It took sixteen years for the Metropolitan Railway to build a stretch of track, but two days for them to build a station to annoy their rivals. Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jagohazzard Patreon: / jagohazzard
On a visit to the Tower of London, a beefeater told us that a tourist who was puffed out from walking from the tube station, asked why they hadn’t built the Tower closer to the station…
Years ago London Transport featured famous people from history advertising various stations. Perhaps not surprisingly Henry VIII was chosen for Tower Hill. He was pictured asking for a return to Tower Hill. Next to it someone added "and a single for the wife"
Kind of ironic really, the Tower Of London station is built in a very similar way to it's namesake, The original Tower of London was built out of wood so William The Conquerer could get a castle up quick to assert his authority over the population, and then replaced it with the Keep that still exists today. Sounds like they built the old station for the same reason!
Great summary of how the Victorian travelling public were subjected to prolonged inconvenience by what was essentially a clash of personalities. The two companies clashed and dithered again in the later 1890's over the electrification of the Circle Line. No wonder our American anti-hero Charles Tyson Yerkes (who eventually sorted them out) testified to a parliamentary enquiry that their behaviour was 'probably a disgrace'.
building something out of spite makes a lot of sense. it's one of the strongest things known to man and generally takes quite a long time to break down entirely
My memory is very unreliable, but it tells me that the new Tower Hill station opened in 1967 without any forewarning (if that is one word) and that passengers arrived at the station one day to find that it had moved (although passengers travelling to and from the west would have noticed its construction). I think that that is what they should have done with Crossrail, just start running trains one day without letting anyone know the date. That would really have made life tough for people with railway related RU-vid channels
Jago, can I just congratulate you on the line "'If you don't knock it off, it's ring-a-ding-ding for you bozos', (or words to that effect)". Masterful writing that makes history come alive!
Any time in the future I hear about neoliberal free market proselytes telling how the market will solve every problem on their own without government intervention I will tell them about the London Underground...
Forget "Mornington Crescent- the board game". This has all the makings of a Christmas pantomime, with Watkin as the villein, all top hats, green lighting and exploding side-whiskers.
San Francisco gained a four-track streetcar line when two streetcar companies, one city-owned, and the other not, laid two double-track lines in the middle of Market Street, the famous "Roar of the Four". In Los Angeles, for a time, Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power laid electric power lines down the same streets, until Edison agreed to sell their infrastructure. And in Chicago, the Chicago elevated railway built short branches in many locations to compete with the streetcar company. In the most extreme example, the elevated built a circle through the Chicago Stockyards, while streetcar tracks served the same area. All the duplication was eliminated shortly after both companies were taken over by the City of Chicago.
