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"The Subterranean Railway" - Wolmar
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 |
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