Press clipping forwarded FYI, by Alan (in Brussels) :

The Subterranean Railway
by Christian Wolmar
351pp, Atlantic, £17.99
Saturday January 8, 2005
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/...385492,00.html

Newcomers to London life can't help but be struck by Londoners' love-hate
relationship with the Underground. You meet people from Muswell Hill who
boast that it's great because the tube doesn't go there, and people from
Hackney who moan that Hackney is rubbish... er, because the tube doesn't go
there. You meet strap-hanging commuters at the end of their tethers, for
whom the thought of one more day underground is enough to make them want to
hurl themselves under a train; and you'll meet lots of Underground buffs,
hip young professionals who hang Simon Patterson's Great Bear on their walls
and spend their spare time going to open days at Neasden depot or on "Steam
on the Met" jollies. Most railway enthusiasts, like swingers, keep their
enthusiasm secret. The Underground is different; the Underground is cool,
and the people who love it are quite happy to be outed. In order to satisfy
their needs and desires there are hundreds of books, beautifully and
expensively produced, that tell the story of the Underground from any number
of possible angles. Into this crowded market comes a new book from Christian
Wolmar.

Wolmar is Britain's foremost expert on public transport issues, and he has
ventured underground before, in his excellent Down the Tube, a devastating
attack on what went wrong with the tube and why. This new book is an
entry-level history of the Underground, and it becomes clear from reading it
that the faults of the system were built into it from the moment the first
sod was turned. Rivalries between companies meant that lines often
duplicated one another without providing proper interchanges (next time you
change at Hammersmith from the District to the Hammersmith and City line,
curse Victorian laissez-faire economics as you try to cross Hammersmith
Broadway); lack of capital meant that the lines were not built large enough
(this is why the underground shuts down at night; if London's system had
allowed for four tracks instead of two, like in New York, the trains could
run at night on some tracks while engineers worked on others); delays are
caused by timorous tube builders, who followed the crooked line of streets
when they could have tunnelled safely straight under buildings, avoiding the
need for slow running on curves. Wolmar's book will tell you, too, why the
Underground, like black cabs, barely ventures south of the river.

SNIP rest of review by Ian Marchant