Geoff Marshall travels the length of the Jubilee Line to discover some of its more unusual features. He finds a secret governmental tube entrance, the network's most pointless waiting room, and an elephant.
How are you not all over our nation's TV screens? These videos are absolutely excellent, so well put together, and so very interesting as well... and with just the right amount of cheesiness to boot. Geoff, you and your small team are surely on the way to big things.
OMFG 1:35 I HAVE ONLY JUST FOUND THIS VIDEO BUT THAT IS 100% MY GRANDAD CROSSING THE ROAD!! Sadly he passed away in 2014 but that is definitely him getting the newspaper! Omg! Wow!
Westminster was, when dug, the largest hole in Europe. It was an amazing feat of engineering to keep the District and Circle lines running while the hole was being dug.
@2:30 The Jubilee line was originally going to be called the Fleet Line - a brilliant name. It not only went to Charing Cross, but the tunnels continued for maybe another half-mile further east (I've walked them) heading for the City of London. It would have gone under The Strand and Fleet Street with stations at places like Ludgate Circus - a route below a major London thoroughfare not well served by the Tube.
The line is still powered by DC. The stock use an AC traction package. You also see this on mainline stock, the SWT Desiros have the AC traction package so give that UFO sound when they move off. 377s make a sound not dissimilar from the Jubilee stock. AIUI the AC motors are more efficient than the DC ones, so the energy loss by conversion is still worthwhile with the motor power.
3 Phase AC is used in every modern Locomotive and train. Here in germany we even had the first ever build 3 Phase Locomotive the Br 120, Which is still used today. 3 phase AC is far easier to Control so you have a smoother Ride on the train. Look Up Sound BR 425 when you want to hear crazy Sound :)
@@ElectroRail I am sad. Anyway, he’s a British Minecraft youtuber that also makes music. He has an old album (he hates it now btw) called “You’re city gave me asthma” with a song called “Jubilee Line”. It’s a song about…well….suicide.
did you know that the Jubilee line connects to every other line on the underground! it also connects to the dlr, overground, buses (obviously) and riverboat services
The Jubilee and Northern lines are my favourite lines on the whole underground network anyway. I love the sound that the trains make as they slow down to stop and speed up again on the jubilee line, and using Waterloo, southwark, London bridge and canary wharf as an example, the general look of the corridors etc is a fond memory for me :-)
Nice one Geoff! Keep em coming! I still love watching your attempt at the world record for every station visited in the shortest time on that old episode of the tube!
Absolutely love your videos Geoff! So interesting and informative (and nostalgic). In the 90s / 00s I regularly travelled to Stanmore on the Jubilee line so this video brings back fond memories
A nice introduction. It's interesting, to me, that the Jubilee Line from Finchley Road to Stanmore started life as the Metropolitan Line, then it became severed from the Met as a branch of the Bakerloo Line, with the tube section added between Finchley Road and Baker Street to relieve congestion and allow Met trains to run fast. Then in the 1970s, the tunnel from Baker Street to Charing Cross was built, the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo was severed and the Jubilee Line was born. Initially, the proposal was for trains to carry on beyond Charing Cross under the Strand to Fleet Street, hence the original proposed name: the Fleet line. This could have provided interchange at Aldwych, and led to that station remaining open, in some form! Out east, the section from Stratford to Canning Town was built parallel to the old Eastern Counties Railway branch to North Woolwich, now mostly the DLR. Overall, one of LU's most complex line histories!
My home line. My local station is Queensbury and the Jubilee line trains have such a unique sound I can remember it from when I was 5 years old in 1996 when the current stock would have rolled out.
3:16 I already knew that revolving door because my mum used to work in Westminster and every time I came to her work on the way home we always came in that way
Blake Talty I really don't know because in most corridors around the tube, people keep left. So you have to keep left along the corridor and then keep right on the escalator.
Same in Toronto, we are getting CBTC (we will call it ATC/ATO Automated Train Control/Operation), platforms are already fairly big but no platform doors even on the new extension that opened last year.
Thank you for making these videos. As a non-Brit I have to stop every 15 seconds to locate the stations on the map (geographically correct), but it's very much worth it.
I like the decision when they refurbished St John's Wood and Swiss Cottage stations, including replacing the wooden escalators with metal ones, to retain the old-style signage and uplighters, and use dark-brown coloured panels on the escalators instead of silver ones (reminiscent of their wooden predecessors, but still complying with modern safety requirements)
My late grandmother used to live just a short bus ride or a 20-minute walk from Queensbury Station and seeing the roundabout with the huge roundel has taken me way back. When I stayed with her I'd often walk to her house from that station rather than catch the bus.
If you come out of Kilburn tube station and turn right under the middle of three rail bridges. Between those two bridges, a mock-up facade of the Bijou Cinema was built for the 1957 film "The Greatest Show On Earth".
When Geoff said between Wembley park and Finchley Road the metropolitan line trains don’t stop here he wasn’t lying, when I went to Wembley to watch Huddersfield vs forest (we lost) we saw metropolitan line trains passing after Wembley park
I lived in a flat with my kitchen window looking over West Hampstead’s tube platform, that unique sound of Jubilee trains departing is so very familiar!
Westminster station before the rebuild used to have an exit solely for staff and MPs straight into the Houses of Parliament, not Portcullis House opposite, directly under Big Ben. Used to see parliamentary passes there checked by an old chap behind a desk and chandeliers in the distance.
If it doesn't boggle your mind too much, there's another entrance/exit for Canary Wharf Station, the station links up with the nearby shopping mall and you'll may get into it directly from the station. :)
Canary Wharf station looks more like an airport terminal than a tube station, but I must admit it's one of the most impressive stations on the JLE. In fact all the stations on the extension are impressive in some way. It's one reason I love the tube - on some parts you have modern futuristic stations and on others you have Victorian and Edwardian gloom.
The Jubilee Line has the dubious distinction of having perhaps the shortest-lived trains, which ran from when it was new in 1979 (and took over the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo Line as you said in your Bakerloo line post). The proposal to link West Hampstead together I believe ground into the sand at some point. And you could point out that along with the Aldwych Branch of the Piccadilly, the Jubilee Line has a complete abandoned set of tunnels between Green Park and Charing Cross - you do mention the platforms.
The 1972 stock that was initially used on the Jubilee is now in the running for the longest serving stock on the Underground, entering service on the Northern and Bakerloo lines in 1972. I presume you mean the 1983 stock, which only saw 14 years of service
I find it strange that the jubilee line initially only ran to Charing Cross - given that it took over the Bakerloo line part from Stanmore to Baker Street, and the Bakerloo already ran to Charing Cross, the only new part that was actually added was a separate route from Baker Street to Charing Cross (via Bond St. and Green Park in instead of Regent's Park, Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus). Why was this deemed necessary back in the 70s? And why did it take them 20 years to extend it? I'm not saying there wasn't a reason, I'm just quite confused
The original plans for the Fleet line (as it was then called) planned for a phased extension east of Charing Cross (Phase 2 would have been under Central London to Fenchurch Street via Aldwych and Ludgate Hill, for example, with Phase 3 planned to take the line east into the Docklands or down to Lewisham in various iterations). Unfortunately, these plans took so long to not finalise that the funding was kiboshed until someone a bit happier with trains was around in power, at which point the present route down via the South Bank was selected instead, and to avoid a ridiculous chicane in the line the plan advocated for Charing X to be bypassed in favour of Westminster. Jago Hazzard has an excellent series of videos on the potential Jubilee line extensions we could have got that explain it far better than I do - well worth a watch!
