ITS VENTILATION
At the commencement of its career the Tube’s atmosphere and temperature were remarkably sweet and equable, not varying much from 62° either in summer or winter. During a spell of hot weather it felt delightfully cool, and when east winds blew it was warm compared with the atmosphere outside.
Trips in the Tube were at one time seriously suggested for the cure of various maladies as a modification of that usual last resource of the medical profession, “change of air.”
Before the advent of the Tube, however, many fond mothers with little faith in the pharmacopœia regarded the Underground as a sanatorium for children’s complaints. Tunnel air, they affirmed, was good for croup, whooping-cough, and various other ailments. A doctor travelling on the Metropolitan once noticed a woman in the same compartment pull down the window upon entering a tunnel and hold outside a child she was carrying, so that the youngster might get the full benefit of the foul atmosphere. When the doctor inquired the reason for this extraordinary performance, she told him that “tunnel air” had been found to be a complete cure for croup. And only the other day an East End mother was discovered by a guard giving her baby two rounds on the Inner Circle because she had been told by a herbalist and bone-setter that a sulphurous atmosphere was good for whooping-cough.
But the ideal state of things in the Tube did not continue, and accusations respecting its ventilation began to be whispered about and finally proclaimed from the housetops (vide Chapter XIX). However, practical steps were taken to ensure its efficiency, and at the last meeting of shareholders the chairman said that the Company had now a better character for ventilation than any other company in London.
At Bond Street Station a powerful fan has been placed at the base of the lift shaft, which, under ordinary pressure, removes the vitiated atmosphere from the permanent ways, fresh air taking its place at the various halting-places. The fan, forty-eight inches in diameter, and electrically driven, displaces 30,000 cubic feet of air per minute, and is capable of entirely exhausting the tunnels in a fraction over three minutes. The fan is worked every night after the trains have ceased running, and travellers by the early trains literally breathe the freshest of fresh air.
If a train in the Central should break down and come to a stop in the tunnel, though it would not, of course, be run into—the block system making that all but impossible—it might be necessary for the passengers to get out. The question naturally asked is, “How shall they alight? And where shall they go when they have alighted?” A fact that not every traveller knows is that a narrow path at the side of the rails leads to the nearest station, which cannot be more than a quarter of a mile off, so that no serious athletic feat is required to get out at the rear of the train and walk along the Tube.
ITS ANNUAL SALE OF LOST ARTICLES
Like the great trunk-lines, the Central has an annual sale of articles left in the carriages and not claimed; but the collection differs considerably from the miscellaneous assortment brought together by, say, the Great Northern or Great Western. Heavy impedimenta are, as might be expected, absent; but who could have been the owners of the 25 bottles of whisky, the 13 boxes of cigars and cigarettes, the 300 ladies’ umbrellas, and the 264 gentlemen’s umbrellas, the walking-sticks innumerable, the 150 pairs of spectacles and eyeglasses (showing that the light is so good that reading is a favourite way of passing the time), the 44 fur necklets, 920 pairs of gloves and 14 muffs, the 166 empty purses, and the multitude of books, chiefly fiction? While every week someone very mysteriously leaves behind a spirit-bottle—evidently recently emptied of its contents—enclosed in cardboard and done up in a neat parcel.
How the Twopenny Tube, and others like it, were constructed will be described in the next chapter.