Central London Railway

Rejected route proposed in 1889

In November 1889, the CLR published a notice of a private bill that would be presented to Parliament for the 1890 parliamentary session.[2] The bill proposed an underground electric railway running from the junction of Queen's Road (now Queensway) and Bayswater Road in Bayswater to King William Street in the City of London with a connection to the then-under construction, City and South London Railway (C&SLR) at Arthur Street West. The CLR was to run in a pair of tunnels under Bayswater Road, Oxford Street, New Oxford Street, High Holborn, Holborn, Holborn Viaduct, Newgate Street, Cheapside, and Poultry. Stations were planned at Queen's Road, Stanhope Terrace, Marble Arch, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Southampton Row, Holborn Circus, St. Martin's Le Grand and King William Street.[3]

The tunnels were to be 11 feet (3.35 m) in diameter, constructed with a tunnelling shield, and would be lined with cast iron segments. At stations, the tunnel diameter would be 22 feet (6.71 m) or 29 feet (8.84 m) depending on layout. A depot and power station were to be constructed on a 1.5-acre (0.61 ha) site on the west side of Queen's Road. Hydraulic lifts from the street to the platforms were to be provided at each station.[4]

The proposals faced strong objections from the Metropolitan and District railways (MR and DR) whose routes on the Inner Circle,[note 2] to the north and the south respectively, the CLR route paralleled; and from which the new line was expected to take passengers. The City Corporation also objected, concerned about potential damage to buildings close to the route caused by subsidence as was experienced during the construction of the C&SLR. The Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral objected, concerned about the risks of undermining the cathedral's foundations. Sir Joseph Bazalgette objected that the tunnels would damage the city's sewer system. The bill was approved by the House of Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords, which recommended that any decision be postponed until after the C&SLR had opened and its operation could be assessed.[5]

Route approved in 1891

In November 1890, with the C&SLR about to start operating, the CLR announced a new bill for the 1891 parliamentary session.[6] The route was extended at the western end to run under Notting Hill High Street (now Notting Hill Gate) and Holland Park Avenue to end at the eastern corner of Shepherd's Bush Green, with the depot and power station site relocated to be north of the terminus on the east side of Wood Lane. The westward extension of the route was inspired by the route of abandoned plans for the London Central Subway, a sub-surface railway that was briefly proposed in early 1890 to run directly below the roadway on a similar route to the CLR.[7] The eastern terminus was changed to Cornhill and the proposed Southampton Row station was replaced by one in Bloomsbury. Intermediate stations were added at Lansdowne Road, Notting Hill Gate, Davies Street (which the CLR planned to extend northwards to meet Oxford Street) and at Chancery Lane.[8] The earlier plan to connect to the C&SLR was dropped and the diameter of the CLR's tunnels was increased to 11 feet 6 inches (3.51 m).[7] This time the bill was approved by both Houses of Parliament and received royal assent on 5 August 1891 as the Central London Railway Act, 1891.[9] In November 1891, the CLR publicised another bill. The eastern end of the line was re-routed north-east and extended to end under the Great Eastern Railway's (GER's) terminus at Liverpool Street station with the Cornhill terminus dropped and a new station proposed at the Royal Exchange.[10] The proposals received assent as the Central London Railway Act 1892 on 28 June 1892.[11]

Route approved in 1892

The money to build the CLR was obtained through a syndicate of financiers including Ernest Cassel, Henry Oppenheim, Darius Ogden Mills, and members of the Rothschild family.[12] On 22 March 1894, the syndicate incorporated a contractor to construct the railway, the Electric Traction Company Limited (ETCL), which agreed a construction cost of £2,544,000 (approximately £308 million today)[13] plus £700,000 in 4 per cent debenture stock.[14] When the syndicate offered 285,000 CLR company shares for sale at £10 each in June 1895,[14] only 14 per cent was bought by the British public, which was cautious of such investments following failures of similar railway schemes.[15] Some shares were sold in Europe and the United States, but the unsold remainder was bought by members of the syndicate or by the ETCL.[14]

To design the railway, the CLR employed the engineers James Henry Greathead, Sir John Fowler, and Sir Benjamin Baker.[8] Greathead had been the engineer for the Tower Subway and the C&SLR, and had developed the tunnelling shield used to excavate those companies' tunnels under the River Thames. Fowler had been the engineer on the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway opened in 1863, and Baker had worked on New York's elevated railways and on the Forth Railway Bridge with Fowler. Greathead died shortly after work began and was replaced by Basil Mott, his assistant during the construction of the C&SLR.[8]

Oxford Circus station, an example of the Harry Bell Measures design used for the CLR's stations

Like most legislation of its kind, the act of 1891 imposed a time limit for the compulsory purchase of land and the raising of capital.[note 3] The original date specified for completion of construction was the end of 1896, but the time required to raise the finance and purchase station sites meant that construction had not begun by the start of that year. To give itself extra time, the CLR had obtained an extension of time to 1899 by the Central London Railway Act, 1894.[16][17] Construction works were let by the ETCL as three sub-contracts: Shepherd's Bush to Marble Arch, Marble Arch to St Martin's Le Grand and St Martin's Le Grand to Bank. Work began with demolition of buildings at the Chancery Lane site in April 1896 and construction shafts were started at Chancery Lane, Shepherd's Bush, Stanhope Terrace and Bloomsbury in August and September 1896.[18]

Negotiations with the GER for the works under Liverpool Street station were unsuccessful, and the final section beyond Bank was only constructed for a short distance as sidings. To minimise the risk of subsidence, the routing of the tunnels followed the roads on the surface and avoided passing under buildings. Usually the tunnels were bored side by side 60–110 feet (18–34 m) below the surface, but where a road was too narrow to allow this, the tunnels were aligned one above the other, so that a number of stations have platforms at different levels.[19] To assist with the deceleration of trains arriving at stations and the acceleration of trains leaving, station tunnels were located at the tops of slight inclines.[20]

Tunnelling was completed by the end of 1898,[21] and, because a planned concrete lining to the cast iron tunnel rings was not installed, the internal diameter of the tunnels was generally 11 feet 8.25 inches (3.56 m).[19] For Bank station, the CLR negotiated permission with the City Corporation to construct its ticket hall beneath a steel framework under the roadway and pavements at the junction of Threadneedle Street and Cornhill. This involved diverting pipework and cables into ducts beneath the subways linking the ticket hall to the street.[19] Delays on this work were so costly that they nearly bankrupted the company.[18] A further extension of time to 1900 was obtained through the Central London Railway Act, 1899.[16][22]

Apart from Bank, which was completely below ground, all stations had buildings designed by Harry Bell Measures. They were single-storey structures to allow for future commercial development above and had elevations faced in beige terracotta. Each station had lifts manufactured by the Sprague Electric Company in New York. The lifts were provided in a variety of sizes and configurations to suit the passenger flow at each station. Generally they operated in sets of two or three in a shared shaft.[23] Station tunnel walls were finished in plain white ceramic tiles and lit by electric arc lamps.[24] The electricity to run the trains and the stations was supplied from the power station at Wood Lane at 5,000V AC which was converted at sub-stations along the route to 550V DC to power the trains via a third rail system.[25]

Rejected route proposed in 1901

The CLR's ability to manage its high passenger numbers was constrained by the service interval that it could achieve between trains. This was directly related to the time taken to turn around trains at the termini. At the end of a journey, a locomotive had to be disconnected from the leading end of the train and run around to the rear, where it was reconnected before proceeding in the opposite direction; an exercise that took a minimum of 2½ minutes.[37] Seeking to shorten this interval, the CLR published a bill in November 1900 for the 1901 parliamentary session.[38] The bill requested permission to construct loops at each end of the line so that trains could be turned around without disconnecting the locomotive. The loop at the western end was planned to run anti-clockwise under the three sides of Shepherd's Bush Green. For the eastern loop the alternatives were a loop under Liverpool Street station or a larger loop running under Threadneedle Street, Old Broad Street, Liverpool Street, Bishopsgate and returning to Threadneedle Street. The estimated cost of the loops was £800,000 (approximately £92.1 million today),[13] most of which was for the eastern loop with its costly wayleaves.[37]

The CLR bill was one of more than a dozen tube railway bills submitted to Parliament for the 1901 session,[note 7] To review the bills on an equal basis, Parliament established a joint committee under Lord Windsor,[40] but by the time the committee had produced its report, the parliamentary session was almost over and the promoters of the bills were asked to resubmit them for the following 1902 session. Among the committee's recommendations were the withdrawal of the CLR's City loop,[41] and that a quick, tube route from Hammersmith to the City of London would benefit London's commuters.[42][note 8]

Rejected route proposed in 1902

Rather than resubmit its 1901 bill, the CLR presented a much more ambitious alternative for the 1902 parliamentary session. The reversing loops were dropped, and the CLR instead proposed to turn the whole railway into a single large loop by constructing a new southern route between the two existing end points, adopting the committee's recommendation for a Hammersmith to City route.[43][44] At the western end, new tunnels were to be extended from the dead-end reversing siding west of Shepherd's Bush station and from the depot access tunnel. The route was to pass under Shepherd's Bush Green and run under Goldhawk Road as far as Hammersmith Grove where it was to turn south. At the southern end of Hammersmith Grove a station was to be provided on the corner of Brook Green Road (now Shepherd's Bush Road) to provide an interchange with the three stations already located there.[43][note 9]

From Hammersmith, the CLR's route was to turn eastwards and run under Hammersmith Road and Kensington High Street with interchange stations at the DR's Addison Road (now Kensington Olympia) and High Street Kensington stations. From Kensington High Street, the route was to run along the south side of Kensington Gardens beneath Kensington Road, Kensington Gore and Knightsbridge. Stations were to be constructed at the Royal Albert Hall and the junction of Knightsbridge and Sloane Street, where the Brompton & Piccadilly Circus Railway (B&PCR) already had permission to build a station.[note 10] From Sloane Street, the CLR's proposed route ran below that approved for the B&PCR under the eastern portion of Knightsbridge, under Hyde Park Corner and along Piccadilly to Piccadilly Circus. At Hyde Park Corner, a CLR station was to be sited close to the B&PCR's station and the CLR's next station at St James's Street was a short distance to the east of the B&PCR's planned Dover Street station. At Piccadilly Circus, the CLR planned an interchange with the partially completed station of the stalled Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. The CLR route was then to turn south-east beneath Leicester Square to a station at Charing Cross and then north-east under Strand to Norfolk Street to interchange with the planned terminus of the Great Northern & Strand Railway.[43][note 10]

The route was then to continue east under Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus for an interchange with the South Eastern and Chatham Railway's (SECR's) Ludgate Hill station, then south under New Bridge Street, and east into Queen Victoria Street where a station was planned to connect to the District Railway's Mansion House station. The route was then to continue under Queen Victoria Street to reach the CLR's station at Bank, where separate platforms below the existing ones were to be provided. The final section of the route developed on the proposed loop from the year before with tunnels winding under the city's narrow, twisting streets. The tunnels were to run east, one below the other, beneath Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, north under St Mary Axe and west to Liverpool Street station, then south under Blomfield Street, east under Great Winchester Street, south under Austin Friars and Old Broad Street and west under Threadneedle Street where the tunnels were to connect with the existing sidings back into Bank. Two stations were to be provided on the loop; at the south end of St Mary Axe and at Liverpool Street station.[43] To accommodate the additional rolling stock needed to operate the longer line, the depot was to be extended northwards. The power station was also to be enlarged to increase the electricity supply.[45] The CLR estimated that its plan would cost £3,781,000 (approximately £437 million today):[13] £2,110,000 for construction, £873,000 for land and £798,000 for electrical equipment and trains.[45]

The CLR bill was one of many presented for the 1902 parliamentary session (including several for the Hammersmith to City route) and it was examined by another joint committee under Lord Windsor.[note 11] The proposal received support from the mainline railway companies the route interchanged with and from the C&SLR, which had a station at Bank. The London County Council and the City Corporation also supported the plan. The Metropolitan Railway opposed, seeing further competition to its services on the Inner Circle. Questions were raised in Parliament about the safety of tunnelling so close to the vaults of many City banks and the risk that subsidence might cause vault doors to jam shut. Another concern was the danger of undermining the foundations of the Dutch Church in Austin Friars. The Windsor committee rejected the section between Shepherd's Bush and Bank, preferring a competing route from the J. P. Morgan-backed Piccadilly, City and North East London Railway (PC&NELR).[47] Without the main part of its new route, the CLR withdrew the City loop, leaving a few improvements to the existing line to be approved in the Central London Railway Act, 1902 on 31 July 1902.[45][48]

In late 1902, the PC&NELR plans collapsed after a falling out between the scheme's promoters led to a crucial part of the planned route coming under the control of a rival, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), which withdrew it from parliamentary consideration.[49] With the PC&NELR scheme out of the way, the CLR resubmitted its bill in 1903,[50][51] although consideration was again held up by Parliament's establishment of the Royal Commission on London Traffic tasked to assess the manner in which transport in London should be developed.[52] While the Commission deliberated, any review of bills for new lines and extensions was postponed, so the CLR withdrew the bill.[50] The CLR briefly re-presented the bill for the 1905 parliamentary session but withdrew it again, before making an agreement with the UERL in October 1905 that neither company would submit a bill for an east–west route in 1906.[53] The plan was then dropped as the new trains with driving positions at both ends made it possible for the CLR to reduce the minimum interval between trains to two minutes without building the loop.[36]

Route approved in 1907

In 1905, the government announced plans to hold an international exhibition to celebrate the Entente cordiale signed by France and Britain in 1904. The location of the Franco-British Exhibition's White City site was across Wood Lane from the CLR's depot.[54] To exploit the opportunity to carry visitors to the exhibition, the CLR announced a bill in November 1906 seeking to create a loop from Shepherd's Bush station and back, on which a new Wood Lane station close to the exhibition's entrance would be built.[55] The new work was approved on 26 July 1907 in the Central London Railway Act, 1907.[56]

The new loop was formed by constructing a section of tunnel joining the end of the dead-end reversing tunnel to the west of Shepherd's Bush station and the north side of the depot. From Shepherd's Bush, trains ran anti-clockwise around the single track loop, first through the original depot access tunnel, then passed the north side of the depot and through the new station before entering the new section of tunnel and returning to Shepherd's Bush. Changes were also made to the depot layout to accommodate the new station and the new looped operations. Construction work on the exhibition site had started in January 1907, and the exhibition and new station opened on 14 May 1908. The station was on the surface between the two tunnel openings and was a basic design by Harry Bell Measures. It had platforms both sides of the curving track – passengers alighted on to one and boarded from the other (an arrangement now known as the Spanish solution).[54]

Route approved in 1909

With the extension to Wood Lane operational, the CLR revisited its earlier plan for an eastward extension from Bank to Liverpool Street station. This time, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) agreed to allow the CLR to build a station under its own main line terminus, provided that no further extension would be made north or north-east from there – territory served by the GER's routes from Liverpool Street.[57] A bill was announced in November 1908,[58] for the 1909 parliamentary session and received Royal Assent as the Central London Railway Act, 1909 on 16 August 1909.[57][59] Construction started in July 1910 and the new Liverpool Street station was opened on 28 July 1912.[57] Following their successful introduction at the DR's Earl's Court station in 1911, the station was the first underground station in London to be built with escalators. Four were provided, two to Liverpool Street station and two to the North London Railway's adjacent Broad Street station.[60]

The CLR's next planned extension was westward to Ealing. In 1905, the Great Western Railway (GWR) had obtained parliamentary approval to construct the Ealing and Shepherd's Bush Railway (E&SBR), connecting its main line route at Ealing Broadway to the West London Railway (WLR) north of Shepherd's Bush.[61] From Ealing, the new line was to curve north-east through still mostly rural North Acton, then run east for a short distance parallel with the GWR's High Wycombe line, before curving south-east. The line was then to run on an embankment south of Old Oak Common and Wormwood Scrubs before connecting to the WLR a short distance to the north of the CLR's depot.[62]

Route approved in 1911

Construction work did not begin immediately, and, in 1911, the CLR and GWR agreed running powers for CLR services over the line to Ealing Broadway. To make a connection to the E&SBR, the CLR obtained parliamentary permission for a short extension northward from Wood Lane station on 18 August 1911 in the Central London Railway Act, 1911.[61][63] The new E&SBR line was constructed by the GWR and opened as a steam-hauled freight only line on 16 April 1917. Electrification of the track and the start of CLR services were postponed until after the end of World War I, not starting until 3 August 1920 when a single intermediate station at East Acton was also opened.[64][27]

Wood Lane station was modified and extended to accommodate the northward extension tracks linking to the E&SBR. The existing platforms on the loop were retained, continuing to be used by trains that were turning back to central London, and two new platforms for trains running to or from Ealing were constructed at a lower level on the new tracks, which connected to each side of the loop. Ealing Broadway station was modified to provide additional platforms for CLR use between the existing but separate sets of platforms used by the GWR and the DR.[62]

To provide services over the 6.97-kilometre (4.33 mi) extension, the CLR ordered 24 additional driving motor carriages from the Brush Company, which, when delivered in 1917, were first borrowed by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway for use in place of carriages ordered for its extension to Watford Junction. The new carriages were the first for tube-sized trains that were fully enclosed, without gated platforms at the rear, and were provided with hinged doors in the sides to speed-up passenger loading times. To operate with the new stock the CLR converted 48 existing carriages, providing a total of 72 carriages for twelve six-car trains. Modifications made while in use on the Watford extension meant that the new carriages were not compatible with the rest of the CLR's fleet and they became known as the Ealing stock.[65]

The E&SBR remained part of the GWR until nationalisation at the beginning of 1948, when (with the exception of Ealing Broadway station) it was transferred to the London Transport Executive. Ealing Broadway remained part of British Railways, as successors to the GWR.[66]

In November 1912,[67] the CLR announced plans for an extension from Shepherd's Bush on a new south-westwards route. Tunnels were planned under Goldhawk Road, Stamford Brook Road and Bath Road to Chiswick Common where a turn to the south would take the tunnels under Turnham Green Terrace for a short distance. The route then was to head west again to continue under Chiswick High Road before coming to the surface east of the London and South Western Railway's (L&SWR's) Gunnersbury station. Here a connection would be made to allow the CLR's tube trains to run south-west to Richmond station over L&SWR tracks that the DR shared and had electrified in 1905. Stations were planned on Goldhawk Road at its junctions with The Grove, Paddenswick Road and Rylett Road, at Emlyn Road on Stamford Brook Road, at Turnham Green Terrace (for a connection with the L&SWR's/DR's Turnham Green station) and at the junction of Chiswick High Road and Heathfield Terrace. Beyond Richmond, the CLR saw further opportunities to continue over L&SWR tracks to the commuter towns of Twickenham, Sunbury and Shepperton, although this required the tracks to be electrified.[68] The CLR received permission for the new line to Gunnersbury on 15 August 1913 in the Central London Railway Act, 1913,[69] but World War I prevented the works from commencing and the permission expired.[68]

Routes approved in 1913 and 1920

In November 1919,[70] the CLR published a new bill to revive the Richmond extension, but using a different route that required only a short section of new tunnel construction. The new proposal was to construct tunnels southwards from Shepherd's Bush station, which would come to the surface to connect to disused L&SWR tracks north of Hammersmith Grove Road station that had closed in 1916. From Hammersmith, the disused LS&WR tracks continued westwards, on the same viaduct as the DR's tracks through Turnham Green to Gunnersbury and Richmond.[note 12] The plan required electrification of the disused tracks, but avoided the need for costly tunnelling and would have shared the existing stations on the route with the DR. The plan received assent on 4 August 1920 as part of the Central London and Metropolitan District Railway Companies (Works) Act, 1920,[72] although the CLR made no attempt to carry out any of the work. The disused L&SWR tracks between Ravenscourt Park and Turnham Green were eventually used for the westward extension of the Piccadilly line from Hammersmith in 1932.[73]