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London's Victorian Railways
Mr R Brasier, London Transport Museum
21 September 1998
Despite the slide projector causing problems, Mr
Brasier, from London Transport Museum, gave a very stimulating talk to
16 members, using his slides as "hook" to guide us through this
complicated period of London railway history. Before joining the Museum,
he worked for BR, in change of Southern Region Records, so he has
extensive knowledge of the historic material upon which his talk was
based. The material was drawn from the museum archives and his own slide
collection, covering the period up to 1914.
The presentation began by considering the main
London terminii - St Pancras was a pertinent starting point as the Group
is about to have make a tour of the site. The General Manager of the
Midland Railway decided to keep line high so that the under-track vaults
as a store of goods, merchandise and Bass beer. The span of arches
under station are reputed to be in units of Bass's beer-barrels. Moving
across the intervening street, Kings Cross was built with the platforms
at street level despite the resulting gradients, especially the dip
under the Grand Union Canal, making for very difficult operations and
,ultimately, they had to shed a lot of the traffic to the North London.
Kings Cross is earlier than St Pancras, dating from 1852, and designed
by Cubit. It was the first building to be designed as a railway station
with no pretence at mimicking cathedrals or other civic buildings. The
clock was made by Dents for the Great Exhibition. It had a connection
with Metropolitan Underground the suburban trains using the York Road
and Hotel Curve lines at an incline of 1 in 35, on a curve, to reach the
Metropolitan Widened Lines. The incline was so severe that there was a
person stationed down the tunnel on a semi-permanent basis to put sand
on the track to prevent locomotives from slipping.
Liverpool Street, by contrast, was below road level.
Again, the General Manager was highly influential in its location; he
wanted a direct line connection with the Underground but with
connections far better aligned than the GNR at Kings Cross. It cost a
lot of money to do this, but it was finally achieved just as a major
financial crash happened, putting the Great Eastern in the hands of the
receiver. To add insult to injury, the Metropolitan used the link for
about 6 months and then built its own station, never using this link
again.
The London Termiii were located on a ring around
central London because the Government took fright at the large number of
railways, promoted during the Railway Mania, which proposed to end in
London. In 1856, a Royal Commission decided that no stations would be
built in the central London area. Fenchurch Street and Waterloo had
already been promoted, but all the others fell under the Parliamentary
decision. While this protected large amounts of property from
demolition, by the mid 1860s, because of the large amount of travel
generated by the railways and the general upturn in the economy, street
traffic was strangling London. The conditions were so bad that they even
introduced streaming of horse traffic (regulated by speed) over London
Bridge. The surface railways tried to encourage the Government to let
them help the situation by penetrating into the centre of London. The
government temporarily relented and allowed Cannon Street and
Blackfriers to be built, and, finally at true cross London line in the
form of the Snow Hill to Farringdon link. Perhaps frightened by what it
had done, the Government then stopped all other plans. However, they did
propose that all the terminii be connected by the new-fangled
underground system.
Mr Brasier presented some rare photos taken in the
mid 1880s show the Circle line being built. The Engineer was John
Powler. The tunnels were built to a diameter of 26 feet, because the GWR
wanted the broad gauge to run through. The tunnels were elliptical with
no invert and light retaining walls resulting in a number of subsidence
incidents. Retaining walls were later made far more substantial, and
they modified the building technique so that they first dug trenches at
for the side walls, then the centre spoil was removed until the arch
could be built; and only then was the centre void was removed. The
tunnels have about 8 rings of bricks. Indeed, so great was the demand
fro bricks that railway building in London at this time caused a brick
famine. While brick and cast iron were "de-rigor", concrete was used
experimentally at various locations. The building process used large
amounts of manpower with limited use of steam shovels. A photograph of a
cutting construction showed arrangements which would now be considered
highly dangerous, with rough catwalks over the drop, no handrails and,
definitely no hard hats in sight! The number of accidents to workmen is
not recorded but must have been substantial. While the building was
taking place, the streets were closed, causing significant traffic
disruption. The services, gas water had to be removed and replaced
before the street was put back. Meanwhile life went on in the adjoining
houses, despite the morass of mud and horse manure outside the front
door.
The lines followed the streets because if it went
under even part of a building, then the company had to buy the whole
building. Nevertheless, there was a considerable amount of slum
clearance. Unfortunately no replacement building were put up, so many
people were left homeless. Stations were substantially constructed as an
attempt to keep the atmosphere clean. The underground steam lines was
cursed with foul air. Not only did the drivers grow extensive beards to
cut out some of the muck, but an enterprising London chemist created a
cough mixture especially for the travellers on the Metropolitan line. A
photograph of the interior of Bayswater showed the gas lighted globes,
similar the the replicas recently installed at Baker Street, which were
used to provide a reasonable level of illumination in the dank
atmosphere. Contractors provided their own locomotives operating on
temporary track. Meanwhile London itself was expanding, made possible
via the services of the railways, for example allowing the professionals
and middle classes to seek the rural idle of Gloucester Road!.
Locomotives used by the suburban services were
typically small tanks. Even the LCDR used such small engines to traverse
the Snow Hill - Farringdon line with its fierce gradients. Mr Brasier
showed early photographs of a range of locomotives, all making use of
condensing apparatus to "consume their own smoke". It is doubtful how
much condensing took place when the loco was under load. Also when the
tank water warmed up, injectors wouldn't work, so at strategic points
arrangements were made to replenish the tanks with cold water. The
Farringdon line was a significant strategic line for the companies with
access to it, even being used by slip coaches to take long distance
services across London
The success of the London railways in attracting
traffic was so great that it soon became necessary to extend the
terminii. One which underwent drastic rebuilding was Charring Cross.
Unfortunately not everything went to plan. On 5th December 1905, the
roof crashed down, pushed out the retaining wall of Northumberland Road,
and demolished part of the adjoining theatre, killing several workmen
who were engaged on some modifications to the theatre layout. The cause
was a poor weld in the girders of the roof which had been present since
its original construction and was just waiting to fail. When the workmen
put up their scaffolding, this was the straw which broke the camels
back. Luckily the creaks and groans were so great just before it did
fail that the station was virtually evacuated before the collapse,
otherwise the loss of life would have been significantly greater. The
original arched roof was replaced with a truss roof.
At around the same period, Victoria Station was
rebuilt. The London Brighton & South Coast Railway decided to extend
its station by building longer platforms so that two trains could be
worked from each platform, making effective use of the central escape
road to bypass trains in front. This allowed the Brighton to work a very
intensive service. Victoria station itself was built over the Grovesnor
canal, explaining why there are no arches under this London terminus.
Waterloo in the 1860s was getting a very bad name
because of the piecemeal way it was built. Not only did the old Waterloo
have very low roofs, it also had considerable clutter and lots of
confusion caused by the partitioning of the station concourse. A new
layout was provided with a new, high, roof which was carefully designed
so that there are no vertical columns in the circulating area. Arching
was also put in underneath the station to provide storage.
The Mr Brasier turned to the development of the
London Tubes. This was made possible by the Barlow Shield, later
perfected by Greathead, to allow burrowing in the London Clay, with cast
iron rings used to stabilise the ground and produce the familiar
"Tube". The City and South London was the first Tube railway but, the
first tunnel to use the technique was the Southwark Subway. This was
first used as a cable way but was not a success, reverting to a foot
subway. The City and South London also proved the use of electric
traction, but the system was still too small to be successful. The
Central London Electric Railway was the first to make a success of the
electric-hauled tube railway.
The real heart of the London Tube was developed by
Charles Yerkes, an American entrepreneur and crook!. He realised that
there was a lot of American money available to build some of the London
lines which were in abeyance due to shortage of cash over here. Despite
him "conning" the gullible Americans to part with their cash, there
being little real return on their capital, it did create the heart of
the Tube railway. A typical Yerkes tube station was illustrated on the
early Piccadilly Line, with its glazed terracotta tiling covering a
steel frame. Yerkes also brought across Mr Otis' electric lift, making
it far easier for the passengers to get up and down to the platforms.
The tube effectively filled the gap caused by the legislation, and
allowed cross London running. It had taken half a century for the
railways to get round the Royal Commission ruling of 1856, but they had
finally done it.
Unfortunately their troubles were just starting.
Electric tram competition was beginning to sap their traffic. The
surface railway tried to reply to the competition by introducing their
own electrification . The Brighton line tried overhead electrification
in 1910, which lasted into the 1920s when it was replaced by the third
rail, which the South Western introduced in the middle of the first
world war.
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