How the Underground Came Together (Part 1)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2024
- So there used to be all these different railways, right? And they were all underground, right? But they weren’t the Underground, right? So let’s look at how they actually went from being underground to being Underground.
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So, in a nutshell, we owe our Capital's public transport system to a shifty American with an impressive moustache.
Including (but a different one) the start of the old tram network.
Selfridges as well!
@@atuljhaveri3377 With the added bonus of a fine pair of mutton chops in his younger days!
To be fair to the moustache such facial appendages were the norm by that time. In fact in the British Army soldier were actively encourage to grow a moustache.
@@bigblue6917 Perhaps, as a topic, 'Victorian facial hair, style and variaton and how it shaped the modern transport revolution' would be a catchy title for a video!
i love a good underground tale while eating my breakfast, it's a good start to the day...
Yup, same here.
Same.
Interesting at bedtime too.
Me too. I love trains.
I feel so stupid for not realising until now that Bakerloo stands for Baker Street and Waterloo line.
You are not alone there....
Bakerloo
Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Bakerloo
Knowing my fate is to be with you
Oh, oh, oh, oh, Bakerloo
Finally facing my Bakerloo
Sorry couldn't resist my self
I'm the same. And it's not helped by the fact that there's a Peterloo in Manchester. And there's no Peter and Waterloo line.
It was a toss up between calling it that or "The Strewater Line". :P :D
@@bigblue6917 that's where Peter goes to the Loo with his Dinklage then.
Hehehe
The myriad of tunnels beneath London amazes me. It must be like a swiss cheese down there. How on earth do they map it all out and not end up tunnelling straight through things like water mains, electrical supplies, sewer tunnels, other railways and suchlike. There must have been incidents in the past where this has (or nearly) happened !! Brilliant vid as always Jago. Looking forward to episode 2.
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These 2 are fascinating on how they did some of the line - Especially around OXFORD CIRCUS
Short answer is basically that they don't really know. Every time anything needs to be modified, someone needs to research who owns what land and what might be under it. Things are getting better but historically it just wasn't recorded, or at least not in an accessible fashion. London Reconnections has an article on this this week: www.londonreconnections.com/2021/covenants-easements-wayleaves-transport-asset-interface-register-part-2/
From part 1 of that article: In 2013, a developer building a new skyscraper drilled a hole through the Great Northern & City tunnel near Old Street. They had failed to check with Network Rail (who now own that bit) whether there was anything down there. They had planned to drive piles as far down as 9 metres below the GN&C tunnel. They narrowly missed a train.
@@allwaizeright9705 Good links to two excellent documentaries on the construction of the Victoria Line. Thanks for sharing these.👍
Actually Paris is even worse than London in this regard as big parts of the city are covered in abandoned underground quarries. A lot of people don't know that when travelling on the metro or RER sometimes the tunnel they're traveling in is actually floating inside a huge underground cave. As you would expect, building underground tunnels in these had its challenges. If not too big, the caves would be filled in with concrete when tunneling through these.
Heading for 100K subs! I've been watching since it was in the low thousands and it's great to see how the channel's grown. Well deserved.
Thanks!
You never disappoint, chap!
Fun Fact:
The District Line, which for part of its route more or less hugs the north bank of the Thames, was initially constructed around the same time as Joseph Bazalgette's great London sewer building program.
Part of its route is contained within the Victoria Embankment which it shares with the Northern Outfall Sewer, a nifty (or nifty) piece of dual use design.
4:50 - with a moustache like that, he ain't messing about.
Last time I was this early the... trains were... on time or something.
This is a very poor joke. I apologise, the pressure to get in first for uber nerd points got to me.
Wow ! You must be incredibly old !
I've been to London just once, almost 20 years ago, and the thing I remember most was the tube. I recall it didn't make any sense to me - all trains were different, all tunnels looked different, all looked so old and disconnected... now it all makes much more sense, thanks!
btw: Paris tube gave me the same impression - different styles, different trains, looooong narrow tunnels connecting platforms...
"I am not going to drown you in information"
:(
The video was great anyway :)
Note Marc Brunel's Tunnel was originally a toll tunnel for horse drawn traffic, then a foot tunnel. Rather a lot of foresight on Marc's part to build it large enough for railway locomotives and carriages.
Given the height of a fully enclosed carriage and driver, its proportions make sense. Shame they never provided the means of access for this to happen. But the best laid plans...
I find it amazing that, not only were they attempting the unprecedented feat of a tunnel under a large river, but that they chose to build two adjacent (but linked) tunnels, rather than a man-sized single bore with passing places. All of that despite the infancy of the technology. Truly a grandiose scheme.
@@cargy930 Reading something today (A History of Stepney (the place) I didnt know there were stoneways - additional, presumably hardened stonework in roads with a greater longitudinal length than the stone setts normally used. These were for carriages being space normal cart width apart. in the roadway. I assume it was to cope with the extra weight of laden (with frieght or people) hackneys, wagons and so on.
@@highpath4776 You just know that, just like today's bloody-minded drivers, there will have been a proportion of wagon drivers who thought they were better than everyone else and decided they should ignore the the stoneways, causing damage to the setts each side as a result. Probably! Or I've been watching too many dashcam videos!
@@cargy930 The horses had more sense
The first Thames tunnel would make a great topic for a video, if Jago hasn't already done it without me noticing.
This presentation cries out for more maps that show the lines and expansions as the narration is taking place. We do get four quick maps, but the relevance to the narration isn't always clear.
That, please, Jago
I've known pretty much all this stuff for ages (I'm old enough to have travelled on Standard Tube stock and vaguely remember doing so back in the 1960s), but having Jago tell us all over again along with his dry humorous quips makes it so much more interesting! Cheers, Jago!
Ok, I really was expecting "To be continued..." trailing text at the end... with "sorry... but you knew it was coming as this is part 1 after all" underneath.
What a superb video - even my beloved East London line got a mention. 😀👍
The chaotic free-for-all that preceeded the LU is the perfect metaphor for England - first to try something, make a pigs ear of it, but stick with it out of obstinacy/spite !!
I love seeing Brompton Road, Down Street, South Kentish Town, York Road and City Road on those old maps. Bring em back!
Fantastic start Jago cannot wait for Part 2
Fascinating, love this series already.
2:51 What? No men posing?
Oh no wait.... just the driver and fireman.
As always, informative and interesting. One of the reasons I subscribed when I found you and I'm so pleased that this is a multi-parter!
You never fail to provide quality content ... eagerly anticipating part 2!
I enjoy all your videos, especially Tales from the Tube. Being from USA I have only been on Picadilly, Metropolitan, and maybe Circle. Hope to come back - when we can - when things are better for everybody
In a way the Tokyo metro system is still a bunch of municipal lines,private lines,metro lines,
first time i visited in 2008 you needed to buy separate tickets for each,now they have some form of travelcard
That was how what we see now as unified networks like London Underground were before,a disparate colection of lines
The problem is that the different companies have their own tub maps in Tokyo and don’t like to show competitors on their map. Two stations on a map could actually be 10 and something that look far could be a huge shortcut if you take an other line.Tokyo metro is pretty difficult but on the upside, some of the best English speaking persons I meet in Tokyo was people in way out metro stations. There is a brand new JP Japan railway museum quite far out in a Tokyo suburb very interesting but no information what so ever in English or any of the languages of their neighbouring countries like Russia, China or Korea.
@@bokhans Thats right,lately it has become easier,but still there are lots private rail lines off the Tokyo Metro and Toei municipal lines that branch out to the suburbs,some of them built by real state developers to give their customers a conection to Tokyo,some with outlandish names and train designs,really interesting,Japan is endlessly bizarre and not just railwise
@@kavorkaa thats why I as a Scandinavian like it so much. My plan was to go back for my third time in 2020 but that didn’t work by know reasons. I was also thinking of being a volunteer at the olympics, I don’t think that will happen either! 😞
2022 is my best right now.
@@bokhans Isn't that true of all of Japan? Most of the rail lines are run by JR, but there's still a lot of private lines throughout the country, some of them pretty long.
So right. The whole set up is a mess and very confusing. Let’s hope one day it comes under an umbrella simuliert to the LU.
Geoff Marshall's animations show some of this visually, sometimes line by line.
great video. Thank you very much and I look forward to part two.
Brilliant!!!! Thank you Jago, well worth the wait.😸😸😸🚂🚂🚃🚃🚃
Appreciate all the time and effort taken to make this series
Thanks for this, looking forward to part 2.
Brilliant video as always Jago :)
Lot of information , very interesting going to see part 2!
Great video and looking forward to part 2
Excellent, very interesting, starting by for part 2
Great video jago, amazing London underground history, love it👌👍😀
Very interesting! Looking forward to part 2 & 3. These keep me going as I can't wait to visit London (when appropriate) and travel on the underground. Thank you. x
Great video! Can't wait for p2
Excellent as ever! And a top cliffhanger to keep us keen for Pt.2 (as if I wasn’t going to watch at my earliest convenience...)
"I'm going to simplify a bit so I don't drown you in information." Why? We love information! It's why we come to your channel. ;)
Great video once again.
Fascinating. Looking forward to part two.
Don’t expect there will be a ‘The story so far’.
Amazing entertainment - and now, serials with cliff-hangers. Of a sort. Jago, this is good stuff!
Thank you! This is starting to make sense! In all the time I virtually grew up on the underground, I never wondered about the creation of it. I assumed it was all done with our best interests and just magically appeared as one harmonious entity!
Love it Mr Hazard, can't wait for part 2 😎
Very interesting, looking forward to the next vid.
Can't wait for part 2!
Another cracking video sir!
Very interesting, looking forward to the other two in the series.
I enjoyed this very much. Most of the names however, went flying by like a train passing through a station without stopping, but I got the overall story. Metropolitan and District, District and Metropolitan, District, Metropolitan, Waterloo, Baker Street becomes Bakerloo, The Great Eastern, Western, Southern, Northern something or other, merges with the Whatitsname to become the Great East-West Metropolitan Southern District Underground something...(my brain hurts). I'm sure someone like Geoff Marshall has drawn a Tube style flowchart map of all this.
It all sounds like a Monty Python sketch or that old joke about trying to explain the rules of Cricket to an American (when they are in and then out so they go in and the next one goes out and is then in...)
Highgate, Moorgate, Aldgate, Shoreditch. Brompton, City, York Road, Elephant, Kings Cross, Queensway, Royal Oak, Ealing, (Common) , MORNINGINTON CRESCENT.
"Buy up old junk, fix it up a little, and then load it on other fellows."
Private equity, then. ;)
Wonderful, I'm hooked on every episode
" Bal ham, gateway to the South"! A great starting point Jago and an an informative and interesting Video Thanks.
Really well compiled narrative and pics -- I anticipate the next with relish (Piccalilli and Piccadilly).
Great Video! Thank You!
What I find fascinating is the extent to which the London Underground began as a link to help people traveling between other cities avoid London's streets, and to allow people arriving from London terminals access other, more dense parts of London. Intracity transportation seems to have been an afterthought for the first several decades.
Loving the videos
Very informative and enjoyable
And of course you leave us on a cliffhanger! - Can't wait for the rest of the story.
You remind me of an Adam Hart-Davis documentary I'd watch as a kid mixed with a bit of Discovery Megastructures. Nostalgically informative
Very very interesting, looking forward to more ;) and part 2
i havent even watched first yet :D
Preemptive like. I’m sure I won’t regret it.
+1
Ends with a cliff hanger! Just how does it end up? Subscribe to the channel to catch Part 2!
I like the Underground mosaic, that’s pretty cool.
Nobody but Jago could sum up so much history so succinctly. Very well done!
Many comments could be made, but at 7:20...what on earth...thousands of years of human philosophy summed up so pithily aside Frank Pick's name in a roundel, the most iconic corporate logo of all time? Quite amazing. (Research reveals that it's an art installation at Piccadilly Circus.)
Jago mentioned the Frank Pick dedication in another video and it is, indeed, in Picadilly Circus station.
I’d love a half hour long complete history. I’m sure a few others would too but I understand the algorithm wouldn’t be very happy with that length of video.
Anyway, always interesting and informative. Keep up the good work fella and stay safe.
Interesting fact, because the line to Moorgate is a railway line (when strictly speaking like crossrail and parts of the overground it's an underground line) a ticket from Peterborough to "London terminals" is valid, by changing at Finsbury Park. Easier and cheaper than getting the underground, although not always quicker (it's about a 15 minute service most of the time).
This video got me thinking.
Since the origins of the underground were not planned to be cohesive ,but competitive, what might the system have looked like if it had been planned from the beginning as one entity.
I think that would be impossible to say as the London we know today is BECAUSE of the underground. Development especially in the suburbs tended to come after the lines were built, Metroland being a very good example.
So it seems to me that the unplanned chaos that is London underground had a big hand in shaping the London we know today.Had the underground been planned from the start
(which I of course realise that given it's origins of many different companies and the many years apart the lines were built from each other that this would be a ridiculous hypothesis)London would have looked very different.
London above ground (in Z1-5 at least) had been part determined by the Omnibus Network (and indeed the short stage carriages and mail coaches ) in the victorian era and the turnpike roads. then expanded on the horse and later tram systems. Also other above ground railways pre-dated the underground ones . A proper plan might have seen the Piccadilly go south , and the bakerloo beyond elephant , and better ways to serve Sutton in Surrey. And that actual Great Central route through to a proper channel tunnel .
@@highpath4776 Central line from Stratford to Epping was originally GER. You can still see many of the stations still have a lot of the original architecture. Became part of the tube 1935-40. Leytonstone became the junction of the Loughton Epping Ongar line with the construction of the Newbury Park loop. Central isn't the only line to have incorporated suburban railways either.
@@Peasmouldia Spoiler for Part Two !!!
Thanks for this video. Im hoping to attempt the famous Tube Challenge as soon as the lockdown is over. I found out about it thanks to Geoff Marshall.
And as soon as the Northern Line extension opens?
@@mastertrams Would it be a new record whatever the time to complete it (It has to be done within day - not past 235959 of the day of starting I think to qualify
Dont forget part of it is the need to run or other public transport between some stations, two records with, and without, olympia. take a couple of mobiles connected to real time information with the need to work out when the LT&SR route is quicker outbound or inbound for the fast retrace steps section/s
Good luck, but wait until the Northern Line extension to Battersea opens in the autumn - otherwise any timing you achieve will be irrelevant to the enlarged network.
A shot every time Jago says “Railway”
You're gonna endt op in the hospital
@@mr.superguy565 no death
Since Jago is not only talking about the infrastructure, but also the companies involved, by necessity, "railway" comes up often. The question is, can you last the duration of the video?
I always preferred the cut and cover lines. I'd change at Mile End from the Central line just to be on a more "proper" and far less packed train. Deep lines were quicker, but way more claustrophobic.
Thanks JH.
P.S. Don't worry about bombarding us with info, that's why we're watching..
Excellent video, Jago. Without being uncharitable, I think we can say that the London Underground was not so much built as "congealed".
Fascinating.
Thank-you that was very interesting.
Amazing, thanks.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you!
It doesn't matter how long a youtube video is, people will still watch it if interested in the particular topic. More people need to like this channel :)
Yerkes stiry starts here....great stuff Jago
Same Tube Channel, Same Tube Time for next enthralling instalment.
looking forward to that second episode!!!
It’s coming this Sunday, and features pirates!
@@JagoHazzard can’t wait! always good when pirates are involved
So not just the beginning of the Underground as we know it, but with buying up bus and tram operators, possibly an ancestral prototype for TfL (which has also added light rail, surface heavy rail [Overground - although I'm disappointed Overground services haven't joined Underground services in the vicinity of a very tidy South West London common!] and even a cable car [!] to its remit).
Well, that was dense. By which I mean as packed as the Victoria Line at 1600hrs.
I recall reading a book by Jean-Paul Satre where the concepts came ten to a sentence. It seemed that ideas were piled on each other in a tangled haystack from which one was invited to pick out the valuable needles.
Anyway, the TubeTube allows one to rewind or play again to Pick up connections that hurtled by in a haze first time around. Good argument for circular travel.
Well done, Jago. I'm looking forward to further whistle-stop instalments.
Excellent
Another tour de force, of course starting the video in Balham (gateway to the 'saff'), where I spent my early years (before moving further south to Merton and then before moving even further south to Perth in Australia), may have influenced me. My Balham underground station really hasn't changed much!
The New York City Subway also started out as several separate private rail lines, often competing with each other, that were eventually bought by the city and knit into one system. But some of the systems used different tunnel boring techniques and thus had different tunnel sizes; to this day some trains can't be used on certain lines.
PS: Which other cities' subway/metro/whatever systems had similar origins? I know to this day Tokyo actually has two separate subway systems.
Any one else get really excited when notification comes thru that a nee video been uploaded?
Another well done video, now hurry up for the other parts 😂
Part 2 is coming this Sunday...
Like a fine meal, you should take time to savour each course, and try appreciate the skills and hard work of its creator.
...Having said that; See you on Sunday morining! :D
Midnight on the West Coast. Must be morning in the UK.
07:56
Hello, fellow West Coaster...midnight is the best time to watch a new Jago Hazzard video!
@@sewing9434 UK in my case, sorry to dissapoint
@@lloydcollins6337 Alas, I meant the OP. We have the advantage of being able to enjoy Jago's latest offerings late at night, since that's when they come out in our time zone.
Yes all good !! A fine film , carry on, I'm all with you on a fine history ahead of its time using electric traction !
This has definitely wetted my appetite, but as comprehensive as this summary is I dearly want to know more. Some parts you've covered already, but I do hope you'll go forward with that long term plan to cover each individual line in greater detail.
Hi Jago. Really looking forward to parts 2 & 3 (or more?). If you don't do so, I would very much like to see the progression from steam to electric motive traction on the Underground. You have shown a picture of the first(?) electric tractor, but I would like to see how they progressed.
Interesting newly painted gap hazard thingys at Balham!
It was almost an accident really that so many lines combined under Yerkes in such a short time. Some of these lines had been kicking around for 10 years or more without being built and if left longer may never have been at least under private ownership. Still in some ways JP Morgan's Piccadilly, City and North East London Railway might have been rather more useful than the Piccadilly Line as built by Yerkes - some parts of London had to wait another 70 years to get a line they would have had with that one.
Brilliant 👍
Very good
Note the LSWR built segment of the district between Wimbledon (specifically Southfields and East Putney) and Putney Bridge is notable as having proper tunnels, not cut and cover for all its sub surface routing, probably the only tunnels on the District entire line.
Charles Tyson Yerkes was certainly a rogue - he actually served a prison term in Pennsylvania for fraud. But rogues often see opportunities and get things done. Incidentally all his London underground rail enterprises were failing financially by the time he died just before the completion of the Bakerloo line in 1907. It's remarkable that Stanley (later raised to the peerage as Baron Ashfiels) and Pick managed to pick up the pieces so deftly.
I wonder if the money came in more from commercial lettings and investments in property as much as passenger traffic. But trams were seen as working class, tubes middle. Buses actually made the money subsidisiing the holes in the ground.
i was hanging on to every word as usual!
Great research as usual..I used the Central Line ( well named ) and Hammersmith City far more than any others...
Random note, when at Mansion House when it’s quiet you can hear the Waterloo and City trains where the tunnels are that close
There are several tube sections on the underground where, when working at night with the traction current off (of course) you hear the rumble of a train and think OMG there's a train coming when in fact its passing close by on another line.
@@1963TOMB Sometimes its a battery loco engineering train coming through.
@@highpath4776 Then I'd sack the Protection Master - if I survived!
@@1963TOMB especially under Kings Cross there are an extraordinary number of tunnels at different heights there.
@@hairyairey I even get spooked in the disused areas of Euston when I hear a train whilst I'm walking in cast iron segmented tunnels that don't even have a track in them!
Thanks for part one of the video. I am looking forward to the next two. It is interesting to see that it was all as well planned out as the rest of the countries railways.
The notion of a railway built with these extended tunnels underground It is somewhat ironic as one of the original arguments by the naysayers to railways was that if people traveled through tunnels would be asphyxiated because of the lack of air. But then again they also claimed the same effect by traveling in a train at 25 MPH. Interestingly a horse can run at some 30 MPH and the highways of England were not strewn with dead riders.
Looking at the illustration of the Metropolitan Railway with the open wagons some enterprising worker on the line could no doubt earn a bob or two by following on behind and collecting those top hats which had become detached from their owners heads.