wrote in message
oups.com...
Oh, I thought they used bigger shafts than that.
Was it for all the dirt and stuff that they had to dig out?

Yes. The earlier Tubes were built mainly using the shafts at each station
which were later to become the lift shafts; the City & South London, Baker
Street & Waterloo Railway and Waterloo & City Railways additionally had
shaft(s) in the Thames.

With the advent of escalators, and with stations having ever more complex
layouts, it became necessary for most stations to be constructed using
temporary or permanent shafts - for personnel access, tunnelling and removal
of spoil. In the case of the Victoria Line every station has at least one,
and in addition much of the running-tunnel construction was carried out from
sites between stations. A few were backfilled (mainly those in sensitive
sites such as the squares of Fitzroy and Cavendish), but most remain as
ventilation or cable shafts, often connected to quite complex layouts of
purpose-built or surplus passageways. The sizes vary but a typical shaft
such as Whitfield Place would be 12ft in diameter and roughly 60ft deep.

Hope that answers your question!