It was necessary to make use, somehow, of the open space between the Mansion House, the Bank, and the Royal Exchange—an ideal spot for a central railway station. But how was it to be effected? For years the Civic Fathers had contemplated the construction of subways for the safety and convenience of foot-passengers at this, which has been termed the busiest—as it is almost the most dangerous—spot in the world, though I doubt whether in the year 1903 Piccadilly Circus does not run it hard.
The Central Railway Company approached the Corporation on the subject, and eventually it was agreed between the parties that the Railway Company, in return for being allowed the privilege of constructing their station beneath the open space, without payment, should make the public subways, and hand them over in perpetuity to the City.
So for many months the pavement in front of the Royal Exchange was disfigured by a lofty wooden hoarding, which completely concealed a shaft, wherein some mysterious work was progressing. But beyond this there was no outward indication of what was going on below; and, although the entire roadway in front of the Mansion House was being undermined, the vast traffic continued as usual.
Arranging this station proved to be one of the stiffest bits of engineering work ever attempted. Drain-pipes were ubiquitous—a perfect tangle that had to be diverted. There were old disused and long-forgotten pipes, electric cables, hydraulic power pipes, pneumatic tubes, gas and water mains—a maze and wilderness of underground communications. These were all rearranged in a special pipe-tunnel, 14 feet wide. Then, at a depth of about 20 feet, the booking-office was built, bit by bit, of steel-work, which had previously been temporarily put together in a field to ensure its fitting exactly into the excavation prepared for its accommodation—an area 145 feet one way and 75 feet the other, its outline being on the curve. Its roof, consisting of girders supporting steel troughing, was filled up with concrete, and finally with asphalte, upon which thousands of people pass daily without realising what is below them. Access to the booking-office is gained by numerous entrances viâ the public subway: two on the Royal Exchange pavement, two at the bottom of Mansion House Place, one at the Poultry corner, and one at Walbrook, one in front of the Safe Deposit City buildings, two each at the corners of Princes Street and Cornhill, and one at St. Mary Woolnoth Church. The entire arrangement reminds one of a mole’s subterranean fortress, with its galleries for entrance and exit branching off in various directions.
These subways, immense conveniences which should be adopted at every rond-point in London—though it is a strange fact that habitués of the City seldom use them, they being patronised chiefly by the “work-girl” and by casual visitors to the central “square mile”—are 15 feet wide and 9 feet high, are lined with glazed brick, and have electric-lighted stairways at the above-mentioned places.
DESCRIPTION OF THE RAILWAY
Some fifty feet below the Bank of England Station are the twin-tunnels and their platforms, approached by five lift shafts of twenty feet, and one stairway shaft of eighteen feet diameter; at a deeper level still are the tubes of the City and South London Railway, crossing the City en route to Islington.
These great passenger lifts work with wonderful smoothness (facile descensus Averno est), and without them no fewer than ninety-three steps would have to be painfully descended.
We are all familiar by this time with the other ten surface stations of the Twopenny Tube (at the Post Office, Marble Arch, etc.). They are nearly all alike, and look as if they were waiting for a substantial and lofty building to be erected upon them, and have little claim to architectural beauty. The platforms, necessarily rather contracted in area, are clean and bright, owing to the extensive use of opalite tiling and glazed bricks, ever spotless, and practically indestructible. Each train consists of six eight-wheeled bogie-cars, 45½ feet long, with well-upholstered seats, arranged longitudinally and crosswise, for forty-eight passengers. The lighting is effected by means of eight sixteen-candle-power incandescent lamps, supplemented by small shaded electric lights, excellent for reading by. The windows, of course, do not open, but practicable ventilating louvres are arranged above them. Entrance is obtained at each end of the car, and the telescopic gates are cleverly and expeditiously manipulated by the attendants. Straps are placed along rods on each side of the roof to aid passengers in traversing the cars, and above the seats are racks for parcels, etc.
The electric locomotives[4] are curious in shape, with the driver’s cabin in the middle, and a backward and forward slope for the apparatus looking like gigantic coal-scuttles back to back. They have eight wheels, and are fitted with motors, one for each axle. The current is collected from a central third rail by means of two cast-iron shoes which rub along it, and is led through an automatic circuit-breaker and switched to the controller in the driver’s cabin, thence to the motors, returning to the track rails through the wheels. The total weight of a locomotive is about forty-four tons, and the average speed is about fourteen miles an hour, the running time from the Bank to the western terminus being twenty-four minutes.