Secret Tunnels of the London Underground - Epiosde 1 

Have worked down in these in a past life with a large communications company. The company had lots of other tunnels of their own too. The tunnels at Stockwell were used to house the first Windrush immigrants and as such, Brixton was the nearest job centre. Hence why Brixton became a home for many from the West Indies.

Nearly everything in that electrical room has "Made in England" written/stamped into the metal. Its a really interesting measure of how much industry and manufacturing has gone from the country. I bet you'd be hard pressed to find anything made in England if the room was built today (with modern equipment of course). Globalisation is what it is, but I cant help but think of all the jobs that disappeared when we stopped making things here!

I think I've seen other people explore this shelter, but IKS is definitely the group I'd want to see down here.

An outfit I used to work for used a company called Recall for storing our offsite backups. They used the Goodge Street tunnels, accessed via the "Eisenhower Centre" in Chenies Street. Sadly, I never managed to blag a tour.

In the 1970's, I worked for a week down in the Chancery Lane complex (formerly Kingsway telephone exchange). They were installing "Motorola Metropage" racks, and I helped with the mains wiring these. Since then, they've been made largely obsolete by the advent of mobile phones.

Thanks folks for the video 📹 upload. Let's hope we can all protect these historical sites by letting English Heritage know and they can list these places to prevent them being chucked into a skip by a thoughtless new development contractors

THANK YOU - the history at the beginning was great, I've watched you go thru these shelters for years & now I have all those background details. Cheers from New York!

The British have proven that they are good at tunnel construction. It saved a lot of people from death. How wonderful to see the old equipment still in good condition.

When you mentioned about whats so special about all round stairwells, I expected you to say. They are all equivalent to a 15 story building.

There are Post Tunnels that were used by the Royal Post to deliver mail. They are no longer used, but are open for tours!

Some of the signal devices cost over £1,500.00 They are beautiful workmanship, but raplaced by £7.50 semi conductors. I saw some on my training courses you have to do to work IT on the Underground. I had to do three different types of courses, just to do my job. I spent the last 8 years of my working life as third line IT Legacy support fot the TFL estate, when compared to commercial life it was like a breeze, the people, the work, it was all very pleasant indeed :)

Shiey did a tour of this place a year ago. Glad to see it's still looking the same.

22:05, interesting info on those castings. LPTB = London Passenger Transport Board. And to the right and upside down is STANTON. This company made (among other things) the castings for air raid shelters commonly found on many wartime UK airfields, and bomb casings. I believe the company has now ceased trading.

The electrical equipment looked new,it was very clean considering the time its been there.

Just seen ya video I fitted the lift in the Clapham South tunnels in the early 90s small world

I guess the lift motor, ventilation system, etc. use 600V DC as that is the traction current supply for the London Underground'; the main supply would be from the traction supply with a DC supply locally generated from AC mains; there may even be rooms full of wet batteries as the fall back supply system.

This is an absolutely fantastic video, straight into the meat. I had no idea so many of the deep level sheters were built, or how many of them there were. They never got that point over too well on the TV show. Nice to see you guys doing stuff like this. This sub is worth it's weight in gold.

Watching them walk down the everlasting staircase looked like the start of a found footage horror movie 😆 great video guys 👍

Amazing to see these pieces of history documented. It is quite sobering to know that the history came from atrocious circumstances. Cheers!

Being prohibited from using the tunnels while Churchill was under 20 feet of reinforced concrete and a 6 storey office block on top of that and 20 feet thick wall now called The imperial war rooms at St James park, He also had PADDOCK at dollis hill he used once "too damp" They've built houses on top of it now, But it occasionally opened to the public. People ignored Churchill and face prison or "certain death"

Just been watching this on Secrets of the Underground .

Start of video talking about north London central shelters was walking in Bloomsbury last week and noticed on Thanet St has a public blitz shelter next to council estate building, must of walked past hundred times and never noticed...

Love underground explores …. The history is amazing 🤩 xxxxxx

Thanks Ian and Chris

Can you guys get Reg the London cab driver and take him on a London underground tour. That'll be the best video ever😊 I bet Reg knows some places his seen around that you have never known was there.

That electrical room at 15:00 is like something out of Victor Frankenstein laboratory. All you need now is some bloke with two bolts sticking out of his neck to creep up on you. If you touched anything live there you'd be nicely rectified.

MIND THE GAP! 😊

And would also guess that the lift doesn't work anymore because it's powered by DC So you arc no lift

I used to be a cop on the underground and on nights we used to go into down st station which used to be a station on the Piccadilly line until 1937. This station was used by Churchill for his meetings etc. We went right down onto the track side and there was a set of points which headed south under green park. And I have it from a very good source who worked as a pway engineer that the line heading south went directly under Buckingham palace. In the event of some clown hitting the red button to nuke us this line was to be used to get the royals out. Toot suite. But not onto the Piccadilly which would be out of service but through another tunnel that went miles out of london to the west using a battery powered unit. That’s what’s I saw and was told.

12:34 Always good to revisit your favourite explores and only seconds in to the actual meat and potatoes there's this gurt big fan. But why d'you all brush past? There is indeed a gem at the end, as is said. A glorious Mercury rectifier to power it. That whole room should be preserved up top in the science museum. It's great that it's all intact and unmolested. Hope it still is.

27:19 That drain at the end looks like a commercial Mrs. Mop cleaning department one from hotels and factories.

Amazing thanks 😊

London Transport Museum provide 'Hidden London' tours of Underground tunnels.

Great Video

Interesting folks Cheers Ian Thank you very much

nice boy's! I love urban explorations!

As possibly seen on the London Transport Museum Hidden London Hangouts videos.

for a hermit like myself that would be a neat place to live.

Very good very nice

A unique species of mosquitoes evolved due to how long people spent down there during the war.

good stuff, cheers dudes :)

I imagine the incoming power to the arc rectifier is DC because it's tapped into the subway power grid. It would be cool to see where these lines tie into the subway system power.

Very cool to see where that cable actually enters. Would have been awesome to see whatever it was hooked up to. Probably a linksys router.

epic bru

Mind bending.

For 80 years old it's all in very good condition,

Which of the shelters is it they first enter?

🤘🤘

I'm sure that lift was working when secret vault went there.

❤

EPIOSDE

Cast metal fuse covers made by Lucy's of Oxford.

🐰🕳️

Hi I an and Chris! Long time no chat. This Collection of videos are really fascinating. As you know I already told you my Medium I use told me I died in WW2. I showed my younger brother last night and he said SOLID when I said I thought you would like the old Electrics. My brother has his own Electrician Company and said wow!!! I do miss my nan and Grandad. One of my old friends John is 88 years old I saw him yesterday and showed him lot's of the Exploring Videos you guys do. John was like this is so cool! Keep up the good work. 1976 I was Born

In Melbourne Australia We still have one active arc That is over 200 times bigger than this one It's only kept online For a few historical buildings That still has working DC powerd lights And they don't know how much longer it's going to be working for Because of it's age They do not want to turn it off to service it Because there is a very strong chance that if it was powered down It would never be able to start iagain They even do tours to the sub station every year so you can go and see it working It really looks like Frankenstein lab And the arc that it makes is massive