Tube, Train, Tram, and Car; or, Up-to-date locomotion. Arthur H. Beavan
difficulties overcome, the line was pronounced to be in working order (1890), after a series of trial trips, at one of which the writer had the privilege of being present.
CHAPTER III
SOME PIONEER ELECTRIC RAILWAYS (continued)
A TRIAL TRIP IN THE CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY
ONE o’clock saw a large party of us, chiefly City men, amongst whom were numerous civil engineers, waiting at King William Street booking-office to descend into the bowels of the earth by one of the semicircular lifts, a novelty in point of size. Our turn having come, we duly filed into the elevator. The telescopic doors clashed upon us, and we stood for a second or two silently expectant, feeling like a batch of condemned criminals on a gigantic scaffold waiting for the hangman to draw back the fatal lever that would launch them into the other world.
Noiselessly the lift descended to an apparently fathomless depth, but in reality, I believe, some 90 or 100 feet. When released by the janitor, we found ourselves in a small, well-lighted, cool, and spotlessly clean, white-tiled station, whence was discernible a couple of small tunnels side by side, leading to unknown regions, seemingly all too narrow to accommodate even the miniature cars waiting for us at one of the narrow platforms.
Inspecting the tunnels, the classical man of our party, a wag in his way, who had hitherto made no remark, was heard to mutter something in Latin, which, on being coerced, he admitted was out of Virgil, and was translated thus: “This is the spot where the way divides in two branches.” In vain we pointed out that the quotation was inappropriate, as the ways were parallel. He was obdurate, so we left him to his own reflections.
To most of us accustomed to roomy Pullmans and commodious railway carriages, the cars, though comfortable, seemed cramped, especially in height. The signal given, off we started, when we noticed that the cars fitted the tube with such nicety and economy of space that, could the windows have been let down, we could easily have touched the iron plates of the tunnel. We realised, too, that although there was no smoke or smell, the railway was by no means noiseless; neither, in the opinion of several of the experts present, was the running as steady as on the “Underground.”
A hint had been given us that at some point where the line dipped and rose again the cars might come to a temporary standstill. As we rather uneasily recalled this, the speed gradually slackened, and finally the train stopped altogether, and simultaneously the incandescent lights began to pale, and at last subsided into filaments of sickly red. The situation was not a pleasant one. There we were; many of us with important engagements awaiting us later in the day; most of us with wives and children who would expect us home as usual when evening arrived, and grow anxious at our absence. There we were sealed up in a tube, for all we knew, at a point beneath the Thames. Not a sound reached us from the locomotive, or, indeed, from anywhere. Were we thus to remain indefinitely? For walk out we could not, there being no room outside the carriages. Would some memorial tablet let into the side of London Bridge, months hence, recall the fact that near it a goodly company of highly respectable citizens had perished in a living tomb?
I don’t think we talked much. It was luncheon-time; we were hungry, and we felt like the occupants of the snowed-up cars in one of Mark Twain’s stories, who gloomily eyed one another as starvation threatened, calculating upon whom, by an ingenious and complicated system of voting previously agreed to, would next fall the lot of being sacrificed for the benefit of the rest, and I believe I found myself unconsciously speculating on the plumpness of a youthful stockbroker standing by my side. But after a very few moments of suspense the train rattled on again, the lights reappeared, and presently we drew up at the Borough, the first station on the Surrey side.
Railway booking-offices are not usually things of beauty, least of all those on the Metropolitan, District, and suburban lines. Here, however, was a surprise, for we found quite a picturesque stone-and-brick building on the ground-floor, a cupola surmounting the prettily designed entrance, and a small dome with lantern by way of roof. And this was a sample of all the stations along the line.
The Borough recalled the Marshalsea that once stood close by; and there opposite was St. George’s, Southwark, where Little Dorrit, accidentally locked out of the prison, was allowed by “the sexton, or the beadle, or the verger, or whatever he was,” to take refuge in the vestry, where, years afterwards, she signed the marriage register when wedded to Arthur Clennam.
The next stoppage was at the Elephant and Castle—not the tavern of that name, where in the past on Derby Day the superabundant holiday traffic usually became hopelessly congested, but the City and South London’s new station, close to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle, Rabbits’ great boot warehouse, and Tarn’s vast emporium, that seems to occupy most of Newington Causeway. Onwards to Kennington Common, once the place of public executions for Surrey, now a well-kept miniature park. Beyond it, Kennington Oval, associated with cricket all the world over; and finally we arrived at Stockwell, the then terminus of the line, since extended to Clapham, where Tom Hood used to go to school at a house “with ugly windows ten in a row, its chimney in the rear,” a style of architecture of which many specimens still exist round and about the Common.
At Stockwell we visited the generating station, recently much extended, and provided with entirely new plant, and, wondering at and admiring all we saw, learned from the chief engineer that the contretemps en route was due to a slight defect in the new and untried power-machinery; and thus at the point where the dip in the line was greatest, the cars stopped.
An excellent luncheon restored us all to eloquence and equanimity, extinguishing the cannibalistic feeling of half an hour ago, and, returning without any incident worth recording, we emerged once more in the City, to be greeted by the noise of the traffic that ever surges around King William the Fourth’s statue.
Those were the “green salad” days of London’s Pioneer Electric Railway Line. Now it runs without a hitch, and has been extended north as far as the historic “Angel,” thus giving a direct route between Clapham and Islington. It has powers to exchange traffic with the Great Northern and the City Railway viâ Old Street, and also to connect itself with the Baker Street and Waterloo Electric Railway at the Elephant and Castle Station; and in a new building at Finsbury Pavement it now has commodious head offices.
At the last half-yearly general meeting the chairman, Mr. C. G. Mott, in the course of his speech, stated that the Board aspired to have a thoroughly first-class terminus in the City of London, and had deposited plans with this view. They proposed to construct this station between the present Bank Station and the King William Street statue.
That the City and South London Railway is most useful and popular is shown by the number of passengers it has carried—some ninety millions since its opening—the returns for last year showing about eighteen millions, over a total route of about seven miles. For the convenience of travellers, it eventually will have subways, connecting its Lombard Street Station with the Bank Station of the Central London Railway, and it already has them from its new London Bridge Station to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. Finally, it can boast of possessing a station below a church—a unique position, I believe. St. Mary Woolnoth’s foundations were completely removed, the vaults cleared out, and the whole replaced by huge iron girders, whereon the sacred edifice now rests, with the booking-office below.
THE WATERLOO AND CITY RAILWAY
The month of August, 1898, was unusually warm, and the heat was felt as much in the City as anywhere. Straw hats were universal; the shady side of the street, if there happened to be one, was thronged; secluded alleys and