City and South London Railway — BrandWiki

City and South London Railway

short title	City of London and Southwark Subway Act 1884
type	Act
parliament	Parliament of the United Kingdom
long title	An Act to authorise the Construction of a Subway under the River Thames from King William Street in the City of London to Short Street in the Parish of St. Mary Newington in the County of Surrey and for other purposes.
year	1884
citation	47 & 48 Vict. c. clxvii
royal assent	28 July 1884
status	amended
original text	https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Vict/47-48/167/pdfs/ukla_18840167_en.pdf
collapsed	yes

The City and South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first successful deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction. The railway was originally intended for cable-hauled trains, but owing to the bankruptcy of the cable contractor during construction, a system of electric traction using electric locomotives – an experimental technology at the time – was chosen instead.

When opened in 1890, the line had six stations and ran for 3.2 mi[1] in a pair of tunnels between the City of London and Stockwell, passing under the River Thames. The diameter of the tunnels restricted the size of the trains, and the small carriages with their high-backed seating were nicknamed padded cells. The railway was extended several times north and south, eventually serving 22 stations over a distance of 13.5 mi from Camden Town in north London to Morden in south London.[1]

Although the C&SLR was well used, low ticket prices and the construction cost of the extensions placed a strain on the company's finances. In 1913 the C&SLR became part of the Underground Group of railways, and in the 1920s it underwent major reconstruction works before its merger with another of the Group's railways, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway

Haulage and infrastructure

Because of the small diameter of the tunnels and the difficulty of providing sufficient ventilation, steam power, which was used on London's other underground railways, would not work for a deep-level tube railway. Like Greathead's earlier Tower Subway, the CL&SS was intended to be operated by cable haulage with a static engine pulling the cable through the tunnels at a steady speed. Section 5 of the 1884 act specified that:

"The traffic of the subway shall be worked by ... the system of the Patent Cable Tramway Corporation Limited or by such means other than steam locomotives as the Board of Trade may from time to time approve."

The Patent Cable Tramway Corporation owned the rights to the Hallidie cable-car system first invented and used in San Francisco in 1873; trains were attached to the cable with clamps, which would be opened and closed at stations, allowing the carriages to disconnect and reconnect without needing to stop the cable or to interfere with other trains sharing the cable. There were to be two independent endless cables, one between City station and Elephant and Castle moving at 10 mph, and the other between Elephant and Castle and Stockwell, where the gradient was less, at 12 mph. However, the additional length of tunnel permitted by the supplementary acts challenged the practicality of the cable system.

It is reported that this problem with the CL&SS contributed to the bankruptcy of the cable company in 1888. However, electric motor traction had been considered all along, and much engineering progress had been made since the tunnel's construction had begun in 1886. Hence, CL&SS chairman Charles Grey Mott decided to switch to electric traction. Other cable-operated systems using the Hallidie patents continued to be designed, such as the Glasgow Subway which opened in 1896.

The solution adopted was electrical power, provided via a third rail (now a fourth rail) beneath the train, but offset to the west of centre for clearance reasons. Although the use of electricity to power trains had been experimented with during the previous decade, and small-scale operations had been implemented, the C&SLR was the first major railway in the world to adopt it as a means of motive power. The system operated using electric locomotives built by Mather & Platt collecting a voltage of 500 volts (actually +500 volts in the northbound tunnel and −500 volts in the southbound) from the third rail and pulling several carriages. A depot and generating station were constructed at Stockwell. Owing to the limited capacity of the generators, the stations were originally illuminated by gas. The depot was on the surface, and trains requiring maintenance were initially hauled up via a ramp although, following a runaway accident, a lift was soon installed. In practice, most rolling stock and locomotives went to the surface only for major maintenance.

To avoid the need to purchase agreements for running under surface buildings, the tunnels were bored underneath public roads, where construction could be carried out without charge. At the northern end of the railway, the need to pass deep beneath the bed of the River Thames and the medieval street pattern of the City of London constrained the arrangement of the tunnels on the approach to King William Street station. Because of the proximity of the station to the river, steeply inclined tunnels were built to the west of the station. Because of the narrow street under which they ran, they were bored one above the other rather than side by side as elsewhere. The outbound tunnel was the lower and steeper of the two. The tunnels converged immediately before the station, which was in one large tunnel and comprised a single track with a platform on each side. The other terminus at Stockwell was also constructed in a single tunnel but with tracks on each side of a central platform.

Opening

The railway was officially opened by Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) on 4 November 1890, and was opened to the public on 18 December 1890. Initially, it had stations at:

The Prince of Wales gave the following speech at the opening:[8] "...thanks for having given me an opportunity of being present to inaugurate a work which I have but little doubt will be of the greatest use to the community, and which will especially be a great boon to this great metropolis. It must be a matter of deep thought to all of us, the ever-increasing growth of this city, and the consequent increasing difficulties of the means of access. This, the first electric railway in England, will, I hope, do much to relieve the congestion of traffic which exists in the City. Business men who have great distances to come will by this means find an easy way of leaving the City and of enjoying the fresh air of the country. The railway will also be a material boon to the working man who is obliged to work all day in a not always pleasant atmosphere; for it will enable him also to get a little fresh air. From a scientific point of view it is a great advantage that you should have two tunnels. This is very different from the large tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway, for here you have no smoke, while you have ample ventilation. You have also a new system, by which you abolish all tickets. All classes of the community are obliged to travel at the same fare, which is the small sum of twopence, and are by a very simple arrangement able to save a great deal of time and trouble. I have been immensely struck by what I have seen today, and I am sure that the greatest credit redounds upon those who have contrived this scheme, and have carried it to such perfection..."

The original service was operated by trains composed of an engine and three carriages. Thirty-two passengers could be accommodated in each carriage, which had longitudinal bench seating and sliding doors at the ends, leading onto a platform for boarding and alighting. It was reasoned that there was nothing to look at in the tunnels, so the only windows were in a narrow band high up in the carriage sides. Gate-men rode on the carriage platforms to operate the lattice gates and announce the station names to the passengers. Because of their claustrophobic interiors, the carriages soon became known as padded cells.[9] Unlike other railways, the C&SLR had no ticket classes or paper tickets; when the railway began operations, a flat fare of two pence, collected at a turnstile, was charged. Despite the cramped carriages and competition from bus and tram services, the railway attracted 5.1 million passengers in 1891, its first year of operation. To alleviate overcrowding, the fleet of rolling stock was enlarged.

Stockwell
The Oval (now Oval)
Kennington
Elephant & Castle
Borough
King William Street

Extensions to Clapham Common and Angel, 1890–1901

Shortly before it opened to the public, the C&SLR gave notice of its intention to submit another private bill to Parliament, to construct a new line from its northern terminus at King William Street towards Islington.[10] Because of the awkward arrangement of King William Street station, the extension was not to be connected directly to the existing running tunnels but was to be linked via a pedestrian subway through which passengers could make interchanges between the separate lines. The bill was rejected on the grounds that the extension failed to make a connection to the existing line. In November 1891, the C&SLR published details of a revised bill for the extension to Islington.[11] The company had recognised the deficiencies of its King William Street station and, just a year after the line had opened, planned to construct a new pair of tunnels to bypass the problematic northern section.

Near Borough station the new tunnels would branch off via a new station to form an interchange with the SE&CR and the LB&SCR at London Bridge mainline station. The tunnels would then pass to the east of London Bridge, north through the City of London to Angel. Following a delay, during which a joint select committee reviewed the proposals of several new underground railways, the (56 & 57 Vict. c. ccvii) received royal assent on 24 August 1893.[12] The Act also incorporated another Bill of 1893[13] to grant an extension of time to build the southern extension to Clapham.

Construction of the two authorised extensions was delayed while funds were raised and plans were finalised. Between 1895 and 1898, three further Bills were put before Parliament to keep the permissions alive and obtain additional approvals:

The new tunnels permitted by the 1895 act enabled the track layout at King William Street station to be modified to a single central platform with a track on each side. This was opened as a temporary measure while funds for the extensions were raised. Finance was eventually obtained, and construction proceeded so that the King William Street section closed and the first section of the northern extension opened on Monday 26 February 1900,[20] with stations at:

The southern extension opened on at mid-day on Sunday 3 June 1900[21] with stations at:

Like the original Stockwell station and the rearranged King William Street, Clapham Road and Clapham Common were constructed with a single station tunnel, with a central platform served by tracks on each side.

Work continued on the rest of the northern extension. The (63 & 64 Vict. c. v), approved on 25 May 1900,[22] gave permission to enlarge the station tunnel at Angel to a diameter of 9.2 m [23] and the rest of the extension opened on 17 November 1901, with stations at:

1895: an extension of time for the 1890 Act and to allow for a new approach tunnel to be built into King William Street station.[14] Approved as the (58 & 59 Vict. c. xix) on 14 April 1895.[15]
1896: an extension of time for the 1893 act and changes to the construction of Bank station.[16] Approved as the (59 & 60 Vict. c. cclii) on 14 August 1896.[17]
1898: an extension of time for the 1896 act, plans to add sidings to the southern extension at Clapham Common and plans to sell King William Street station and its approach tunnels to the newly proposed City and Brixton Railway (C&BR).[18] Approved as the (61 & 62 Vict. c. xi) on 23 May 1898.[19]

London Bridge
Bank
Moorgate Street

Clapham Road
Clapham Common

Old Street
City Road (closed 1922)
Angel

Cooperation and consolidation, 1907–1919

By 1907, Londoners had seen the network of deep tube underground railways expand from the original C&SLR line of 1890 with its six stations to a network of seven lines serving more than 70 stations. These companies, along with the sub-surface Metropolitan Railway and District Railway, criss-crossed beneath the city streets, competing with one another for passengers as well as with the new electric trams and motor buses. In several cases pre-opening predictions of passenger numbers had proven to be over optimistic. The reduced revenues generated from the lower numbers of passengers using the lines made it difficult for the operators to pay back the capital borrowed and pay dividends to shareholders.

In an effort to improve their collective situations, most of the underground railways in London: the C&SLR, the CLR, the Great Northern & City Railway and the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL, which operated the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR), the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR), the CCE&HR and the DR) began, from 1907, to introduce fare agreements. From 1908, they began to present themselves through common branding as the Underground. The Waterloo and City Railway, operated by the main-line London and South Western Railway, was the only tube railway that did not participate in the arrangement.

In 1912, the C&SLR submitted another bill for parliamentary consideration seeking to increase its capacity by enlarging its tunnels to the larger diameter used for the tunnels of the more recently built railways to allow larger, more modern rolling stock to be used.[29] A separate bill was published at the same time by the London Electric Railway (LER, a company formed by the UERL in 1910 through a merger of the BS&WR, GNP&BR and CCE&HR), which included plans to construct tunnels to connect the C&SLR at Euston to the CCE&HR's station at Camden Town.[30] Together, the works proposed in these Bills would enable the CCE&HR's trains to run over the C&SLR's route and vice versa, effectively combining the two separate railways.

On 1 January 1913, the UERL purchased the C&SLR, paying two shares of its own stock for three of the C&SLR's, a discount reflecting the struggling financial position of the older company. Both Bills were enacted on 15 August 1913, as the (3 & 4 Geo. 5. c. cx) and the London Electric Railway Act 1913 (3 & 4 Geo. 5. c. xcvii).[31]

The proposed extension and tunnel enlargement works were delayed by the First World War, and works could not begin until after the war.

References

Length of line calculated from distances given at Clive's Underground Line Guides, Northern line, Layout retrieved 20 September 2007^
{{London Gazette |date=27 November 1883 |issue=25291 |pages=6066–6067}}^
{{London Gazette |date=29 July 1884 |issue=25382 |page=3426}}^
{{London Gazette |date=26 November 1886 |issue=25649 |pages=5866–5867}}^
{{London Gazette |date=15 July 1887 |issue=25721 |page=3851}}^
{{London Gazette |date=22 November 1889 |issue=25995 |pages=6361–6362}}^
{{London Gazette |date=29 July 1890 |issue=26074 |page=4170}}^
Opening of the Electric Railway The Daily News, 5 November 1890^
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{{London Gazette |date=25 November 1890 |issue=26109 |pages=6519–6520}}^
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{{London Gazette |date=23 November 1894 |issue=26573 |pages=6659–6660 }}^
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A History of the London Tube Maps retrieved 20 September 2007^
{{London Gazette |date=9 December 1930 |issue=33668 |pages=7905–7907}}^
Abandoned Tube Stations – King William Street retrieved 20 September 2007^
City South London 30 City & South London 'Padded Cell' stock built 1890 www.cs.rhrp.org.uk, retrieved 2020-11-10^
City South London 67 'Padded cell' (body only) saloon trailer www.cs.rhrp.org.uk, retrieved 2020-11-10^
City South London 135 City & South London tube stock (body only) built 1902 www.cs.rhrp.org.uk, retrieved 2020-11-10^
City South London 163 City & South London tube stock (body only) built 1907 www.cs.rhrp.org.uk, retrieved 2020-11-10^
T.S. Lascelles. The City & South London Railway The Oakwood Press, 1955^