Tube, Train, Tram, and Car; or, Up-to-date locomotion

by Arthur H. Beavan

By permission of the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London, Ltd.

The arrangement of the seats will be somewhat different from that of the Tube. There will, of course, be corridor cars, which will be entered from the platforms, through telescopic doors; there will be also sliding doors. The gain in leg-space will be great, the centre gangway giving a clear 4 feet, and there will be fewer cross seats. Each train will hold about 338 passengers; the ventilation of the cars will be perfect; and the height sufficient for a giant. As the District tunnels are 25 feet in diameter, and 15 feet 9 inches from the rail level to the crown of the arch, there will be about 2 feet of head-room, about 2 feet 6 inches between each train, and the same between the trains and the sides of the tunnels.

Compare this with the present Inner Circle trains that carry about three hundred passengers, with gangways that, even in the first-class compartments, leave no room for incomers to avoid a leg entanglement, and whose height will hardly admit a tall man in a tall hat to stand upright. Also compare it with the dimensions of the Central’s cars, which are 39 feet long, 8 feet wide, and whose height to the middle of roof is only 7 feet 5 inches, the gangway narrow, with seats in each car for forty-eight people. The space in the cars of the City and South London, and the Waterloo and City, is still more exiguous.

It is proposed to run about twice as many trains as at present, each journey to be made in about two-thirds of the time now required; that is to say, the trains that now run about ten miles an hour will, it is anticipated, work up to at least fifteen miles; the total carrying capacity being estimated at 70,000,000 per annum, increasable, if necessary, to 100,000,000. There may be an all-night service, for the convenience of people engaged at Covent Garden market, and for journalists and others whose work lies in the vicinity of Fleet Street. A somewhat novel and economical feature will be that the trains, during the stock hours of the day, can be run in short lengths, as in the City and Waterloo Railway, and, with their triple motors divided, will resemble those strange Naidæ worms of the Annelida class that possess the power of increasing by mechanical division. They will also be able to go forward and backward without reversing the motor engines.

Brilliant will be the lighting of the cars and stations; the tunnels, too, are to be illuminated. Fresh air will be obtained by the frequent movements of the trains through the tunnels, while smoke and smuts will, of course, become things of the past. The stations, with their wide and roomy platforms, will in some cases be lengthened by fifty feet to accommodate the three-hundred-and-fifty-feet-long trains, and be thoroughly cleansed and repainted, and the tunnels may possibly be whitened by means of “spraying”—the principle adopted at the Chicago Exhibition for the finials of the pavilions.

The question of classes, fares, and tickets has not yet been settled, but we may assume that the system adopted will be somewhat like that of the Tube. The entire project closely resembles the Metropolitan Underground Railway of Paris, and the Boston Subway. Lifts are not at present contemplated, and probably their absence will be no great loss to active travellers, nor even to the “old, subdued, and slow,” for trains will so quickly succeed one another that the missing of one will involve no serious delay. Possibly, however, as time goes on, some new and convenient form of sloping footway may be adopted.

But alas! for the lovers of the beautiful, the directors, we are told, “have not decided that they will be warranted in sacrificing, on æsthetic grounds, the revenue derived from advertisements.”

Then, again, as there will be little or no waiting, even the most impatient of voyageurs will hardly need the diversion obtained by a trial of the omnipresent penny-in-the-slot machines, or the contemplation of the numerous works of art displayed on the station walls. They will not even need the bookstalls, much less to gape at the contents-bills of the daily paper.

And, provided the glass roofs be kept clean, and the atmosphere innocent of smoke and gas, might not the stations—sheltered as they are from the vagaries of weather, and brilliantly lighted—be transformed into modified winter gardens, with sturdy flowers and shrubs filling up nooks and corners, and bold paintings (frequently renewed) of distant lands, seascapes, and historical subjects, in the recesses now covered by “Reckitt’s Blue,” etc.? The frequent stopping of trains would be actually welcomed, and people would travel by the “Circle” for the sake of seeing the novelties! In fact, every station might be converted into a thing of beauty.

One other suggestion for the directors of the new Inner Circle. Cannot something be contrived in the new cars to effectually deaden the sound of the closing and opening of doors, so irritating to modern nerves, and unpleasantly associated with the “banging” in the old carriages, and the “clashing” of the telescopics in the Tubes.