European Railroad Discussion > On the Yerkes Tube

Charles Yerkes, the New York financier formed the Underground Electric Railways Company of London in 1900 and through it financed the purchase and electrification of the Metropolitan District Railway and the construction of three deep level tube lines; the Baker Street and Waterloo, the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton and the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead. Today they are the core of the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern Lines. Modern Londoners and those visiting the city owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Mr Yerkes and his vision.

Yerkes employed two architects to design the stations of his new railways, Harry Wharton Ford on the District Railway and Leslie W Green on the three new tube lines. The Green stations are instantly recognisable, clad in ox-blood red faience tiles they are a distinctive feature of the London Underground. Not all survive, some closed, others were rebuilt and others had no surface buildings in the first place or shared a station with another railway. At platform level too, they all exhibited similar characteristics, such as the station name picked out in tiles. The tile designs were different at each station but in the 100+ years since these lines opened the tile friezes have been restored or replaced a number of times, sometimes with not very pleasing results. But today London Underground treats its heritage very seriously and in recent years a number of Green stations have received very sympathetic restoration.

Unfortunately Leslie W Green didn't live to see his stations grow up, he died at the age of 33 in 1908 of TB but many hundreds of thousands of commuters and visitors to London pass unwittingly though his buildings every day of the year.

I took these two pictures this evening, firstly the Northbound platform at Kentish Town with a High Barnet train arriving and, secondly, the station building at Tufnell Park, the next station up the line. Although the stations were all very similar, they were designed for their particular site and so none is the mirror image of any other. The buildings are modern in construction - a steel frame capable of supporting the lift mechanism on the first floor and the opportunity to sell the air rights for further construction above the station, which has happened at a number of stations in the inner city area but not at Tufnell Park or Kentish Town. Tufnell Park still retains its lifts but at Kentish Town they were replaced by escalators, although the building still retains the characteristic semi circular windows to the upper floor.

These stations and the later ones by Charles Holden and others in the modern style on the extensions opened in the 1920s and 1930s are as much a characteristic of London as red buses, black taxis and policemen in silly helmets.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/14 01:24 by 86235.

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Thanks for the photos Nick. I truly love the style of the Tube stations, and marveled at how deep some of the platforms are. And I assume mostly dug by hand.

Is the a good book on the history of the Underground out there?

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You could try this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Subterranean-Railway-Underground-Changed-Forever-ebook/dp/B002ROKQQK/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403805494&sr=1-4&keywords=christian+wolmar but it's not a typical railway history full of semi technical details. It's social history but even that isn't a totally fair evaluation.

I would certainly recommend Wolmar's The Subterranean Railway, he is a journalist and it is written in a journalistic style, so it's not a technical book at all but it does explain how the system came to be as it is and the personalities involved - rivals James Staats Forbes and Sir Edward Watkin in the late ninetenth century, Charles Pearson the Solicitor (Attorney) to the City of London who started it all and Yerkes and Albert Stanley who brought Yankee get up and go to London. It is a highly entertaining book.

There are countless books about London's transport system, focusing on everything - rolling stock, motive power (steam and electric), the stations, the architects, the posters and, don't forget, the tram and bus operations, which are equally fascinating.

One book which brings it all together in text and pictures, with specific features on almost every aspect of public transport in London, is The Moving Metropolis.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Moving-Metropolis-History-Transport/dp/1856692418



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/14 13:32 by 86235.

Fairly sure the deep tube (as in the photos) was dug with tunneling shields (Greathead springs to mind). The sub surface lines (what's now Metropolitan, Hammersmith and City District and Circle lines were, when in tunnel, at least in the beginning, built by hand.

If you look at pictures taken when the Yerkes lines were being built they still relied on manpower digging behind the Shield.

Charles T Yerkes is a fascinating traction tycoon from the late 19th and early 20th Century. Before he went to London, Yerkes built 3 of the 5 elevated lines in Chicago AND the downtown Loop. His holdings eventually passes into the hands of Sam Insull who developed the Commonwealth Edison electric company and the North Shore and South Shore interurbans.

Yerkes had started his career in finance in Philadelphia. It was a checkered career that included a stay in the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia. His life was fictionalized in Theodore Dreiser's novel "The Tycoon".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/14 18:13 by Christo.

I'm sure his financing methods wouldn't find favour today with the Federal Reserve or our Financial Conduct Authority :-)