On 21 Feb, 18:22, "Bill Again" wrote:
"Christopher A.Lee" wrote in message

...



On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:20:51 +0000, Graeme Wall
wrote:

In message
"Brian Watson" wrote:

A contributor to The Robert Elms Show on BBC Radio London has just
claimed
there are secret underground train lines between Buckingham Palace and
various other London sites.

Nifty conspiracy theory, or fact?

There are certainly tunnels connecting a large number of sites in Central
London but none of the maps I have access to show them connecting to Buck
House. Some of them are PO (now BT) cable tunnels and others connect the
various government 'citadels' under the various ministry buildings.
However
to the best of my knowledge non are equipped with rails.

The usual source of these stories is that someone has heard of these
tunnels
and also of the Post Office railway and put 2 and 2 together and made 5.

The Victoria Line passes under Buck House. I have heard stories of
there being an access for mergencies.

Having been around when the Victoria line was being built I remember the
discussions in the Press of the time. The story was that the direct route
under Buck House was turned down and the line actually makes a big (and
expensive) curve around it. Phil is alleged to have said, " I'm not having
their bloody trains run under my house, thank you!"

Bill


Ha! A quite believable story.

However I wonder whether it is true. If you take a look at the
Victoria line's route as marked on the central London bus map then it
is shown as passing under the Buck House garden but not the building
itself - this makes sense as the line needs to turn so as to be
aligned to run southeast from Victoria station towards Pimlico and
Vauxhall.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/centlond.pdf

Of course this alignment may have been chosen to specifically avoid
running under the palace (or the map could be wrong!). However, taking
a look at a street map, even if the options were to take a direct
route under the western corner of the building and taking a deviating
course to avoid the palace, the deviation would not need to be "a big
(and expensive) curve around it [the palace]" but a slight kink.


As to the story of evacuating the Royal Family in an emergency there are
two
runways in Central London capable of taking an aircraft of the Queens
Floght
assuming the latter still exists.

The Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens is the obvious one.

I wonder if that's one of the two that Christopher has in mind -
perhaps he might share his thoughts with us...