Subterranean Railway [Hardcover]

Christian Wolmar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2004

Since Victorian times, London's Underground has made an extraordinary contribution to the economy of the capital and has played a vital role in the daily life of generations of Londoners. This wide-ranging history of the Underground celebrates the vision and determination of the Victorian pioneers who conceived this revolutionary transport system and the men who tunnelled to make the Tube. From the early days of steam to electrification, via the Underground's contribution to twentieth-century industrial design and its role during two world wars, the story comes right in to the present with its sleek, driverless trains and the wrangles over the future of the system.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Christian Wolmar, 'Britain's most astute transport observer' (New Statesman), is a writer and broadcaster whose previous books have included Broken Rails: How Privatisation Wrecked Britain's Railways (Aurum). His most recent book is Down the Tube: The Battle For London's Underground (Aurum, 2001) He writes regularly for The Independent, Evening Standard and New Statesman, principally on railway matters, and is a frequent broadcaster on TV and radio on current affairs and news programmes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Books (October 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1843540223
• ISBN-13: 978-1843540229
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,085,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christian Wolmar is a writer and broadcaster specialising in transport. He has spent nearly all of his working life as a journalist, and was at The Independent from 1989 to 1997, mostly as transport correspondent. Although he mainly concentrates on transport matters, he covers other social policy issues and has written on a wide range of subjects ranging from cricket to the Private Finance Initiative.
After graduating from Warwick university in 1971, Christian worked on various publications including the Retail Newsagent, Marketing and the Hampstead and Highgate Express. He later moved to the New Statesman and the London Daily News and spent a year working for Camden council editing its magazine. He is currently a freelance, working regularly for a wide variety of publications including the Evening Standard, The Independent, the Yorkshire Post, and Public Finance. He has a regular column in both Transport Times and Rail and all his recent material, since 2000, is available on the website.
Christian has become one of the UK's leading commentators on transport matters and has won several awards for his work. He broadcasts frequently on radio and TV and is a regular pundit on the national news bulletins of terrestrial channels and Sky, as well as having appeared on virtually every radio news programme from World at One and the World Tonight to Radio One's NewsBeat and LBC.
Christian undertakes consultancy and advisory work for organisations seeking to understand the workings of the rail industry. Christian is also a regular speaker at conferences and is often asked to chair sessions at them. He is also available for after dinner speaking on his favourite topics, the London Underground and the railways. He speaks regularly at conferences in Europe and has twice travelled to Australia to deliver speeches.
His books include Stagecoach (1999), an account of the firm which rose from nothing to the FTSE 100 in 20 years, The Great British Railway Disaster (1997), a humorous series of anecdotes about rail privatisation, and On the Wrong Line, which is the definitive story of rail privatisation first published as Broken Rails in October 2001 and updated in 2005.
He has written two books on the London Underground, Down the Tube, an account of the Public Private Partnership, published in 2002, and The Subterranean Railway, published in 2004 but now available in paperback, which has been widely acclaimed by the critics (see the reviews on his website). His next book, Fire and Steam, a new history of the railways in Britain was published by Atlantic Books in 2006 and has been widely praised. It was the first history of the railways to be published for many years. Subsequently, he has written Blood, Iron and Gold an examination of the way that railways affected economic development and Engines of War, looking at the impact of railways on warfare. He has also produced DVDs on both The Subterranean Railway and Fire and Steam of the same title.
He is a member of the board of Cycling England, which sadly is due to be soon abolished, with a special interest in intermodal transport and uses his bicycle as his principal means of transport around London. He is also on the board of trustees of the Railway Children, a charity which helps homeless and destitute children at stations home and abroad.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creating The Gap of "Mind the Gap!", November 23, 2008

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Subterranean Railway : How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever (Paperback)

"The District (Line) ... attracted considerable negative (press) coverage with various mechanical failures and, in particular, its primitive air-operated doors which apparently had a tendency to tear off ladies' skirts, something particularly shocking to the Edwardian psyche." - from THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAY

Disclaimer: If you've never visited London and/or fallen in love with the Underground, or at least have no interest in how such mass transportation evolves, then you're likely to find THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAY excruciatingly boring. So, as is advised at the stations, just "pass along the platform", so to speak.

Having had the good fortune to enjoy Britain's capital many times, I've found the Tube to be both indispensable and an inseparable adjunct to any visit. Thus, for me, Christian Wolmar's volume about the evolution of this below-ground railway, from its inception in the mind of visionary Charles Pearson in the first half of the 19th century to the present day, was as enthralling as any couldn't-put-it-down thriller. OK, so I need to get a life.

THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAY includes two sections of black and white illustrations and photographs of the Underground both then and now, but mostly then. There's also a color section that comprises two route maps of the system from the early 20th century that are geographically correct - something I've never seen before - plus the more familiar schematic rendering of the network conceived by Harry Beck in 1931 and based on an electric circuit diagram. The version of the latter, current as of about 2006, spreads over two pages. Unfortunately the central fold of the volume rests squarely on the route of the Northern Line from Camden Town to Kennington and several stations are lost in the crease. Nevermind, I just pulled out my London A-z (Street Atlas) to get my bearings. One thing Wolmar left unexplained, though, is the odd side-loop from Leytonstone to Woodford via Fairlop that the Central line takes near its eastern terminus. What's that all about? (The unredeemably curious must consult Wikipedia.)

The narrative focuses mainly on the construction, expansion and consolidation of the various lines - all originally under separate, private ownership - beginning with the opening of the Metropolitan on January 9, 1863 to the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s. The competition between the lines sometimes went to absurd length, e.g. the dispute between the Metropolitan and District over a siding at South Kensington, as reported in the West London Advertiser:

"The District ... have run and engine and train into a siding and have actually chained it to the spot ... A day or two ago, the Metropolitan sent three engines to pull away the train and a tug of war ensued in which the chained train came off the victor ..."

As a Yank, I was impressed by the hitherto unknown (to me) fact of the enormous influence U.S. entrepreneurship and money had on the final form of the Underground as we know it today. (Bleedin' Americans, "overpaid, overfed, oversexed and over here.") Well, you must admit that America's contribution was more substantive and useful than McDonalds.

Having finished THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAY, I'm inspired to contemplate further excesses, such as to go back to London, Travelcard in hand, and ride each of the thirteen lines from one end to the other visiting all 268 stations. Ah, now that would be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure!

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history of the London Underground, September 27, 2010

By 

M. A. Krul (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Subterranean Railway (Hardcover)

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.