Talk:History of the London Underground

Reading the beginning of this article, I am struck by the difference of emphasis between it and an article I have in the January 1963 edition of the Railway Magazine. There it clearly states that the original scheme for the MetR came about gradually, beginning with the building of Farringdon Street between 1830-1838, which is in the River Fleet valley, a most squalid area at the time. With it came proposals to put in a covered railway to function as means of getting railways from the north into close contact with the City of London. After the Great Exhibition 1851 a revised scheme was put forward, as I show in my rewrite of the start of the article. The GWR got interested - so the extension to Paddington came about. Nothing about other termini or buses though... I shall hope to complete a rewrite over the next few days Peter Shearan 18:48, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I have now completed the rewrite, incorporating new and revised info. Much of the information I have gleaned from two articles in the Jan/Feb 1963 Railway Magazine and from the 1912 Railway Year Book. Not all of the articles on individual railways - and I think it is a mistake to call them Piccadilly Line etc when discussing them in a historical sense! - contain full historical details as yet, I notice. My own article on the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways is fairly comprehensive, so I didn't see any necessity in trying to copy it here Peter Shearan 16:02, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PPP section out of date
The Public-Private Partnership section needs updating, for example it contains nothing about TfL buying Tubelines. Thryduulf (talk) 19:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

bizarre USAmerican bias
in the first paragraph we have bizzare USAmerican pseudo history the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in New York City is in no way relevant to underground rail transport, it is in no way a world first and claims it is such are just fake history made up by USAmericans, these people do need to be corrected and wikipedia needs to be about relevant facts not USA bias — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.163.45 (talk) 10:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Please calm down and refrain from making spurious allegations about the behaviour of editors. That being said, it does indeed seem undue to mention that tunnel in the lead, at the very least it belongs in a "Origins" (or something similar) section in the article itself. But since it is also completely unsourced, and it is making some very strong claims about the definitions of underground railways, I would be inclined to remove it altogether as WP:OR. At least we need some secondary reliable sources that contains all of the following information 1) the claim of Atlantic Avenue Tunnel being "the oldest subway tunnel in the world" 2) that it doesn't meet the criteria for being an "urban underground passenger-carrying railway" 3) that the London Underground does. If such a source is not found, then it qualifies as WP:SYNTHESIS and should not be included in the article. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:58, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I can not see how any "spurious allegations about the behaviour of editors" has been made, infact what other credible reasons are there to explain the behavior of the editor that added that irrelevant information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.178.163.45 (talk) 11:23, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I went through the history and figured out that the information was originally added . It was added by Peter Shearan who says he is from Kent.  This looks like it is not a US biased act at all.  GB fan 13:01, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Making claims about percieved intentions of other editors is highly discouraged. Judge edits, not editors. If the edit doesn't live up to Wikipedia policies it can be removed or changed. There simply isn't any need for drama, especially not over this kind of stuff. --Saddhiyama (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Public-Private Partnership
The article itself is big enough and we have a large section dealing with the recent history of PPP. This means that the few years 2003–2010 takes up more space than say the section on London Passenger Transport Board that deals with 1933–47, which means that it's WP:UNDUE. While the sourcing needs attention (and if taken to FA, sourced to history books rather than contemporary news sources), I suggest that this section be split out per WP:SUMMARY. Edgepedia (talk) 12:47, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Although the text re-added looked like it had sources, when I checked the sources I found sections that were unsourced, not verified by the source given and a copyright violation. I manage to move one section to the Metronet (British infrastructure company) article.
 * This article is 6000 words long, in thinking about the amount of coverage to give the subject I've looked at Day & Reed (2010) which covers the subject in four pages out of about 200 (2%). Edgepedia (talk) 17:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The current section is just over 200 words long and the article 6000 words, i.e. about 3% long. Edgepedia (talk) 18:00, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

This content was moved from London Underground, and in the process of that and other editing, some sources were lost. I've fixed most of the problems I think; if you find others, let me know. As to WP:UNDUE - this is an important episode in LU's recent history, and as such there is obviously more documentation about it. Instead of removing significant information (and in the process turning the article mostly into a history of the technical side of the Tube), expand other parts. If the article gets too big, we can talk about using summary-style. Rd232 talk 20:22, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry I jumped the gun too quickly. I removed the copyvio you restated, and replaced the tags you removed. I also replaced two sourced sentences that you removed. My opinion is that, as an overview article 6000 words is long enough. There are plenty other articles out there for the details.Edgepedia (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I've fixed the various issues (I think). I'm fine with it as it is, but if you want to create London Underground PPP, then the whole section can be moved there, and a shorter summary here will be OK. The same approach of splitting into subarticles would also make sense for other sections, like Early history of the London Underground, London Underground (1947-2000), etc. There's plenty there that can and should be expanded, and as you say, this should be an overview article. Rd232 talk 10:19, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Picture of 1890 station
I have placed a disputed decription tag on the picture at the head of the article. This cannot be a photograph of a station in 1890 because all stations before the Central London Railway opened were gas lit and it would have been quite impossible to photograph using only the station lighting with the photographic materials of the time. The Central London were the first company to light their stations electrically, and the bright Crompton arc lamps that they used made photography possible. The station shown is Queens Road which did not open until 1900. Further information at File talk:London Underground 1890.jpg. – Live Rail    &lt; Talk &gt;  16:45, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe I'm missing something but it seems a bizarre claim that the first underground railway companies that pushed the bounderies of electrical engineering resorted to the use of gas lighting in the stations. Surely they would have used their electrical supply to power electric lighting.  86.186.11.34 (talk) 11:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I might seem odd to the casual observer, but there were a number of reasons why this was the case. The City and South London Railway built a power generation station that was barely adequate to power the trains and there was certainly no spare capacity to provide electric lighting for the stations.  Mr Edison had only perfected his incandescent lamp in 1880, but it was a carbon filament lamp which was very inefficient by today's standards and it would require a considerable amount of electrical power to provide a lighting level in the station even approaching that which could be obtained with gas.  The gas mantle had been invented around the same time and this made the gas lamp as bright as the carbon lamps of the day but they required far less energy.


 * An additional problem was that the traction power was directly generated at the voltage required by the trains (500 volts DC).  For several technical reasons, incandescent lamps are impractical at voltages in excess of around 300 volts.  Although lower voltage lamps could be connected in series, one failure would darken a large part of the station (though this was the arrangement used on the trains themselves where there was much less space to light - and piping gas to moving trains was impractical anyway).


 * The Central London Railway was the first to generate its electrical power using AC (at 33 1/3 Hz). Each station was provided with its own substation and rectifier system (each placed in the bottom of the lift shaft to save having to excavate a special compartment).  The substation was not only able to provide the DC traction supply but also a lower voltage DC supply to operate the station electric arc lighting.  Such lighting had only recently become feasible because Crompton had invented a self starting and self regulating arc lamp.  Previously an arc lamp had to be manually started and required constant attention to maintain the correct distance between the carbon rods as they burnt away - clearly impractical in a station environment.  An AC supply was also available for other station equipment such as ventilation fans etc.  –  Live Rail    &lt; Talk &gt;  12:46, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

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Smoking on the London Underground.
We seem to be completely missing a small section about smoking. Something like this:

The world's first underground railway, the Metropolitan Railway, opened in London in 1863, and is where the term ‘Metro’ for a metropolitan transport system originates. It is known at the Metropolitan line today. The District Railway, now the District Line, opened in 1868. These are ‘sub-surface’ lines (rather than tube lines), and built using the ‘cut and cover’ method (huge trenches were dug, the tunnels built in brick, and then covered over again to allow roads to be reinstated).

Because the early trains were coal-burning steam trains, where possible, and particularly at stations, these ‘cuts’ were left open to allow steam and smoke to vent to the sky. The trains were carefully designed to maximize their smoke emissions in stations and minimize them in the covered tunnels. Even so, they were inevitably smoky places. To avoid additional smoke, and to avoid the risk of fires, these private companies banned smoking on their railways.

However, with the intention of not restricting people’s freedoms, the government legalized smoking on the underground. And that’s now it rested until smoking on Underground trains was banned in July 1984, and following the Oxford Circus station fire on Friday 23 November 1984, a complete ban on smoking in all underground stations was introduced in February 1985. Habits die hard, and some were still inclined to ‘light up’ on the escalators on their way out of the stations, which gave rise to the King’s Cross fire on 18 November 1987 which killed 31 people. After that the ban was more rigorously enforced and fines were introduced for offenders. Perhaps, if the government had not legalized smoking in … the King’s Cross fire might have been avoided.

I would have added this myself but, I haven't yet managed to find a reference or date for the legalisation of smoking in the 1800s or early 1900s. I may have read it in a book, but don't recollect which one. Anyone know? Thanks. FreeFlow99 (talk) 16:01, 11 July 2021 (UTC)