Tube, Train, Tram, and Car; or, Up-to-date locomotion. Arthur H. Beavan
Under the sanction of the Brighton Town Council, the Magnus Volk Co., Ltd., now work the Brighton Beach Electric Tram-railway, which at its opening was regarded as a great novelty and curiosity, constituting an additional attraction and amusement to “London by the sea,” and tens of thousands must have taken a ride in its little open cars since it came into existence twenty years ago. The gauge is but 2 feet 8½ inches, the “feeders” are underground, the propelling system is electric, with a third rail, and its speed is about 12 miles an hour. Starting from the west pier, opposite the Royal Aquarium, it sets out on its one mile and a half route of single line and dips beneath the level of the Marine Parade to a level a little above the beach, passing en route, though hidden from view, many landmarks of old Brighton, such as Park Place and Gardens, Royal Crescent, Marine Square, and Lewes Crescent, and terminating at a point near Black Rock.
This was the eastern end of Old Brighton, noted for many an original character in the “twenties” and “thirties,” not the least interesting of whom were old Martha Gunn, queen of the bathing-machines, and Sak Deen Mahomed, a native of the East, who introduced the art of shampooing into the town, and lived to become a centenarian, his fame being enshrined in verse by James Smith, one of the authors of Rejected Addresses, who humorously predicted his longevity as follows:—
“Sprung doubtless from Abdullah’s son,
Thy miracles thy sire’s outrun,
Thy cures his deaths outnumber;
His coffin soars ’twixt heav’n and earth,
But thou, within that narrow berth,
Immortal, ne’er shall slumber.”
Many have been the changes in Brighton since those days. Arundel Terrace, Kemp Town, Ultima Thule in the east; Adelaide Crescent with Palmyra Square, its western boundary. From the fields to the north of that square could be seen, a mile or so off, the village of Hove, the intervening space being dotted with farms. No one could have dreamt that a great railway-station would be built there, with minor ones at Kemp Town, West Brighton, and Hove. Old residents could not have pictured a Grand Aquarium, a Western and Eastern Pier, nor the destruction of their familiar Chain Pier. They would be amazed at the spread of Brighton in every direction, the springing up of palatial hotels like the “Métropole” and “Grand,” and the increase of the population to some hundred and fifty thousand; while the coaching world, headed by the popular Sir St. Vincent Cotton, prince of amateur whips, and all the confraternity of coachmen and hackney-coach drivers, would have thought anyone a lunatic who had dared to prophesy that one day a conveyance drawn without horses or steam power would carry passengers along the Brighton beach!
THE CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY
For many years prior to 1890, in Gracechurch Street, at a point near its junction with Eastcheap, could be seen every day of the week numerous omnibuses arriving between nine and eleven a.m., and departing between five and eight p.m., for the suburbs over the water. These ’buses regularly plied between London and Kennington, Walworth, Camberwell, Stockwell, Clapham, and Brixton (a few journeying to Dulwich and Peckham), for the special accommodation of dwellers in those favourite localities engaged in business during the day. Wealthy “principals” of mercantile and brokers’ firms drove to and from their comfortable Surrey villas in well-equipped carriages, the junior members in smart traps or dogcarts; but the small merchants and smaller brokers, the head clerks and the rank and file who do all the hard work, had to make use of these omnibuses, and when exceptionally bad weather prevented the vehicles running, they had to get to and from their offices as best they could on foot. To the working man, living, say, at Brixton, and engaged upon a City job, the fares—4d. to 8d.—were prohibitive. The time wasted in these conveyances was great, and at the best it was an unpleasant way of travelling; overcrowding was common, and the “fight for the trams” in 1903 is as nothing compared to the frantic rush for those omnibus seats; while on wet days the sight was piteous.
It is true that City men could use the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, to reach these suburbs, but this involved a walk to Blackfriars Station, and the facing of the crush on its dangerous platforms. There were also the alternatives of crossing Blackfriars Bridge and using the London Tramway Company’s horse-cars, or of forcing one’s way over London Bridge, tramping or “bussing” it along the Borough High Street, and, emerging at the “Elephant and Castle,” there tapping the trams.
As a matter of fact, these ingenious alternative routes were seldom made use of. At the close of business, men of all ranks want to get home as fast as they can, and from some station not far from their counting-houses. Therefore, in the days I am describing, how could any of those gentlemen clad in irreproachable frock-coats and new glossy hats, who each day of the week issued from snug offices in Austin Friars, Drapers’ Gardens, or Copthall Court, whose business was transacted over the way at the “House”; how could the brokers of Mark Lane and Mincing Lane, the underwriters at Lloyd’s, the ship-brokers and ship-owners round about Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street, the flourishing bill-brokers of Broad Street, and the smaller mercantile fry; how could any of these, if resident on the Surrey side, be expected to go to and from business by way of Blackfriars?
However, this unsatisfactory means of communication was hardly likely to escape the notice of such astute experts as Mr. J. C. Mott, doyen director of the Great Western Railway, and his far-seeing friends. They took counsel together, and, after the usual hard task of persuading people, plans were matured, and in 1884 an enterprise was organised and incorporated as the City of London and Southwark Subway Company, to construct a line of railway from King William Street to the “Elephant and Castle,” with an intermediate station at Marshalsea Road.
This was the initial stage of the present well-known railway.
At the outset, three points had to be considered. How was the subway to be constructed? What motive power should be employed? And how was the deep level to be reached by the passengers? A subway under the Thames was no novelty. The directors of the new line were not the “first that ever burst into that silent sea” of mud and gravel at the bottom of the swift-flowing river. Brunel had been long before them with his costly Thames Tunnel, and Barlow had years ago laid upon its oozy bed the Tower Subway of iron.
It was decided that a tube, or, rather, two independent tunnels of cast-iron rings, should be driven side by side beneath the bottom of the stream, a little to the west of London Bridge, and continued on the Surrey side.
On this system the work was begun by the contractors, Siemens Brothers and Mather and Platt, and proceeded with quite out of public sight. It was accompanied with many disheartening delays and seemingly insurmountable difficulties; but they were all successfully overcome, and the tubes were brought to a temporary end at the “Swan,” Stockwell, to which charming retreat, by an Act of Parliament, 1887, an extension of the line had been sanctioned, making its length a little over three miles.
The motive power eventually selected was electricity, steam being impracticable, and the funicular or cable system considered unreliable. Access to and from the trains was to be obtained at the stations by means of capacious twin-lifts capable of holding many people at a time.
Then the problem of how best to utilise the ample “power,” generated at the Stockwell Station, for hauling the cars, had to be seriously tackled. It was not a question of a toy line like that on the Brighton beach, but of the driving at fair speed, say 15 miles an hour, of comparatively heavy coaches laden with passengers, and at frequent intervals. Altogether it was a new departure in electric traction.
How the motor locomotives were effectually to pick up the current was the puzzle which had to be solved, or the enterprise might at the last moment collapse and the subscribed capital be lost.
After an infinite amount of anxious experimenting on the part of Mr. Mott and his scientific advisers—the narrative of which, as told me by that veteran, sounded like a romance—by a happy inspiration