eBook The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground was Built and How it Changed the City Forever ePub

If you like this sort of stuff, read this.
I love the Underground and this was a "must read" for me.
I appreciate not everyone like this sort of stuff - not a thriller but a well-constructed history with lovely anecdotes.

I bought it for a friend who is taking his family to London for the first time and he really liked it!

Yet another book By Christian Wolmar on the history of British railways, this time on the evolution of the 'Underground'.
It is another well researched and authoritative guide on British Rail transport. He leaves no stone unturned in his research of engineering and politics in the planning and development of what is today the first and one of the most complex underground rail systems in the world.

Very detailed history of the Tube.

Who said you cant build a railway under a Victorian London?
English industrial revolution at its finest
Unknown technology, learn as you go, and innovation. The greatest challenge in London's history.
The British equivalent to the Transpacific railway in the States. Not as long granted but with an equivalent effect on the society of London and England as a whole.
How they did it and what it took to get here stands for all time.
Its worth the train fare for this one.

This is a hard to find book in bookstores - even in London. So it was great to find it online and get it painlessly!

I purchased this for my grandson, at his request, and he was thrilled with the book. He has enjoyed it and was very happy to have received it. I was pleased with the purchase.

Popular railway writer/journalist Christian Wolmar is known for his readable and intelligent books on the British railways and their history. In "The Subterranean Railway", he has applied his skills to writing a history of the London Underground, its construction, development, companies and politics. In the best traditions of popular history the book covers all the aspects of the tube's history, from the first suggestions for underground rail to the modern extensions. It covers the technical aspects of constructing the tunnels, the fares policies through the century, the sequence of the lines' development and their oddities, the competition between the individual underground railway lines in the early stages, the politics of public transport, and the individual Victorian and Edwardian entrepreneurs who determined much of the Underground's current structure and functioning. Wolmar even pays attention to the design aspects of the tube stations and Harry Beck's famous map, to the development of 'Metroland' around the Metropolitan Line in the northwest of London, and to the central role played by London Transport's recruitment in the Caribbean for drawing West Indian workers to London in the first mass immigration of that kind to Britain.

The book is well-written, balanced, informative and accessible. It does help to have a basic knowledge of London and the geographical layout already, given the proliferation of names and places in the book, although the modern tube map is helpfully provided with the illustrations. Wolmar's book shows some interesting aspects of the railways' development, in particular the decisive role played by the fact that until relatively quite late the different Underground lines were run by individual companies aiming to make a profit and competing with each other, rather than a planned urban public transport service as in most other cities with major underground railways. This role, as Wolmar has also showed for the mainline railways in Britain in his celebrated book on the topic (Fire and Steam: How the Railways Transformed Britain), has mainly been negative. Although the activities of the underground railways allowed the construction of major projects for public transport at a time when it would have been politically impossible for the state to do so, it led to a great number of inefficiencies as competing stations and whole lines were built close to each other, as tickets valid for one company were not accepted on the other (gravely limiting the usefulness of the entire system), as companies failed to expand useful lines for years on end for want of capital, and so forth. It is no coincidence that until the 1990s, every single developed country had amalgamated its mainline and underground railway lines each into a single public company, as competition in this branch is simply not productive from a public point of view - if anything, public transport by rail in countries where space is significantly limited is a rare obvious example of a natural monopoly, just like healthcare.

Also interesting is Wolmar's emphasis on the importance the American investors such as Yerkes played in consolidating the underground lines into a more coherent system akin to what we know now, as well as the major significance of the structure of the bus system for the functioning of the Underground - the bus lines for the longest times were the main competitor and tended to 'poach' the customers rather than providing connecting services, as is the aim now. Add to this various interesting anecdotes about the oddities of the tube - such as the bizarre side line to Mill Hill East on the Northern line or the two directly proximate stations in New Cross - as well as small histories of individual stations interspersed in the main narrative and Wolmar's clear passion for the Underground, and you have a readable and impressive book. Wolmar wants us to realize how amazing it is the Underground exists at all and functions as well as it does, and he succeeds in this purpose. A small note: since the book was written in 2004, it does not cover the Underground bombings of 2005, nor does it mention the newest expansions such as the East London expansion of the overground and the plans for Crossrail.