Steam train back on tube track for 150-year anniversary celebrations

Test run for London Underground's anniversary sees restored locomotive
pull Victorian carriage from Earl's Court to Moorgate

Gwyn Topham, transport correspondent
The Guardian, Sunday 16 December 2012 19.00 GMT

Any bleary-eyed Londoner overlooking exposed stretches of the District
or Circle lines in the small hours of Sunday must have pinched
themselves. For the first time in more than 100 years, a steam train
was carrying passengers on the tube.

In a test run for London Underground's 150-year anniversary
celebrations, a restored original locomotive hauled a Victorian
first-class carriage – all wood and gas light fittings – from Earl's
Court to Moorgate, billowing clouds through the capital's oldest
tunnels.

As on the very first journey in 1863, railwaymen, enthusiasts and a
few dignitaries and press were aboard. But this time an audience of
overnight tube maintenance workers in orange hi-vis jackets were
lining the route with cameraphones at the ready.

Riding inside the restored Metropolitan 353 carriage was Peter Hendy,
the commissioner of Transport for London, a key player in making this
bizarre vision a reality. "This is the advantage of having your own
railway – you don't have to ask permission," he said.

The event has been three years in the making, via fundraising
campaigns, a lottery grant, and painstaking restoration of the teak
carriage's crimson upholstered seats, large windows, leather panels
and gas light fittings – the height of Victorian luxury in 1892,
before it lapsed into less exalted use. "This was a chicken coop in a
farmyard," Hendy marvelled, before -- ignoring the safety briefing of
five minutes earlier -- pulling down the windows to appreciatively
sniff in the smoke as if sampling a Havana cigar.

The original plan was for a "light steam" simulation -- where an
electric locomotive did the pushing -- but TfL insisted on "doing it
properly" with a full working locomotive, which burned approximately
one tonne of coal for Sunday morning's journey. Not everything went
smoothly -- a valve that blew at Baker Street rendered much of the
station invisible from the carriage. A soaked, sooty and bedraggled --
but delighted -- station supervisor eventually appeared through the
clouds to help wave the party on.

The weekend's recreation followed some of the route of the world's
first underground journey, from Paddington to Farringdon on 9 January
1863. With familiar echoes of modern grand construction projects such
as Crossrail, it took a decade of lobbying before parliamentary assent
was given for the tube in 1854, and construction only started in 1860.

Three years of blight and construction noise followed, the worst of it
in Euston Road, a stone's throw from the site of the planned
demolition of Camden housing estates for High Speed 2 being fought
over in the high court.

The underground opened to the public at 6am the following day -- early
enough, as the Observer reported, to "accommodate workmen, and there
was a goodly muster of that class of the public, who availed
themselves of the advantages of the line in reaching their respective
employment". By 8am there was a first morning rush-hour crush, with
would-be commuters unable to board at King's Cross. Even on day one,
some employed the commuter trick of travelling a stop outwards in
order to get a space for the journey in.

The Observer of 1863 was impressed by the "general comfort", noting
that the "novel introduction of gas [lighting] into the carriages is
calculated to dispel any unpleasant feelings which passengers,
especially ladies, might entertain against riding for so long a
distance through a tunnel".

While the steam-powered trains are an immense draw now -- £180 seats
on January's celebratory services sold by the London Transport Museum
went instantly -- passengers on the original underground trains were
not so keen, complaining about the "sulphurous atmosphere" in the
tube. Electric alternatives were pioneered in the later Victorian era,
and the last regular steam services ended in 1905. Now, as part of a
series of exhibitions and events for the anniversary, the public can
witness this extraordinary spectacle again next year.

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/de...ry?INTCMP=SRCH