoned for a month! This video was worth watching for this information alone , and the commentary was highly professional and particularly eloquent , something which is rapidly dying out in Australia! PS It is probably a good thing that the Channel Tunnel was not constructed more than a century ago as proposed, for the above mentioned reason. The East River tunnel in New York appears to be causing much concern regarding its structural integrity , for instance.
Always remembered this quirky little line, for some reason the Drain makes for a very good nickname. Wonder what other names we can give lines. Although if I remmeber correctly, didn't the City & South London Railway go under the thames first when it went to King William Street? I might be wrong, but I think that predated the W&C
Not sure if this is accurate, but in the late 1800s - when the W&C got going - the Victorian houses of many of the suburban City-workers, who came in every day on the LSWR and changed to the W&C, would have had 'new-fangled' drains which linked to a main sewer in the street outside the front gate; maybe drains and drain problems were becoming a regular topic of conversation in daily chat. Anyway, 'drain' no longer meant just a country 'field drain', but a nice clean(ish) manufactured cylindrical thing which was rapidly becoming an essential part of civilisation. So maybe the word 'drain' had acquired some nicer associations - as well as the original less pleasant ones ...
Seems reasonable, though drains at that stage were not always clean and reliable. There are a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories that refer to problems with drains, including the very first one, A Study in Scarlet of 1887; "them houses are empty because they won't have the drains seed ot even though the last man that lived there died of typhoid fever".
Dorothy L Sayers makes a remark in one of her novels -- Gaudy Night I think -- that there isn't a civilised nation that doesn't like making conversation about drains. This was in the early 1930ies.
My first impression of the W&C was "why does it pong like this, when the rest of the tube doesn't?" That said, I'll go with the workplace bantz theory.
I've always known the Waterloo and City Line as 'The Drain' and my view, for what it's worth, is that it is an affectionate commuter term given to it by the people who mostly use it, at least in pre-Pandemic days, to reach the City having travelled into Waterloo from the Surrey stockbroker belt and beyond.
I don't know when the travelator was installed at Bank station, but I do remember that, before then, the access to the platforms was a long pedestrian trudge, up or down. It looked and smelt much more like a drain than it does now, especially in the homeward rush hour, as the participants in the rat race flooded down it. Maybe the whole line got called the Drain by extension as it were.
Nicknames like this are intriguing and amusing. The Aldershot & District Traction Company, a bus company running around the Surrey/Hants border, was commonly called the 'All Aboard and Risk It!"
I stand corrected. I thought that "the drain" referred to the direct access steps from each platform (before going through the main ticket barriers) at Waterloo to the subway leading to the tube network. If you were to ask me about the W&C line in particular, the trains run through a cylindrical tunnel between two stations, mimicking a (horizontal) drain pipe. Remember, as stated in the video, this was owned independently from the other tube lines.
I always thought it was because of its purpose as a shuttle service between such a busy mainline station to the heart of the city, therefore acting as a "drain", swiftly transporting people away from work
I really like the Water Closet suggestion. It is worth remembering that when the British were looking for a cover story for their early tank production, it was suggested that they might be called Water Carriers (or Water Containers, acc. to Wikipedia). This was kiboshed when it was realised that the committee of august persons overseeing the development would be called, inevitably, the WC Committee. So, Tank. To illustrate how far digression can take on, one of the very august persons involved in early British work on AFVs was Winston Churchill (also, for the first time it strikes me, WC). When he was Head Honcho at the Admiralty, he wanted a new battleship to be named HMS Pitt, he having a strong interest in parliamentarians. It had to be pointed out to him that the jolly matelots liked to make up nicknames for HM's vessels, and they knew about rhyming slang. I now have Julie Andrews in my head, singing "The trains in Spain go mainly down the drain." I blame you. Find a suitable substitute for "Spain" and exorcise this ear-worm.
American Railroads would get initial-fitting nicknames too. One that went through my wife's hometown was a lesser-used line called the Pontiac, Oxford & Northern, which locals called the Polly Ann and workers called the Poor, Old & Neglected. Nowadays it's a multi-use pathway called the Polly Ann Trail.
I'm very happy you ask people to like your video at the end of it and not at the beginning. It annoys me to no end that many other TH-camrs do this (or worse, display a graphic showing a like, subscribe and bell).
The Waterloo and City Line started out being part of National Rail and Network Southeast before it was transferred to begin part of the London Underground. And is still the shortest deep level tube line in Central London. I’ve been on many times and I still quite like the Waterloo and City Line. Can’t see any future plans to expand it.
My dad worked in Leadenhall St, in the City, close to Bank Station. And he told me, when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s, that a wag, who used it sometime before, had, one day, in one of the Lyons Corner Houses, that were plentiful in the City in those days, had christened the line the 'drain', and it stuck. Apparently, the wag, named it so, because it was the main way to empty out the City in the evenings. And still is.
Now that I'm remembering your first video explaining the W&C, that last theory does make a bit of sense. Sure other "underground" railways existed, but not the the extent of the W&C. I think it's the only Tube line to be completely underground, stations and everything else. So for the workers that had to lower trains back down to the line after maintenance, it must've been like dropping trains down a drain
@@Inkyminkyzizwoz As all W&C rolling stock, and all maintainance materials can and are brought to the surface then even the W&C is not 100% underground. If you look carefully around London you will see large sections of roadway that can be lifted out. This is so that damaged stock can be craned out. The damaged trains after the 7 July 2005 bombings were craned out by Ainscough Crane Hire through these portals. If you include all this aditional infrastructure including ventilation then no line is entirely underground. If the service line is entirely underground then it is fair to state that the line is entirely underground. Do try and not be an annoying pedant.
A friend worked at Strawberry Hill depot and whenever his shift included trips to Bank, then he always referred to it as The Drain. Nowdays the drivers come from Leytonstone depot.
I remember back in my younger days hearing the Waterloo and City line being refered to as the; 'silver bullet'. Does anyone else recall this nickname? The 'Drain' was also used, but not as much.
I always thought it was just a play on drain sounding like train, on it being dull, and going under the Thames. The combination of those three alone had always been good enough for me. But your WC take on it has suddenly changed all of that, and it's the theory I shall be advancing if anyone asks me in future!
I remember the Somerset & Dorset line as the Smoky & Dirty. My uncle's house at Midsomer Norton backed onto the line, and it was not a good idea to hang washing out!
I understood the name came from what happens at Bank just after 5:00 pm every day. The workers come out of their offices and disappear down a hole in the ground.
Buried memory, or you think like a railman Jago. :) I first heard it called "The Drain" because WC, in the 70s, when I was was a BR Guard based at Didcot.
It's been nicknamed The Drain for as long as I can remember and it seems to be the image it portrays,a rather strange two station oddity with a good deal of its length under the river.It used to be different to the other tube lines due to its Southern Railway heritage and Bulleid designed trains which I quite liked.I presume the trains still have to be hoisted in and out at Waterloo for maintenance?
My money is on the latter, giving the propensity for nicknames on the railway. Considering the nicknames given to locomotive types and liveries as well as lines themselves then it is no surprise that workplace banter came up with 'the drain', that and the fact that drain rhymes with train! Ah, the good old days, when workplace banter was actually legal!! 😊
An old uncle of mine who used to be a London cabbie in the 50s told a story of his father who worked the railways at the turn of the 1900s and the workers used the phrase “The train in the drain” because it rhymed. Hence I like your theory too, Jago
I'm assuming it became the Drain, as compared to the rest of the journey on the LSWR from the London suburbs and further out to the City of London, this final section did feel like travelling in a drain! Incidentally the City & South London Railway was the first crossing of the Thames, with its terminus and King William Street.
I had always thought it was a combination of 'Loo as in Waterloo and WC as you suggested, normal London toilet humour, maybe. I first heard (1972) it called that by a city worker in an (my) office on Cheapside, he came in on the Drain, he said, not sure where from.
Certainly, back in the '70s (I was working at Peckham Rye at the time) it was called the "drain" even then. Colleagues maintained it was the water logged nature of the line that gave it this name.
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Here's a fun fact that wasn't mentioned: most main line rail routes have a three letter engineering code to allow people to identify them - you often see them on bridge signs, so each structure has a unique code in case of emergency. Since the Waterloo & City was a main line railway, it has its own engineering code... and that code is DRN.
Darn
As an ex British Rail/Network Rail worker. It was called the drain even before 1970s. Some manuals used the nickname aswell. Plus the drain is from the WC initals. Some said that the mens toilets were above the line. So maybe thats where the answer is.
I'd go with that. And with Pouparts Junction only minutes away and the City at the other end, it's in the bag.
WC!! Of course it is! #solved
And “Loo” is slang for a toilet…
I can remember my first ride on the 1940s units down the Drain as a schoolboy in the 1960s. It smelt like a drain; not just a bit damp here and there, even the inside of the trains smelt like a waterworks railway. The smell lingered because the line was isolated and both ends were underground - ventilation was poor. Either that or City gents back in the 1960s had very odd tastes in aftershave.
Yup W&C without the ampersand. Running from a place with loo in the name.
I could definitely imagine whichever supervisor on the South Western Railway assigned routes to the drivers telling someone, "You will be working on the drain tomorrow".
Given that the W&C is so different from the rest of the SWR region both in style and train stock, I can't help imagining that even then those who drove the route were assigned as full-time drain drivers?
skip the "on"
more like "U 'orking The Drain t'morrow son"
I first lived in London in 1968, a young kid from Canada dressed in rawhide, a jean jacket and wool checked shirt, guitar in tow. For some reason I had to get to Waterloo and took this train, at rush hour. The train was dull, dark and dirty with seats facing forwards. As I got on and tried to find a seat I passed maybe 50 gents in strange attire, bowler hats, brolly and a copy of the Telegraph or Times tucked under one arm or on top of a briefcase. They all glared at the intruder. It was a scene out of the movie Brazil. They looked askance at me and I looked back with a cocky look at all the worker drones. I loved London in those years!
I always figured on the metaphorical explanation just because, to a much greater degree than most Underground lines, it was almost exclusively a work-commute line that did huge business twice a day at rush hour and very little otherwise. Its sole function was to get City financial workers between Waterloo station and the office. At the end of the day, the drain opens and everyone rushes out. Add that to its unusually deep configuration and you have a powerful image.
And even during the rush hour it's a flood of commuters in one direction but a mere trickle in the opposite direction. I used to do that commute in reverse many years ago: hundreds of people getting off, and me and about six other people getting on.
This was my interpretation. It just drains The City of its workers come 5pm (when people only worked until 5pm).
Yes, this was my understanding too, told to me by my mother who moved to London in 1957 (and left again in 1962). I moved there in 1985 and left again in 1995 and always thought that was the "meaning" of "the drain". Also of course because it is just a single "tube" - there are no branches or intermediate stations, so the passengers just flow from one end to the other. But I must say, I do like the "WC" theory better. It just has that ring of plausibility about it.
As the certified Waterloo & City Line, we back the WC theory. It just makes the most sense to us
I agree with you, Jay. As a BR railwayman, I can tell you, The Drain got its name, because of the fact it was the LSWR's underground, and therefore unique amongst LSWR lines. I know people today associate the Waterloo & City, as just another tube line, but historically this was not so. It was a BR line sold to LT in 1992, and the name Drain predates the change of ownership.
My uncle, who worked in the City most of his career and was an Alderman of the City of London, always told me that us commuters went down it like “Rats down a drain”. I am one of those rats….
A bit of an insalubrious image there, rather like
Millions of people
Swarming like flies round
Waterloo underground.
A bit like 'You aren't stuck in traffic, you are the traffic'.
@@mattevans4377 it felt like that in peak rush hour - like the marching hammers in Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Four in line trudging down the ramps. It’s more free flowing post pandemic
@@mattevans4377 still not as serious as the Bethnal Green stampede... thankfully!
Does anyone else make a game of trying to guess what the "You are the.... to my...." line is going to be, or just me? I can't help but feel a sense of personal accomplishment if I guess it right xD
As a kid going round London for days out, I always knew it as "The Drain". My theory is just that it got it's name from being connected to Waterloo. Like a drain is connected to a 'loo'. Silly simplicity with no real reason other than 'well, why not?'
I do - so far the only one I think I've managed to get right is the one about the statue that King's Cross is named after
That's my take, as well. It's in the name: water loo.
Yes, and combine the journey from outside London, you go from the train to something that isn't a train (or part of the tube), "the drain."
I always wonder, but I have no idea what he will actually come up with until I hear it
@@DanceswithDustBunnies Yes. The water from the loo goes down the drain. Passengers from Waterloo go down the drain.
My theory was similar to one of those: that it Drains the Water from the Loo.
I was thinking the same thing
Except, gentlemen, that would have "water" travelling up to Bank.........
My late aunt worked in the City for a merchant bank in the 70s - 90s used to insist to us as kids that it was called 'The Drain' because it ran from the ''Loo to the Cesspits' that were the trading floors ( she was an early pioneer in the then very male world of merchant bank aquisition services and did not think much of her colleagues )
I have heard a similar explanation: it's the route the shits drain out of The City of London when the stock market closes.
Actually there was another line that went under the Thames around the time the Waterloo & City Line opened! The original Northern line as the City and South London Railway had a section that went under the Thames between Borough and King William Street, and this opened in 1890! However, it was short-lived due to the line's inconvenient placement and was unable to cope with the traffic, so the line closed in 1900 and a new route to Moorgate via Bank opened that year. That being said, since Waterloo is a busy regional station, I think the commuters draining into the Tube station from the National Rail station to get to Bank would also make sense behind The Drain nickname.
It’s perhaps also worth pointing out that the Thames Tunnel had a poor reputation for bad odours, until LU tried to do something about them during the late-80s/early-90s.
I really don't get why he makes these sort of mistakes. I mean, he obviously knows what's right since he'd mentioned it in like a million videos. So, maybe it just slipped his mind?
I used to commute using the W&C during the hot summer of 1976. The explanation I learned at the time was that during the evening rush commuters entering Bank station and flowing down the travelators would have looked like (from a distance!) ants being washed down a drain after rain!
As someone who was a Station Supervisor at Waterloo, staff never refer to the W&C as the drain but then again they never referred to the underground as the tube either. It did once flood when I was on duty due to a burst water main and had to be closed. The punters were used to it closing so most knew alternative routes without us telling them.
Must have been a new boy then.
To follow up on your literal drain analogy, back in the 90's when Waterloo was being spruced up for the Channel Tunnel traffic, the Waterloo and City also had a refurb, which I was involved in, I walked the tunnel many times, and right in the middle, under the river, there is a Sump room, with ancient Victorian water pumps which were still in use trying to keep the tunnel dry. The room is accessed via a very narrow opening which meant that the huge pumps were effectively walled into the tunnel and couldn't be replaced. As far as I know (retired now) they are still there.
Such pumps would have been powered by steam engines. It seems incredible to imagine coal fired boilers being maintained constantly in such a location , but the trains of the period were steam powered after all. The air would have been thick with smoke ! It is possible that the boilers were outside the tunnels and steam was brought in via asbestos lagged pipes similar to those which were once a common sight in the grounds of hospitals and other places of industry.
always made 100X more sense to make the plug at or close to the end... then the "subscribe if you liked it" part actually has meaning!
The Victoria line goes under the Thames too.
Also I wonder if the stock going to the line via the old lift lead to people seeing it and not knowing about how they were sent to/from maintenance asking where it was going to got the comic answer "It's going down the drain."
Meanwhile the 7 (IRT Flushing Line) in NYC is called the International Express! This is because of two reasons. One is because of all the ethnic neighborhoods it goes through in the borough of Queens, especially along Roosevelt Ave. Queens is pretty much the Rosetta Stone of America, because this small area has up to 200 languages from Filipino to Uyghur, Danish, and Jamaican Patois! The other reason why is because it was the route people took to the NY World's Fair (both in 1939 and 1964)! The line was designated a National Millennium Trail (trails that reflect aspects of the country's history and culture) in June 1999 for its role in distributing large groups of immigrants in the early 1900s.
NYC itself has many nicknames from Gotham (which it didn't get from Batman but rather by Washington Irving in his 1807 Salmagundi and the term itself comes from medieval England for "homestead where goats are kept") to The City that Never Sleeps (which first came from a Fort Wayne news article in 1912).
“The drain” is certainly something that overground rail workers would use to describe the Waterloo & City line. The avoider lines that go through tunnels at Crewe are called “The hole” or mucky hole
Hi Jago from Spain where it is a pleasant 22°. My first usage of the line goes back to 1966 when I was in the RAF. The place where I was stationed was miserable so I took every opportunity to get away from it at weekends and used to drive a minivan taking Priority 1 radio items to other RAF bases. I would stay from Friday evening until Sunday morning at the Union Jack Club, near Waterloo. To get to other places I would take the drain to Bank and go elsewhere from there.
I see they still spell the flat escalator thing “travolator”. I remember travelling on it in the mid-90s and the sign used to say “trav-o-later” which amused me. Some of the signs said “travolator”.
I believe it was a brand name (like a Hoover)
You show a brief shot of the entrance to the W&C line platform at 3:31. This is located in a corridor beneath the waterloo station platforms. In the morning rush hour, suited bankers would arrive here at a rate faster than the W&C line could wisk them off to the city. So in the rush hour, this area was full of bankers standing, patiently waiting to drain down the ramp and stairs and onto the platform, each time a train was loaded up with the next batch. I witnessed this in the 70s.
Hello Jago, your mention of damp and musty smells on the Waterloo & City reminded me of the description of the similar “atmosphere” experienced by passengers on the East London Line at the stations at the ends of the line under the Thames. In the item that I read it mentions perfumed air fresheners used on the trains and staff shooing (?) away the rats* from the platforms. * I don’t think that was a reference to certain passengers 🤣 .
The drain reference to W&C lead me think of the slightly more amusing WC&P, the Weston, Clevedon & Portishead Light Railway ( Col. Holman Fred Stephens - appointed manager in 1911. Col. Stephens died in 1931). The very last WC&P train ran on 18 May 1940.
As someone who has done promotional work at Waterloo, and stood through many a rush hour near the entrances to the platform ( particularly the entrance shown in the video at 3:31 - with the double flight staircase on one side and the ramp down on the other) I'd always assumed 'The Drain' name was based on the visual that occurs.
Whilst waiting for the train to arrive, the platform, during rush hour, quickly fills up leaving commuters queuing out the door and up the staircase and ramp. Essentially looking like a sink (or toilet!) filling with water. When the train arrives the quick movement of people boarding, allowing others onto the platform, looks like water draining away down the hole when the plug has been pulled.
There used to be a musty smell at Aldgate, until the early nineties, when the station was renovated. I can also remember a musty smell coming from some of the underground tunnels that go under the Thames and at Bank, in that long corridor, they used to have, all before renovations were done.
And another thing: Water + Loo is inviting as a possibility, but the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary records the use of "loo" for the WC as mid-20th century. On another note, a Yorkshire uncle of mine used to use "closet" as a somewhat jocular synonym for "clot" or "idiot". "You closet" he would say to one of his daughters when they did something he thought foolish.
An underground pipe connected to the 'Loo...
I really prefer this idea to the hand-me-down theory I was given about us being rats down a drain!!
I'm honestly surprised the WC pun wasn't one of the widely adopted theories. That was the first thing my mind went to (Or at least a pun on the 'loo' part of Waterloo)
I'd say this theory, ahem... Holds the most water... ahem.
1:48 What about the CSLR? Harrumph!
Was gonna say!
A chthonic burrow! Fie upon’t!
@@JagoHazzard I suppose you'd have to call the W&C a chthonic irrigation...
Hey it’s Jay Foreman. Hi Jay.
When the line was owned by LSWR then British Railways, the drivers that operated it always referred to it as the ‘Rat Hole’.
I used the line when I first started work in the City back in the 60s. I was firmly told by my elders that the “Drain” referred ONLY to the entrance subway at Bank not the train. In those days there was no big bright travelator, just this thin dark claustrophobic pipe down to the platforms, packed with people at rush hour.
Slightly off topic, but I was looking at board games involving London Transport, and I thought that "The LONDON Board Game" would be a fun thing for Jago and some fellow TH-camrs to get together and play "in real life" - for fun and to showcase the new lines and stations. If you're not familiar with the game, there's a nice brief tutorial on TH-cam (with hazard conveniently misspelt Hazzard!). The game was launched in 1972, so maybe play the game twice; once with the '72 map and the other with the modern day one.
Flushed with success, Jago presents another video 😁
Want odd industrial smells on an underground platform? Try Birkenhead Hamilton Square - oil, dust, and a hint of hot brakes. Pot fires are quite popular there.
"The Drain" rings a bell up here also, but I can't place it. I do know that the old Platform 1 single track tunnel out of Lime Street is called The Rat Hole by drivers.
3:23 Funny how the WC Idea came out of your head. Curiouser and Curiouser.
I always thought it was some combination of the WC initials, and the fact that it's uniquely twisty, going through sharp bends back and forth and up and down which always seemed to test the limits of the coupling between carriages, thus could engender the kind of nausea that one might feel from being flushed down a twisting drain... If it were built now perhaps it would be nicknamed the Flume instead.
As someone who grew up in the era of "Carry On Films" I like the Toilet Humor Theory. Afterall where else can you spend a penny!
There was the "tuppenny tube" so presumably they let you go twice? 🤔
As a child in the 1950’s I fondly 2:47 remember the quaint Southern Railway stock that used to run on the line. We always associated the name “The Drain” with the unpleasant smell of the tunnels and stations which incidentally was much stronger in those days than it is now…. and so the name has stuck with my family.
I recall my Mother telling me it was called 'The Drain' because it was dark, dirty and basically a dismal place to be. Her Father, my Grandad was a 'Southern Railway' man, but I can't recall him ever referring to it as that?
Regarding the 'lift' used for the rolling stock access and egress, the one just off Baylis Road, by Spur Road was a later addition, there was a 'lift' up on the approaches to Waterloo main line station, I've seen some pictures of the lift, an Armstrong hoist apparently, it was removed to make way for the Eurostar platforms.
To which I would add:
It's always been known as The Drain by commuters, possibly borrowed from the staff.
Two reasons I'll give:
When you approach from the main line commuter platforms, especially if you've used the centre platform steps, the feeling of going down a drain is a perfect way of describing it. You are on the move downwards for what can feel like an age at busy times, there is very little horizontal walking.
Many of the passengers are in banking. "Where are you going?" "We're going down the drain." is funny, if in a dark way.
I like all the explanations. They have a certain degree of probability to them that make them quite acceptable. They should all ve considered as equitably valid. You could call that The Jago Postulum.
I loved your last shot of the platform with its NSE logos still intact some 29 years after handover to LT.
I used to love the old stock on the Drain
Same here. Last time I traveled on this line the stock was painted BR blue.
@@AtheistOrphan Huh! The last time I went on the W&C they were painted Southern Region green, and had ornate ventilator grilles with 'Southern' at each end of the carriage.
@@peterdean8009 - I remember those grilles Peter, and in fact planned to take a screwdriver and ‘liberate’ a pair during the stocks’ last few weeks of service (the carriages were largely empty outside of rush hour). In the end I bottled it and didn’t carry out my dastardly plan!
I recall as a nipper going with my mum into Waterloo in the 60s, we would either walk out of the station in the fresh air towards the Embankment or wherever, or we would go "down the drain" to take the train to Bank if we needed to go in that direction. Simple really. In those days through ticketing between BR/LT was not common, but we could buy a ticket all the way to Bank as it was BR.
Great video thanks Jago
Have always called it that but never known why, very easy to get bogged down with such nicknames I suppose
Maybe Gareth Dennis knows of an archivist who can dig through official railway documents, to see if this was called The Drain by the railway companies that controlled it.
'irony' like that (about names) is worth gold. I laughed out loud, and went back to listen to it again! Keep it up.
Jago. I find your posts very comforting, interesting and enjoyable. Thank you.
Just to confuse the issue, my mother, who used to travel on this line many years ago told me that it was commonly known as "The Slug". Anyone else heard that?
I rode it with her once, in BR days, and I recall the trains being a dismal greeny colour. Could that have given rise to this other nickname?
Following on along the "WC" theme, there used to be a light railway that ran from Weston-super-Mare to Clevedon, and then on to Portishead - The Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway.
Inevitably, people would say that they were going to get on the "WC and P(ee)".
The line closed in 1940.
Side note of workspace things leaking out:
On the New York Subway, where I work, we call the letter lines by phonetic names
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Fox and so on…
This originally was from radio communications, but it is not just how we talk amongst ourselves “I was working on the Echo last week, got stuck for an hour because of a stalled Mikey” (the M train)
I constantly have to stop myself from using those names when speaking to the passengers when I’m off script.
Gesundheit
Foxtrot not Fox
@@hairyairey Fox is a million times more common. I almost never hear anyone call it “foxtrot” Are you really going to argue the point with someone who has actually worked the F in the last week? Where I had to ask for a “radio check 8 o’clock Fox 179 to Stillwell”
@@metropod Foxtrot is the NATO standard.
@@hairyairey we don’t use NATO standard. We use whatever we feel like. N is often Nancy instead of November and Q is often Quincy instead of Quebec.
According to the British Transport Film "The Travolators", the "Drain" was the nickname for the passage down to the Waterloo and City Line platforms at Bank: a strange mix of slopes and steps in a tunnel.
1:38 - the original City and South London railway (i.e. the Northern line on its original route) opened in 1890 and passed under the Thames from Borough to King William Street, did it not?
Jago if only you had a time machine and could go back to the original station with it's long passage down the slope in dim lights at the end of the day you might have felt the chilled dam air coming up from a train entering the platform below just like walking down an oversized drain. My understanding the name was given by the passengers long before the travellator and modern lighting was installed!
You're describing the entry at Bank, and yes, I could imagine that would be true when the line was first opened. .... Which reminds me, that I have always wondered why the line stopped so far short of the entrances near the Bank of England and had the long sloping tunnels, rather that the more usual escalators, or lifts (I know today lifts would be inadequate for the passenger volumes at peak times).
Great Way Round for the GWR was only used by its detractors, to those of us who lived in the West Country and whose relatives worked on it, GWR stood for and always will stand for, God's Wonderful Railway. Most of those who worked for it, including one of my uncles and a cousin simply referred to it as 'The Company' even after it was nationalised.
Real detractors would be tempted to call the GWR the Green Wet and Rusty....
@@18robsmith or Gas Works Railway
I've heard "Go When Ready." could be taken either way really.
I always thought it was simply that it drained commuters from Waterloo onwards to the City. But I might be wrong.
I heard that the nickname came from the way it drained trains arriving at Waterloo both in terms of ridership and in terms of descent into the tunnel.
The Northern line definitely passed under the river before the Waterloo & City did: the Northern was inaugurated in 1890, and the W&C in 1898. At that time, the Northern's current tunnels under the Thames were under construction, which may explain the confusion; but the tunnels to the old King William Street were in use since 1890.
The fact that thirty million litres of water has to pumped out daily is both staggering and alarming! Imagine if the system was temporarily abandoned for a month! This video was worth watching for this information alone , and the commentary was highly professional and particularly eloquent , something which is rapidly dying out in Australia! PS It is probably a good thing that the Channel Tunnel was not constructed more than a century ago as proposed, for the above mentioned reason. The East River tunnel in New York appears to be causing much concern regarding its structural integrity , for instance.
Always remembered this quirky little line, for some reason the Drain makes for a very good nickname. Wonder what other names we can give lines.
Although if I remmeber correctly, didn't the City & South London Railway go under the thames first when it went to King William Street? I might be wrong, but I think that predated the W&C
Not sure if this is accurate, but in the late 1800s - when the W&C got going - the Victorian houses of many of the suburban City-workers, who came in every day on the LSWR and changed to the W&C, would have had 'new-fangled' drains which linked to a main sewer in the street outside the front gate; maybe drains and drain problems were becoming a regular topic of conversation in daily chat. Anyway, 'drain' no longer meant just a country 'field drain', but a nice clean(ish) manufactured cylindrical thing which was rapidly becoming an essential part of civilisation. So maybe the word 'drain' had acquired some nicer associations - as well as the original less pleasant ones ...
Seems reasonable, though drains at that stage were not always clean and reliable. There are a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories that refer to problems with drains, including the very first one, A Study in Scarlet of 1887; "them houses are empty because they won't have the drains seed ot even though the last man that lived there died of typhoid fever".
Dorothy L Sayers makes a remark in one of her novels -- Gaudy Night I think -- that there isn't a civilised nation that doesn't like making conversation about drains. This was in the early 1930ies.
My first impression of the W&C was "why does it pong like this, when the rest of the tube doesn't?"
That said, I'll go with the workplace bantz theory.
Back in the 60s we called it the Drain, mainly because it smelt like a drain. It was also not part of the Tube.
I've always known the Waterloo and City Line as 'The Drain' and my view, for what it's worth, is that it is an affectionate commuter term given to it by the people who mostly use it, at least in pre-Pandemic days, to reach the City having travelled into Waterloo from the Surrey stockbroker belt and beyond.
I don't know when the travelator was installed at Bank station, but I do remember that, before then, the access to the platforms was a long pedestrian trudge, up or down. It looked and smelt much more like a drain than it does now, especially in the homeward rush hour, as the participants in the rat race flooded down it. Maybe the whole line got called the Drain by extension as it were.
Always thought it was the route it takes that ‘looks like a drain’ gave it its name.
Nicknames like this are intriguing and amusing. The Aldershot & District Traction Company, a bus company running around the Surrey/Hants border, was commonly called the 'All Aboard and Risk It!"
Mr Hazzard, with these two for ones you are really spoiling us!
I stand corrected. I thought that "the drain" referred to the direct access steps from each platform (before going through the main ticket barriers) at Waterloo to the subway leading to the tube network.
If you were to ask me about the W&C line in particular, the trains run through a cylindrical tunnel between two stations, mimicking a (horizontal) drain pipe. Remember, as stated in the video, this was owned independently from the other tube lines.
I always thought it was because of its purpose as a shuttle service between such a busy mainline station to the heart of the city, therefore acting as a "drain", swiftly transporting people away from work
The theory you used for the name drain is the only one I have heard of from other sources, so I'll go with that too!
Suggestion for naming the Series of Station names: ‘The Name Game’.
Keep uploading. 👍🏻🇬🇧👀...
I really like the Water Closet suggestion. It is worth remembering that when the British were looking for a cover story for their early tank production, it was suggested that they might be called Water Carriers (or Water Containers, acc. to Wikipedia). This was kiboshed when it was realised that the committee of august persons overseeing the development would be called, inevitably, the WC Committee. So, Tank. To illustrate how far digression can take on, one of the very august persons involved in early British work on AFVs was Winston Churchill (also, for the first time it strikes me, WC). When he was Head Honcho at the Admiralty, he wanted a new battleship to be named HMS Pitt, he having a strong interest in parliamentarians. It had to be pointed out to him that the jolly matelots liked to make up nicknames for HM's vessels, and they knew about rhyming slang.
I now have Julie Andrews in my head, singing "The trains in Spain go mainly down the drain." I blame you. Find a suitable substitute for "Spain" and exorcise this ear-worm.
American Railroads would get initial-fitting nicknames too. One that went through my wife's hometown was a lesser-used line called the Pontiac, Oxford & Northern, which locals called the Polly Ann and workers called the Poor, Old & Neglected. Nowadays it's a multi-use pathway called the Polly Ann Trail.
I'm very happy you ask people to like your video at the end of it and not at the beginning. It annoys me to no end that many other TH-camrs do this (or worse, display a graphic showing a like, subscribe and bell).
The Waterloo and City Line started out being part of National Rail and Network Southeast before it was transferred to begin part of the London Underground.
And is still the shortest deep level tube line in Central London. I’ve been on many times and I still quite like the Waterloo and City Line. Can’t see any future plans to expand it.
My dad worked in Leadenhall St, in the City, close to Bank Station.
And he told me, when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s, that a wag, who used it sometime before, had, one day, in one of the Lyons Corner Houses, that were plentiful in the City in those days, had christened the line the 'drain', and it stuck.
Apparently, the wag, named it so, because it was the main way to empty out the City in the evenings.
And still is.
Now that I'm remembering your first video explaining the W&C, that last theory does make a bit of sense. Sure other "underground" railways existed, but not the the extent of the W&C. I think it's the only Tube line to be completely underground, stations and everything else. So for the workers that had to lower trains back down to the line after maintenance, it must've been like dropping trains down a drain
Victoria Line is the other completely underground line. Every other line on the network has surface sections.
@@Levermonkey The Victoria Line depot is open air
@@Inkyminkyzizwoz Can a fare paying member of the public get on or alight at that depot? No, my comment stands.
@@Levermonkey But the original comment said 'stations and everything else', so your comment doesn't stand!
@@Inkyminkyzizwoz As all W&C rolling stock, and all maintainance materials can and are brought to the surface then even the W&C is not 100% underground. If you look carefully around London you will see large sections of roadway that can be lifted out. This is so that damaged stock can be craned out. The damaged trains after the 7 July 2005 bombings were craned out by Ainscough Crane Hire through these portals. If you include all this aditional infrastructure including ventilation then no line is entirely underground.
If the service line is entirely underground then it is fair to state that the line is entirely underground. Do try and not be an annoying pedant.
I spent some time working on the tube in the noughties, There I heard the Hammersmith & City referred to as the Hot & Cold
A friend worked at Strawberry Hill depot and whenever his shift included trips to Bank, then he always referred to it as The Drain. Nowdays the drivers come from Leytonstone depot.
I remember back in my younger days hearing the Waterloo and City line being refered to as the; 'silver bullet'. Does anyone else recall this nickname? The 'Drain' was also used, but not as much.
Trains to London are the Up Train, as in going up to London. Away from London is the Down Train. Spoonerise this and you get the Town Drain. Relevant?
I always thought it was just a play on drain sounding like train, on it being dull, and going under the Thames. The combination of those three alone had always been good enough for me.
But your WC take on it has suddenly changed all of that, and it's the theory I shall be advancing if anyone asks me in future!
I remember the Somerset & Dorset line as the Smoky & Dirty. My uncle's house at Midsomer Norton backed onto the line, and it was not a good idea to hang washing out!
I understood the name came from what happens at Bank just after 5:00 pm every day. The workers come out of their offices and disappear down a hole in the ground.
Buried memory, or you think like a railman Jago. :)
I first heard it called "The Drain" because WC, in the 70s, when I was was a BR Guard based at Didcot.
It's been nicknamed The Drain for as long as I can remember and it seems to be the image it portrays,a rather strange two station oddity with a good deal of its length under the river.It used to be different to the other tube lines due to its Southern Railway heritage and Bulleid designed trains which I quite liked.I presume the trains still have to be hoisted in and out at Waterloo for maintenance?
Nope, well, every time I use that line, a little bit of my soul is drained away
After a long day in the city everyone goes to the line that flushes them out of the city. The Water Loo.
So it's not named after some obscure Victorian developer with a name like Percival Drain then?!
My money is on the latter, giving the propensity for nicknames on the railway. Considering the nicknames given to locomotive types and liveries as well as lines themselves then it is no surprise that workplace banter came up with 'the drain', that and the fact that drain rhymes with train!
Ah, the good old days, when workplace banter was actually legal!! 😊
An old uncle of mine who used to be a London cabbie in the 50s told a story of his father who worked the railways at the turn of the 1900s and the workers used the phrase “The train in the drain” because it rhymed. Hence I like your theory too, Jago
Years ago we made up a list of tunes that related to each line. The Waterloo and City is shown on my 1949 London Transport map
I'm assuming it became the Drain, as compared to the rest of the journey on the LSWR from the London suburbs and further out to the City of London, this final section did feel like travelling in a drain! Incidentally the City & South London Railway was the first crossing of the Thames, with its terminus and King William Street.
I had always thought it was a combination of 'Loo as in Waterloo and WC as you suggested, normal London toilet humour, maybe.
I first heard (1972) it called that by a city worker in an (my) office on Cheapside, he came in on the Drain, he said, not sure where from.
Jago Hazzard, asking questions about the London Underground you never thought about since 2019.
When you said about not deciding what you could call 'Explain the name' I immediately thought of the not-exactly-catchy 'ety-mole-ogy'.
Never ever disappointing is the enigma that's called Jago Hazzard !
Certainly, back in the '70s (I was working at Peckham Rye at the time) it was called the "drain" even then. Colleagues maintained it was the water logged nature of the line that gave it this name.