Victoria Line; Out with the old, in with the new!

It may seem an implausible tale to tell today but when the Victoria Line opened in 1968 it was the greatest thing to happen to London in a very long time and represented the cutting edge of technology! It had dramatic looking automatically controlled trains with gleaming bodies with a tapered front, no driver side doors and unpainted brushed aluminium bodies.


Victoria Line 1967 Stock with the brushed aluminium skin

Amazingly it still had the first trains, known as 1967 Stock, which operated on the original line. Now after 43 years and millions of miles later these are being replaced. The 1967 Tube Stock was designed specifically for the Victoria Line. It was the first train in the world to be specially designed for a fully automatic railway designed from scratch.



Original 67 Stock interior


The line is equipped with an Automatic Train Operation system (ATO); the train operator (driver) closes the train doors and presses a pair of "start" buttons, and if the way ahead is clear, the ATO drives the train at a safe speed to the next station and stops it there. This system has operated since the line opened in 1968, making the Victoria line the world's first full-scale automatic railway.


Trains being produced at Derby: the Class 378 Electrostar for London Overground, the S-stock MOVIA for London Underground's SubSurface Lines and the MOVIA metro for London Underground's Victoria Line.

After 43 years in service the '67 stock Victoria Line trains are being replaced. 30th June 2011 was the last scheduled serviced, for two trips between Seven Sisters and Brixton. The videos offer comparisons between the 1967 Stock (so called because it entered service in 1968!) and the replacement 2009 Stock (so called because it entered service in 2010!)

For the full story of the Victoria Line see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/04/onwards-to-victoria.html

The London Bombings

Six years ago today four bombers brought death and carnage to London's transport system. The attacks by four suicide bombers on the London Transport system on 7th July 2005 were the largest mass murder in Britain in peacetime killing 52 passengers on The Tube and on the No. 30 bus at Tavistock Square and injuring 800 more, many seriously.

The victims are not forgotten

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/remembering-london-bombings.html

Onwards to Victoria!

Victoria Line 1967 Stock with the brushed aluminium skin

It may seem an implausible tale to tell today but when the Victoria Line opened in 1968 it was the greatest thing to happen to London in a very long time and represented the cutting edge of technology! It had dramatic looking automatically controlled trains with gleaming bodies with a tapered front, no driver side doors and unpainted brushed aluminium bodies. It was the first new deep tube line to be built across Central London since 1907 and the first major investment in the Tube since the Second World War – that’s over 29 years! It is also the only truly “underground” Underground Line with only its Depot at Northumberland Park being above ground and every station (except Pimlico, which was a late addition) is an interchange station.


Original 67 Stock interior

It looks different today as the graffiti plague which began in 1984 put paid to the somewhat beautiful brushed aluminium skin on the trains, the short sighted budgetary cuts during construction compromised the utility of the line later and it is a victim of its own success with crowded trains and at Victoria the Underground’s busiest station with over 71 million passengers a year. You have to ask, where did all these people go before the Victoria Line was built? Its very success shows how much it has contributed to London’s economy since it first opened.


Victoria Line Route - Click for larger image

Amazingly it still has the first trains, known as 1967 Stock, which operated on the original line. Now after 43 years and millions of miles later these are being replaced and the London Transport Museum is organising a special Railtour on the 15th May to mark the passing of these remarkable trains. The line is equipped with an Automatic Train Operation system (ATO); the train operator (driver) closes the train doors and presses a pair of "start" buttons, and if the way ahead is clear, the ATO drives the train at a safe speed to the next station and stops it there. This system has operated since the line opened in 1968, making the Victoria line the world's first full-scale automatic railway. It is worth remembering in these days of Outsourcing (a process where a company gives its brain away and then pays double to get it back!) that the design and testing both of the trains and signalling system was done in house by London Underground with great success. These trains were also used for the new stock on the Piccadilly and Bakerloo Lines.


1967 Stock - National Railway Museum, York

But more than that the trains were unique for despite the budgetary cut backs which resulted in a somewhat drab grey and blue tiled interior each station had individual tiled designs commissioned from artists in the seat recesses to represent the history of the locality.


Warren Street Motif: Warren, by Alan Fletcher.


The line's origins can be traced back to the Second World War when it was included in the 1943 County of London Plan. The constraints of the war years and the subsequent re-organisation and nationalisation of London's transport caused the plan to be postponed, and Parliamentary Powers to build the line were not obtained until 1955. Further delays in obtaining funds meant that actual construction work did not start until 1962.


Euston Motif: original Euston railway station Doric arch by Tom Eckersley.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/euston-arch.html

The Victoria Line runs for 13 miles from Walthamstow Central at its northern end to Brixton in the south. It was opened in sections, north terminus first, between 1968 and 1971, and so the Victoria Line sections of all these stations date from then. The first section was built between Finsbury Park and Manor House, but after testing was complete and the rest of the tunnels were completed, it was decided not to open a set of Victoria Line platforms at Manor House.


Blackhorse Road Motif: Black Horse by Hans Unger

The Victoria Line was built to relieve congestion on other lines, and so some of the interchanges were designed to minimise walking distance. This was done by either building the new tunnels next to the existing ones, or by swapping which line used which platform. The effect is that several interchanges allow you to continue a journey in the same direction, that is to say change from one northbound or southbound platform to the other, by walking about ten metres. The exception is Euston, where instead the northbound Victoria platform is intimately linked to the southbound Northern line (Bank branch) platform and vice versa. These platform-level interchanges of the Victoria line can be seen on a track layout diagram.




Refurbished 1967 Stock - Painted exterior and refurbished interior

As a theoretical rough guide, trains take two minutes to pass from each station to the next, and with 16 stations on the line it takes just over half an hour to travel from Walthamstow to Brixton. However, due to extended stops in tunnels and at stations, trains can take twice that time to make the entire journey. The Victoria Line was the world's first automatic passenger railway, and the drivers simply operate the doors and then press the start button.


Tottenham Hale Station - An interchange for the Stansted Express


Tottenham Hale Motif: Ferry across the River Lea, by Edward Bawden

The Victoria line is a deep-level London Underground line running from the south (Zone 2) to the north-east (Zone 3) of London. It is coloured light blue on the Tube map and, in terms of the average number of journeys per mile, is the busiest line on the network. It is the only line on the Underground, except for the two-station Waterloo & City line, that is operated entirely underground, the only section of track to emerge above ground being the part from Seven Sisters to the line's depot at Northumberland Park.


Seven Sisters Motif: Seven elm trees, by Hans Unger

The line has hump-backed stations which allow trains to store gravitational potential energy as they slow down and release it when they leave a station. This provides an energy saving of 5% and makes the trains run 9% faster. 183 million passengers use the Victoria line each year making it the fourth busiest line on the network. Overcrowding has been a big issue on the Victoria Line and is almost inevitable given the station interchanges on the line. If the moribund Chelsea–Hackney line were to be built it would relieve a lot of congestion on the Victoria line, offering an alternative route across Central London between Victoria and King's Cross St. Pancras.


Brixton Motif: A ton of bricks, by Hans Unger.


Victoria Line's southern terminus at Brixton

When the Victoria line was constructed, severe budget restrictions were imposed and as a result the station infrastructure standards were lower than on older lines and on later extension projects. Examples of these lower standards include narrower than usual platforms and undecorated ceilings at Walthamstow Central, Blackhorse Road and Tottenham Hale, adversely affecting lighting levels. At most stations there is still a concrete staircase between the up and down escalators, where an additional escalator could be installed. The lack of a third escalator can cause severe congestion at peak times. However in recent years an additional escalator has been installed in place of the fixed stairway at Brixton (2004) and Vauxhall (2006). The line was originally to go to Wood Street (Walthamstow) but this was dropped to reduce the budget at a late stage.


Leaf motif; Green Park

The oldest group of tube stock is the 1967/72 type. The 1967 Tube Stock was introduced for the opening of the Victoria Line with automatic train operation (ATO). Although the car body was to the same general dimensions as the earlier tube stocks, there were a number of differences in style and layout such as wrap-round cab windows, double-glazed passenger windows and the provision of all-longitudinal seats in the trailer cars. Cabs were not provided with side doors for safety reasons.


Vauxhall Motif: Old Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens by George Smith


Highbury & Islington Motif: Highbury House, by Edward Bawden

The 1972 Stocks, consisting of two versions known as MkI and MkII, were 7-car versions of the 8-car 1967 Stock. They were designed to operate on manually driven lines with a possible future conversion to automatic operation in mind. They never had this fitted but the MkII stock is now working on the Bakerloo Line under One-Person Operation with manual driving. The Mark I version has been disbanded but some cars have been used to supplement the Victoria and Bakerloo fleets following suitable conversion.


Trains being produced at Derby: the Class 378 Electrostar for London Overground, the S-stock MOVIA for London Underground's SubSurface Lines and the MOVIA metro for London Underground's Victoria Line.

The 1967 Stock is now being replaced with new 2009 Stock. The 2009 stock is a type of London Underground train built by Bombardier Transportation as part of their Movia family at their Litchurch Lane Works in Derby, England. Forty-seven 8-car units are being built for the Victoria line, replacing the original 1967 Tube Stock.


Victoria Line Northern terminus at Walthamstow Central






Walthamstow Central Motif: William Morris design, by Julia Black

Construction of the new trains is on-going and rollout will continue until 2011, when all 1967 Stock trains will have been replaced. The first 2009 Stock train entered passenger service on 21 July 2009 and a new train is now entering service every two weeks. The Victoria Line trains are now effectively in "one in, one out" mode, meaning that as soon as an 09 is dropped off at Northumberland Park depot, a 67 is sent to be scrapped by Booths from Acton Works.

The '67 stock has been running on the Victoria line for 43 years since the line opened in 1968. It will be decommissioned this summer as part of the Victoria line upgrade. To mark this historic event there will be a special offline tour on Sunday 15 May. Victoria line General Manager John Doyle said:

"The tour is an exciting and unusual event. It will be the first and last time passengers can travel by '67 stock on the District, Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines. The tour marks the end of more than 40 years of sterling service given to London by the '67 stock and any money we are able to make from the tour will be donated to the Railway Children charity."


2009 Stock at Euston

So what’s so special about the 1967 Stock Railtour? First; because it is the first time passengers have been conveyed by ’67 stock on the Piccadilly, District and Metropolitan lines. Last; because it will never happen again! This unique tour marks the end of more than 40 years of sterling service given to London by the '67 stock.

The train will leave Seven Sisters on 15th May at 10:13 and return at approximately 16:00, taking the following route:

Seven Sisters platform 4 – Northumberland Park staff platform
Northumberland Park staff platform – Uxbridge via Finsbury Park and Rayners Lane
Uxbridge – Barons Court siding via Rayners Lane and Acton Town
Barons Court siding – Ealing Broadway via Acton Town
Ealing Broadway – Seven Sisters via Acton Town and Finsbury Park

Tickets

Tickets are priced at £30, with all profits going to the Railway Children Charity. Please note that as this is a full day trip, with limited comfort breaks available, we do not recommend that children are brought on the tour. However, if you do wish to bring children on the trip, the prices are: 0-5 yrs – Free and Under 16’s - £15 (all children MUST be accompanied by an adult).


Ticket issued on 1 September 1968, the first day of service of the Victoria line

For tickets, please contact London Transport Museum bookings office on 020 7565 7298 or Book Online;

http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk


Stockwell Motif: The Swan, representing the nearby pub, by Abram Games


Victoria Motif: Blue cameo of Queen Victoria on pink background by Edward Bawden

So farewell to the unique Design Icon which is the 1967 Stock. Hopefully with the new trains, the upgraded signalling and the “new stations” due at Victoria, Euston and Oxford Circus the Victoria Line will regain some of the admiration it enjoyed on opening in 1968 as the first new tube line in London in 61 years.

For the history of the Tube see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

And see "TUBE BLOGS" in the Blog sidebar >>>>>>>>>>>>

Bethnal Green Tube Disaster – Memorial Service

The proposed "Stairway to Heaven" Memorial

68 years ago on March 3rd. 1943 in the largest loss of civilian life in a single non-military incident during World War II, 173 people perished at Bethnal Green tube station. They are not forgotten.





Today on Sunday 6th March 2011 a Commemoration Service for the 68th anniversary of the Bethnal Green tube disaster took place at St. John on Bethnal Green Church (next door to the tube station) at 2pm. There was a blessing at the top of the stairs where everyone died and relatives and survivors were encouraged to lay flowers or wreaths to their loved ones. Refreshments and a chance for locals and supporters to reminisce after the Service were provided inside the church and there was an exhibition of articles, photographs and other information about the Bethnal Green tube disaster.

Here is an eyewitness testimony of what happened that fateful night;



“Bethnal Green tube station was used as a shelter. The line was boarded over there. Women worked down there on war work. They were safe from the bombing. I think the warning went, and they opened up with rockets. They reckon people started running in the station, causing a panic. They reckon probably a woman with a child had a bundle of clothing, fell, and then the other people fell on top of her, and they all piled up until there was a hundred and seventy-three people that was killed. The next day the air raid warden asked us to look at the ones they couldn’t identify. There was a pile of bodies, and the police uncovered their faces in case you might recognise people. Out of fifty or sixty people there, there was nothing I could recognise.”

Albert Garrett

The Memorial Fund is dedicated to building a “Stairway to Heaven” to properly commemorate the victims. Its patron Tommy Walsh was there and the names of all those who died were read out. Here is the detail of the fundraising to date and the proposed memorial; Please help by contributing to this cause.


Tommy Walsh, Patron of the charity

http://www.stairwaytoheavenmemorial.org/

Here is the coverage of the service on ITV News; the BBC didn’t bother to turn up.

http://www.itv.com/london/memorial53354/

Commemorative Plaque


In Memory of the 173 Men, Women and Children who lost their lives on the evening of
Wednesday 3rd March 1943 descending these steps to Bethnal Green underground air raid shelter
Not forgotten.

For the full story of the Bethnal Green Disaster see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/02/bethnal-green-tube-disaster.html



Here is a short documentary of the Disaster and the proposed memorial. It includes an interview with Alf Morris who as a 13 year old was the last survivor to be dragged alive from the crush.

Paolozzi @ Tottenham Court Road

Anybody who has been up around London’s Tottenham Court Road Tube Station lately (known to Tube aficionados as TCR) will have noticed that the Astoria Ballroom, venue for many hedonistic concerts and druggy 21st. birthday parties, and much else has gone to be replaced by a huge building site in preparation for Crossrail. One consequence of the £1 billion transformation of Tottenham Court Road station (to expand the ticket hall by almost six times and prepare the station for Crossrail) is the threat to the fabulous murals by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. The late Scottish sculptor and "pop artist" was commissioned by London Underground in the early 1980s to help brighten up its stations. He took his inspiration from the jazz clubs of Soho, and the mosaic on the westbound Central line platforms features saxophones echoing nearby Denmark Street which is full of musical retailers. Other mosaics reflect the hustle and bustle of the city with running legs and other motifs of the busy lives of commuters.




Sir Eduardo unveiled a giant Newton statue at the British Library in 1997 in the presence of prime minister's wife Cherie Blair

His designs help passengers to momentarily forget that Tottenham Court Road is, in the main, an overcrowded interchange between the Northern and Central lines (it is used by 147,000 passengers a day). Instead they feel like they are part of Underground history, the murals having the look of something far older than their 27 years (the work was completed in 1984). However these are very important artworks as the mosaic murals that adorn seemingly every available surface at Tottenham Court Road station are the work one of the great British artists and sculptors of the twentieth century, whose work is often considered a forerunner to that of the later Pop Artists. Indeed he was the first artist to use the word “Pop” in an artwork. Paolozzi's I was a Rich Man's Plaything (1947) is considered the first standard bearer of Pop Art and first to display the word "pop". Paolozzi showed the collage in 1952 as part of his groundbreaking Bunk! series presentation at the initial Independent Group meeting in London.


"I was a rich man's plaything" - 1947


Bunk!


Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi, KBE, RA (7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005), was a Scottish sculptor and artist. He was a major figure in the international art world working without compromise on his own interpretation and vision of the world around us all. Paolozzi investigated how we can fit into the modern world to resemble our fragmented civilization through imagination and fantasy. By the dramatic juxtaposition of ideas in his work, he let us see the confusion as well as the inspiration.




Paolozzi's Head @ The Design Museum


Northern Line passage


Born to Italian Immigrants in 1926 he had a long association with London prior to his death in 2005. He studied at both St Martins and the Slade School of Fine Art and, after spending several years in Paris in the late forties, returned to London and ran a studio out of Chelsea. Beginning with his work on cooling tower panels in Pimlico during the seventies, and ultimately culminating in the truly wonderful Newton at the British Library in the nineties, Paolozzi left an impressive imprint on the Capital.


Main Entrance to the station before demolition




Paolozzi's signature



For eight months from April 2011, Northern line services will not stop at Tottenham Court Road to allow essential works to be completed at the station. Contractors will be working 24 hours to rebuild sections of the tunnel lining and dig new connecting passages. This will allow new escalators to be connected to the platforms. The station will remain open and Central line services will run as normal. Customers wishing to use the Northern line should use nearby Leicester Square or Goodge Street stations. Something similar will happen with the Central line after the Olympics. The station is due to be completed by 2016 (and will remain open for as much of the project as possible). Project engineers admit they have no idea what effect the construction work will have on the tiled walls.




Escalator entrance


Face

London Underground, which dates from 1863, of course have many Listed Buildings including their iconic HQ at 55, Broadway and an active Art on the Underground programme and are well used to conservation issues. They have issued this statement.


Leg





“London Underground highly values the Paolozzi mosaics within Tottenham Court Road Underground station, and alongside the Tube’s ‘Art on the Underground’ programme, we have been working closely with the Paolozzi Foundation as the Tottenham Court Road upgrade progresses. We are taking great care to protect and preserve these wonderful mosaics as we upgrade Tottenham Court Road station.





"As part of the upgrade of the station, major engineering works are required in the platform tunnels to strengthen them before new passageways are dug. This will mean that some sections of existing mosaic tiles will have to be carefully removed and reinstated once the tunnelling work is finished. Where small sections do have to be permanently removed from their current location, they will be preserved with the aim of being used elsewhere on the station in the future.”



The new TCR underground




My own view is, as wonderful as the murals are, they should never have been done. A deep Tube station is fundamentally a utilitarian pipeline for people and trains and simplicity of finishes and ease of circulation is really what people want with the design statements confined to the entrances. This is what the great architect Charles Holden achieved with his iconic work, especially on the Piccadilly Line on the 1930’s. The new stations on the Jubilee Line Extension in 1999 also took this approach and achieved a new architectural standard with Westminster Station winning the “Building of the Year” award and Canary Wharf and North Greenwich in particular providing a great sense of spectacle. The Tube has a great tradition of wall design with many of the early stations having unique tile designs which served as a visual location indicator to arriving passengers.


Northern Line mosaic


Cow






However covering every surface with artwork like at Paolozzi’s TCR makes you something of a hostage to fortune. For in what is essentially a utilitarian context you will need to make changes, add / remove equipment rewire, retrunk and so on and every time there is a danger to the mosaics. If you ask TCR users what they want they will tell you it is a station with better access, less claustrophobic and with more sense of space. The renovations will undoubtedly provide this and in making for a better ambience they will hopefully allow Paolozzi’s vibrant and exciting murals to be better seen and appreciated in a more comfortable and less stressed environment. For, whatever about the advisability of doing them in the first place, they are a unique and exciting legacy of one of Britain’s most exciting 20th Century artists. Indeed they are rendered even more exciting by being in such a mundane and unexpected location, one of London’s busiest Tube stations. This is a magnificent display of “Art for the People.”


Bird


Rotunda




Entrance to Crossrail at Centrepoint TCR

London Underground appears mindful of protecting the murals but fans of Paolozzi, and of the unique character of much of the Tube, may need to remain vigilant as the huge construction works at Tottenham Court Road station continue over many years.


The new TCR station


New Dean Street Entrance



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