7 things you didn’t know about the Tube (or perhaps you did)

It might feel old, cramped and take a loose approach to how many seconds there are in a minute, but most Londoners still look upon the Tube with a certain patriotic fondness.

It also happens to be the oldest underground railway network in the world, and as such, has been through some stuff in its time. It’s expanded (and contracted) far beyond London city limits, had more versions of its map made than anyone seems to remember, and even transported superheroes around the UK’s capital. That’s not to mention all the lives it saved sheltered people during World War Two.

To celebrate our love for the city’s dark and dusty tunnels, we sat down with railway historian and host of TfL's podcast, Mind the Gap, Tim Dunn, to shed some light on the darker corners of the tube.

1. Yes, ghost stations are real (and pretty useful it turns out)

We’ve all heard of tube stations which ‘once were’ – probably walked past a few closed doors, red-tiled facades in our time. But how many are there and what on earth do they do now?

According to Dunn, there are likely around 40 disused stations across the whole Underground network. Their use today varies. Some facilitate filming (Thor: The Dark World, The Mummy, Paddington and most James Bond films feature), some now host escape rooms. Many, however, serve a more practical purpose, providing additional ventilation shafts, walkways or even storage space.

“Whenever TfL or the London Underground take one bit of infrastructure out of use, they’ll always find a new use for that space in the middle of Zone One,” Dunn explains. “Because why wouldn't you? Under London, space is at a premium.”

In terms of completely secret, inaccessible to the public, locked-away stations, he estimates “there's a good dozen in central London”. One such is South Kentish Town. Now more recognisable as a Cash Converters, its deep red enamel exterior still gives it away. Don’t get any ideas, though. “There's no public way down there anymore, but for emergency access,” Dunn says, “If you’re working with TfL though, there’s still a way.”

2. We need to stop complaining about delays

While we’ve probably all felt exasperated at signal failures, maintenance works and ‘leaves on the track’, Dunn believes we’ve got it seriously good. “It's a miracle, it works every day. [The tube] is a machine of a million moving parts: trains, people, bits of machinery, technology. Really, if we're honest about it, with so many billions of technical moving parts, it’s a miracle it doesn't actually break down more.”

When put into context, we’re hard-pressed to disagree. It turns out there’s actually relatively little time for maintenance work to take place, thanks to the frequency of the tube schedule. “Because there’s the night tube and it's central London, there’s not a lot of time,” Dunn expands.

“There's about four or five hours of available work every night, and only a few nights a week to actually do it.” That makes about 18/20 hours a week to fix the network’s myriad problems. Which is where the ghost stations come in. Having the materials and machines close to hand makes fixing the issues vastly more efficient.

3. Tube tunnels produced aircraft parts and radio equipment during World War Two

During the Second World War, tube stations were a valuable and versatile commodity. As well as working as makeshift bomb shelters, they were used to house National Gallery artworks (Aldwych), as bases for anti-aircraft operations (Brompton Road) and in the case of the (at the time) unfinished Hainault loop on the Central Line, even a top secret weapons-building factory.

“They used those several miles of tunnels as the Plessey factory to build radio equipment,” Dunn revealed. “There was a narrow gauge railway right around it, and they built technology, radios, and transmitter equipment for the war effort.” The factory also turned out bombs and shell casings, as well as an estimated 11 million aircraft parts. As if that wasn’t enough, some of the larger depots worked on bigger projects such as converting tanks to operate in water for the D-Day landing as well as upgrading over 500 armoured vehicles.

4. The tube is cleaner than it looks

There are some pretty far-fetched myths surrounding the tube, but this one might almost be believable. If you’ve ever stood on a platform while a train comes careening out of the dark, you could believe that enough hair gets swept off scalps daily to generate some seriously silky tumbleweed.

While Dunn deems it unlikely the daily cleaning crew are scooping up giant piles of hair, track cleaning teams have reported collecting ‘huge clumps of human hair’ – so perhaps the devil is in the detail.

Either way, the underground has, without a doub,t had a serious hygiene overhaul in the past few decades. “The tube is a lot cleaner than it was,” Dunn says. “I can remember 35 years ago, being in London, there were mice, dirt – the tube was gross. I mean, it really was gross.”

Today, TfL asserts that all tube surfaces and floors are cleaned daily, and all trains are subject to a deep clean every 28 days. “London is a lot cleaner than it was,” Dunn goes on. “Until fairly recently, about 20 years ago, there was even a vacuum train. It went around and sucked up dirt.” The so-called ‘Tubevac’ might have needed six people to operate it but it could suck up 20 cubic metres of ballast. Sadly, it was retired some years ago, the powers that be deciding human hands were a safer set.

5. The Tube vents air in surprising places

While the tube no longer needs to expel hot air the way it used to, ventilation is as important as ever. With around 500 trains on track during peak hours, the underground gets hot. Luckily, there are hundreds of ventilation shafts helping to circulate fresh air into the system all around the city.

“There are some in Camden that go up the back of buildings and some in very central London that go straight up like chimneys,” Dunn explains. “I know of one in Islington where the building is built around it, and this person's house has almost a concrete curve to their sitting room because it’s been built around the edge of a ventilation shaft.”

There are plenty of more obvious spots that you’re likely walking past semi-regularly too. In Bank, a water fountain outside the Bloomberg building hides a ventilation shaft, while the ‘Camberwell Submarine’ is a popular ‘70s-era bunker-style structure which helps disperse dirty tube air. Aptly, a statue of James Henry Greathead, one of the engineers who worked on the construction of the Underground, hides a vent at Cornhill, steps from Bank station.

6. Is Baker Street the ‘oldest’ London Underground station? Kind of

When it comes to locating the oldest platforms on the Underground, most people look to Baker Street. It opened its doors back in January 1863 and is frequently cited as being the oldest station on the network. While there’s good reason for this, exactly how much of the original structure remains intact today is up for debate.

Dunn credits the Hammersmith and City line platforms here as being the ‘oldest appearing’ in the system, but points out that much of what travellers see today is actually a reconstruction. A lot of the station’s bricks have been replaced or repaired, and the whole place underwent a thorough redesign in the 1980s which changed its look quite significantly. It was reverted later to more closely resemble what we see today.

Some of the oldest stations on the network are ones which existed as train stations which were then subsumed into the Underground system. Dunn directs us to Buckhurst Hill and Snaresbrook on the Central line, which both were running trains as far back as 1856.

7. Fake houses hide an open air tube tunnel in Bayswater

While the tube carves up London’s nether regions like a maniacal mole, TfL have done their best to help it blend in above ground. In the late 1860s, the Metropolitan Railway (the first underground railway in the world and the origins of today’s tube) was expanding through Bayswater, and the steam engines running along those rails needed areas to let off steam.

An uncovered portion of the tunnel by Leinster Gardens was created between houses on the street, with front-facing facades put in place to hide the tunnel’s aperture. If you’re in the area, look for numbers 23 and 24, which have strangely greyed out ‘windows’ and doors that don’t open.

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