For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Letting off steam (12.10.12)

In the 1930s a successful hoax succeeded by selling hundreds of 10 guinea tickets for a charity ball to be held at a house in Leinster Gardens.

When the underground line was being built Nos. 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens were dismantled leaving just their 5ft-deep façades, the space left behind allowed the trains to empty their smoke boxes before entering the next tunnel. Today the fake houses can still be seen while behind them the District Line rattles along its way.

At Crystal Palace Park in 1864 a novel way of transporting the public through a tube was opened which obviated the need to let off steam.

A large tube enough to accommodate entire carriages was assembled, and the air was forced through the tube, in the manner of a bicycle pump, to propel the train and its hapless passengers along the tube’s entire length, at the other end of its quarter-mile length giant fans would suck the train to its destination.

It cannot have come as a surprise to any passengers of this mode of transport to learn that it closed after a few months. Rumours later persisted that the tunnel was haunted by skeletons dressed in Victorian clothes still sitting in an old railway carriage. We shall never know as the site was demolished in 1911 to make way for the Festival of Empire celebrations.

Travel along the southern section of the Bakerloo Line and you enter the tube that the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway laid down in 1865. Running parallel with Hungerford Bridge this underwater cast-iron pipe was expected to take passengers in trains propelled along its length by fans sucking or blowing the carriages along. Fifteen trains an hour and costing 2d for a first-class ticket, second class for a ha’penny less and third class at a bargain 1d. Unfortunately for its operators, the company went bust before they could experience this ‘commodious, and well-lighted’ form of transport.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A gaping problem (09.10.12)

When taking my daughter for her first job interview, we were sitting on the tube when a drunk sitting opposite awoke to the announcement “Mind the Gap”. Our slumbering passenger then started to doze off again, until that is, we reached a later stop and upon hearing the Mind the Gap announced a second time declared to the rest of the carriage “Blimy! That bloke gets around”. It was the perfect antidote to break the pre-interview nerves my daughter was feeling at the time.

The original Mind the Gap announcement which had awoken our slumbering friend was first heard in 1968 when AEG Telefunken supplied the recording of an unknown actor, unfortunately, the fellow had insisted on being paid a royalty every time his voice was heard. Unsurprisingly that recording was scrubbed and re-recorded by someone cheaper.

Sound engineer Peter Lodge then took up the baton and his sound tests proved so popular with the powers that be it was decided that his own voice should be the announcement broadcast.

The Earl of Portland was a title bestowed on the first Earl for mopping the fevered brow of King William III who at that time was struck down with smallpox. The 12th and current Earl can be heard on the Piccadilly Line, his Mind the Gap announcement earning him the princely sum of £200. He is best known as the actor who plays David Archer in Radio 4’s The Archers.

The gap problem like so much these days can be blamed on London’s bankers. When tunnelling commenced early in the last century, engineers were concerned that the excavations would undermine the City’s banks. It was decided, where possible, to tunnel beneath the roads, many of which followed their Medieval routes.

As a consequence despite billions being spent on planning, building, refurbishing and rebuilding our trains just don’t fit the stations. Passengers on the Central line at Bank are regularly reminded of this fundamental flaw in the Tube system.

This fear of being sued by powerful property owners has meant Bank Station has one of the sharpest bends on the Tube network. This sharp bend has even become represented on John Beck’s iconic Tube map where the station’s given its own unique kink. There is even some speculation the bend had to be made even sharper so the tunnel didn’t end up in the Bank of England’s vaults.

The company clearly didn’t fear the church though because it gained permission to demolish St. Mary Woolnoth. A public outcry prevented this but it still dug up all the bodies in the crypt to build lift shafts.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Running out of puff (05.10.12)

It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that underground rail travel was envisaged, deemed to be quieter and less disruptive than overground, not to say obviating the need to demolish properties in more salubrious areas. Underground rail travel posed a problem for the engineers as passengers rather inconsiderately needed to breathe, and existing coal-fired trains emitted a toxic mixture of steam and sulphurous smoke which had a tendency to suffocate both crew and their passengers.

The world’s first underground railway opened on 9th January 1863. The line, which still runs alongside Farringdon Road, was built as cheaply as possible so rather than design new locomotives, the company simply adapted existing ones – steam trains.

Trials were undertaken burning coke instead of coal but because of poisonous gases it was thought preferable that tunnels were filled with coal smoke instead, prompting The Times to comment ‘A journey . . . is a form of torture which no person would undergo if he could conveniently help it’. Train drivers were not convinced by the company’s assertion that asthmatics found the smoky atmosphere helped to breathe and grew thick beards to try and filter the black soot; they even named their locomotives after tyrants – Mogul, Czar and Kaiser.

Fowler’s Ghost Enter Sir John Fowler, Bt. who designed the world’s first experimental fireless locomotive nicknamed “Fowlers Ghost”. Propulsion was achieved by using heated bricks placed in a conventional coal-fired engine to produce steam. It was deemed a failure after only one test run presumably the locomotive’s footplate was just a little too hot for comfort for the engine drivers trying to manhandle red-hot bricks. Fowler would later redeem himself as the genius who designed the Forth Rail Bridge.

It was back to the drawing board this time to design condensing engines which emitted less steam and smoke, the engine’s emissions were routed into large tanks behind the locomotive, which were then vented off as the train emerged from the tunnel. Because the tunnels were under roads, the venting would spook any horses that happened to be overhead, so doubt prompted the cabbies driving Hansom cabs to complain. This method meant that frequent breaks in the tunnel were needed to let off steam and evidence of which we can still see today.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Up in the air (02.10.12)

Central London is starting to look as if a giant mole has been at work, with holes appearing at the most unlikely locations the largest of these is to be found beside Centre Point; and just what did happen to the iconic fountains which once stood outside?

Said to be the biggest engineering work being carried out in Europe, CrossRail is, at £15bn, certainly the most expensive. The only compensation is that Knowledge students will never have to memorise the “Dirty Dozen”, twelve road which form a shortcut through Soho from west to east, now that Great Chapel Street has been turned into a hole.

CrossRail is just the latest of the Capital’s grandiose rail schemes, which started in 1836 with the London & Greenwich train line; its name would indicate that Greenwich was not part of the Metropolis at that time.

Unlike CrossRail it was planned to run the tracks over an elevated Roman-style viaduct with its terminus modestly styled on the Acropolis. It was routed through some of the poorer parts of London, so that less compensation had to be paid when demolishing people’s houses and making them homeless, even so, it was costly and time-consuming for no fewer than 878 separate brick arches were constructed, making it at the time the world’s longest viaduct, the surviving arches and station booking office can still be seen in the Spa Road area of Bermondsey. When completed the cabbies at that time, no doubt were among those who complained about “the thundering steam engines and omnibusters”.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Razor sharp carbuncle (28.09.12)

Of all the arts architecture is the most inescapable, you can stop reading your novel, never listen to poetry, no one forces you to go to one of London’s free art galleries, buy a ticket to an opera, the ballet or theatre (if you deprive yourself of any of these in this chaotic and diverse city you really are missing out), but one art form cannot be ignored – architecture. Like it or not we all have a vested interest, with have to live with it, and in it, architecture can either uplift your spirits or irritate you intensely.

I was asked recently by the producer of a BBC documentary about London, “What do you think the best view is of the Gherkin?” As a Londoner, it was embarrassing because I could not think of which vista showed the Swiss Re Tower to the best advantage. Thinking about it later I concluded that, although it is a huge building, its shape and proportions allow it to sit perfectly within the City’s landscape. Try it out, for even in St. Mary Axe at the building’s base it retains the impression of having small proportions.

Le Corbusier, the darling of 20th-century architecture, once penned: “The house – a machine for living in.” Although strangely most people don’t want to live, or work, in a machine, they seem to prefer to inhabit a building which is more intimate. In fact, in a poll which asked which was Londoner’s favourite post-war building, it wasn’t the Lloyd’s Building, Shard, Canary Wharf or Centre Point. More popular than any of these was Shakespeare’s Globe, now recreated from the original which first opened in 1599.

Many recent towers are vainglorious tributes to the greater glory of the clients, who commissioned them and their architects, but one sits heads and shoulders above them all for it can be seen in London from wherever you view it – and it’s not a pretty sight. London’s Strata Tower, the world’s first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines, is stylised to look like it comes straight out of Gotham City, the perfect place for a hero and a villain to have a rooftop showdown falls into that mould, and if any dwelling was designed as a machine for living in, this is it.

The structure does not sit within the landscape, in fact, it seems to scream – look at me – and the exterior is designed so that it is recognisable from miles around. That would be fine is it held some kind of symmetrical beauty like The Shard, but the shape, height and black and silver cladding have destroyed what little of London’s comfortable if jumbled skyline we had left.
Now the building (or should that be machine) has won the ultimate accolade The Carbuncle Cup. Despite fierce competition for the trade publication Building Design least coveted prize, the Strata Building has won this year’s dubious honour. One nominator said “I used to live in south London and moved partly because – and I’m not joking – the Strata tower made me feel ill and I had to see it every day.”
So now the next time a passenger gets in my cab and asks to go to south London I can say to them “Sorry I’m not going south of the River that Strata Tower makes me ill”.