Steam train chugs through London's subway system

[Teamdriver]

" LONDON — Tourists waiting for their morning subway train to Madame Tussauds were treated to an unusual sight Sunday: a 19th- century steam engine chugging down the tracks.

Transit officials sent the Met Locomotive 1, built in 1898, down London's Metropolitan Line to mark the 150th anniversary of the capital's Tube network, the world's oldest.

Hundreds of train fans, costume-wearing enthusiasts, and curious onlookers gathered at platforms and bridges across the city to watch as the locomotive traveled non-stop from Kensington Olympia station in the west to Moorgate station in central London.

London Mayor Boris Johnson was among the invited passengers aboard the historic black-and-red locomotive. He said the trip was "romantic," describing "thick clouds of white steam going past and then bits of soot coming through from the engine."

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[Passenger]

About those steamers in the Underground back in the 19th century:

How bad was the smoke in the tunnel? Was there some way to exhaust it?
Or did folks even notice, what with the "London fog?"

Thank you.

[ExCon90]

The line was built as close to the surface as possible, with openings to the surface wherever possible. The wind has a natural tendency to draw air out of the tunnels as it passes over the openings. When the station at Baker St. was renovated some years ago. yellow lighting was placed at the top of the vertical shafts above the platforms which were formerly open to the street; today the yellow lighting simulates daylight filtering down from above. The locomotives were equipped with condensers which captured the steam that would otherwise have gone up the stack and converted it back to water. A book by the noted rail author C. Hamilton Ellis showed a photo of one of those engines in which he mentions in the caption that "the condenser looked after the steam, while the smoke looked after itself." Also, in those days it was widely believed that sulphur was good for you. An interesting legacy of that operation is that since the promoters realized that the idea of traveling under ground in a steam train might dissuade people from even trying the service, they made a point of providing well-upholstered seats with padded armrests so that at least passengers would not be sitting in a big wooden box with benches. (Also, their market was not so much workers as people whose alternative was a hansom cab or their own coach, in which upholstered seating was the norm.) That set the bar, and since then London Underground trains have been noted for unusually comfortable seating. I think an interesting parallel is BART a hundred years later, whose designers realized that their market was already traveling to work in comfort, and thus provided carpeting and upholstered seats.

[mtuandrew]

Very cool!

I'm going to leave a link here, but on request of a member, I'm moving this topic to Worldwide Railfan.

[David Benton]

Thanks Andrew ,
The london underground musuem , in London , is well worth a visit .

[bellstbarn]

I am glad that the internet allows us to explore faraway systems that I may not ride again. What I find missing in many of the 150th celebrations is the old-time distinction between Underground and Tube. Thanks to previous commentators, I realize that at least some of the Underground in central London is open to the air, maybe like Brooklyn's Sea Beach Line, the so-called Rat Hole Division. The other day, I took a look at a current complete "Underground" map and found the intricate above-ground sprawl of Docklands Light Rail. Then I discovered from Wikipedia that DLR trains are only 2 or 3 cars, yet the total number of passengers carried is large. All quite puzzling for this outside.
----
Thanks for beginning the topic.
Joe McMahon

[ExCon90]

There's an interesting BBC video under Passenger Rail, SEPTA (and PATCO), on the thread entitled "Why are we committed to catenary?", posted by limejuice on Jan. 15 at 11.54 am (I don't know how to link), depicting the operation. I also deplore the disappearance of the distinction between Tube and Sub-Surface, but nowadays even official announcements from London Underground simply lump everything together as the Tube.

[johnthefireman]

As a railway enthusiast I fully agree with you about the distinction between tube and sub-surface lines, but as a Londoner I have to say that "the Tube" has been the common colloquial term for the whole system for a long time, probably at least since I was a kid there in the late 1950s.

Much of it is open to the air, especially the outer suburban parts. I used to live on the eastern end of the Central Line, where it's mostly above ground, and many of the stations are quaint old Great Eastern Railway designs from long before they got taken over by the underground. Yet most of the Central Line is deep tube.

The DLR is one of the newer additions and it's true that the trains are very short, although they're now twice as long as they were when first built, which involved lengthening many of the platforms. But trains are very frequent. On other parts of the tube I remember counting less than 60 seconds between the departure of one train and the arrival of the next during peak morning and evening periods. I also remember that rush of wind as the oncoming train pushed the air out of the tube ahead of it into the station area. You could feel the train coming long before you could see or hear it.

[george matthews]

There are two types of Underground network in London. The tube network consists of small trains. There is a wider and larger structural gauge system: District and Metropolitan, though both use the same track and electrical system. The steam train ran on the Circle line, part of the wider structural system. This network was originally a steam network.

50 years ago when I used to travel to college on the Metropolitan line I used to see steam powered freight trains occasionally (maintenance trains). They used connections to the British Rail lines which mostly no longer exist.

[george matthews]

There are two types of Underground network in London. The tube network consists of small trains. There is a wider and larger structural gauge system: District and Metropolitan, though both use the same track and electrical system. The steam train ran on the Circle line, part of the wider structural system. This network was originally a steam network.

50 years ago when I used to travel to college on the Metropolitan line I used to see steam powered freight trains occasionally (maintenance trains). They used connections to the British Rail lines which mostly no longer exist. I think there was also a service of steam hauled passenger trains which left the Circle Line at Kings Cross to travel on the surface lines. That service probably ended about 1959. In the 1960s the developments post-war phased out the use of steam over the entire national network.

[george matthews]

There are two types of Underground network in London. The tube network consists of small trains. There is a wider and larger structural gauge system: District and Metropolitan, though both use the same track and electrical system. The steam train ran on the Circle line, part of the wider structural system. This network was originally a steam network.

50 years ago when I used to travel to college on the Metropolitan line I used to see steam powered freight trains occasionally (maintenance trains). They used connections to the British Rail lines which mostly no longer exist.