The Underground...

1918-1939 The Birth of London Transport

'As early as 1863 a House of Lords Committee had suggested that a single transport authority was needed to coordinate and intefrate transport services in London.'

The Moving Metropolis - A History of London's Transport since 1800
Edited by Sheila Taylor


The London Underground was the first underground train system in the world. The first part of the Underground to be built was the Metropolitan line which is represented on the map now as a purple line. Funnily enough, over 50% of the the Tube is actually above ground, even though it is called the Underground.

Here are some facts about the 'Tube' from Wikipedia:

In the Transport for London website, it supports the Wikipedia statistic that there are around three million passenger journeys everday on the Underground. The track, as mentioned earlier began as the Metropolitan Line which was nearly 4 miles long, and to build it a 'cut and cover' method was employed where, the streets would be dug up along the route of that line, the track would be placed into the trench that was created and then covered back over, but this caused as many problems as the project was to supposed to resolve.

The Tube played a major part in World War 2, as it helped to get the evacuees out of the city and into the countryside, and became a shelter for residents in the Blitz, where it was simply not safe to be on ground level. In a census in September, during the war, it was calculated that 177,500 people were using the underground as a means of shelter. The Underground was one of the safest places in the city to be, however, there were a few accidents...
In January 1941, a German bomb hit the ticket area of Bank station, killing 68 people. There was also an accident at Balham and at Bethnal Green station where 300 people were crushed in on the stairs, 173 died.

In the tube during the Blitz:

On the whole I do enjoy using the Tube, apart from peak times when it can be chaotic and stressful, but in normal hours it can be quite therapeutic. And I always take photos of the underground on every visit. I love the Tube map, it has to be one of the best designs invented, it is really functional, timeless and effective, and is such a useful piece of graphic design, with millions of people viewing it everyday.