baulks could be dropped to seal the twin tunnel mouths at the south end of Charing Cross station and the north end of Waterloo on the Bakerloo. Each barrier would take almost an hour to install and they were only designed to check immediate flooding. Nevertheless, this rather crude system required the constant allocation of 100 men on stand-by in case of a breach. A more permanent solution of steel doors was suggested by the Underground Company but as this would have required 170 tons of steel that could otherwise be used for ammunition, the Ministry of War rejected the idea. Even when it was pointed out that sixty-five miles of tunnel could be flooded, with massive loss of life, the Ministry only relented enough to discuss the issue more urgently; and it was not until after the war that a lining of armour plate was installed on the Bakerloo Line either side of the river. To this day, flooding remains probably the greatest risk of a major catastrophe in the tube system, although much stronger defences have been built.
Apart from the use of the Underground as a massive air raid shelter, the Great War had two long-term effects on the Underground: a move towards integration which became irreversible and a massive rise in usage which was to create both problems and opportunities.
Although the Underground Company controlled most of the lines, each one still had separate accounts and shareholders, resulting in complex calculations to allocate revenue. To make matters even more complicated, the District line had been taken under direct control of the government, along with most of the main line railways, while management of the tube lines had been left with the company.This meant that District staff would receive a war bonus, but their counterparts on the tube lines would not. A strange consequence of this anomaly was that Stanley devised a plan to establish a common fund for receipts from the various lines, which convinced the government to pay the bonus to all the company’s staff, including those working for the London General Omnibus Company. More importantly, this was the beginning of the kind of pooling arrangement which was essential to create an integrated transport system for the capital, towards which Stanley seemed always to be working. The arrangement protected the less profitable parts of the Combine, the rather Orwellian name increasingly used for Stanley’s ever-growing empire, and meant that the shareholders’ rates of return were equalized. Consequently, the owners of the bus company received less than under the previous arrangement, and the Underground stockholders more.
The overcrowding was also to have long-term consequences. At the beginning of the war, as mobilization resulted in hundreds of thousands of new recruits heading to training camps and to southern ports for transfer to France, the Underground Company allowed all uniformed men to travel free until 1 October 1914. But even after the soldiers had to pay, the Underground system had to cope with vastly increased traffic – in contrast with the Second World War when numbers were to go down. There were a variety of causes: the massive troop movements, leave travel, cutbacks in road services as vehicles were used for war and their drivers sent to the front, and the greater affluence that accompanied the high employment levels resulting from the conflict. The major history of the tube network suggests another reason: ‘Another contributory factor [to the growth] was the dim-out enforced after dark as a precaution against air attack – people naturally preferred travel in the well-lit tube cars to slow bus and train journeys through darkened streets.’ 5 Clearly the Underground Company saw the war as an opportunity, too. For Easter 1915 the company issued a poster using the war in a ironic way to boost passenger numbers: ‘Why bother about the Germans invading the country – invade it yourself byunderground and the motor bus’, a testimony to the
Apart from the use of the Underground as a massive air raid shelter, the Great War had two long-term effects on the Underground: a move towards integration which became irreversible and a massive rise in usage which was to create both problems and opportunities.
Although the Underground Company controlled most of the lines, each one still had separate accounts and shareholders, resulting in complex calculations to allocate revenue. To make matters even more complicated, the District line had been taken under direct control of the government, along with most of the main line railways, while management of the tube lines had been left with the company.This meant that District staff would receive a war bonus, but their counterparts on the tube lines would not. A strange consequence of this anomaly was that Stanley devised a plan to establish a common fund for receipts from the various lines, which convinced the government to pay the bonus to all the company’s staff, including those working for the London General Omnibus Company. More importantly, this was the beginning of the kind of pooling arrangement which was essential to create an integrated transport system for the capital, towards which Stanley seemed always to be working. The arrangement protected the less profitable parts of the Combine, the rather Orwellian name increasingly used for Stanley’s ever-growing empire, and meant that the shareholders’ rates of return were equalized. Consequently, the owners of the bus company received less than under the previous arrangement, and the Underground stockholders more.
The overcrowding was also to have long-term consequences. At the beginning of the war, as mobilization resulted in hundreds of thousands of new recruits heading to training camps and to southern ports for transfer to France, the Underground Company allowed all uniformed men to travel free until 1 October 1914. But even after the soldiers had to pay, the Underground system had to cope with vastly increased traffic – in contrast with the Second World War when numbers were to go down. There were a variety of causes: the massive troop movements, leave travel, cutbacks in road services as vehicles were used for war and their drivers sent to the front, and the greater affluence that accompanied the high employment levels resulting from the conflict. The major history of the tube network suggests another reason: ‘Another contributory factor [to the growth] was the dim-out enforced after dark as a precaution against air attack – people naturally preferred travel in the well-lit tube cars to slow bus and train journeys through darkened streets.’ 5 Clearly the Underground Company saw the war as an opportunity, too. For Easter 1915 the company issued a poster using the war in a ironic way to boost passenger numbers: ‘Why bother about the Germans invading the country – invade it yourself byunderground and the motor bus’, a testimony to the
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