The London Underground

The book I read to research this post was Down The Tube by Christian Wolmar which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is about the London Underground System  and was written in 2002 so probably doesn't have the latest information. They were introducing the idea of drivers who just operated the doors to re assure the public they were safe and trains moved and stopped automatically. Nowadays they are some trains that don't have a driver at all. There also was a line built to Heathrow Airport & talk of building a line to Canary Wharf & the Docklands. The book starts by looking at Camden Town station which has a popular market and has seen visitors increase dramatically. The Underground System in general is getting much more popular with travelcards which let you travel anywhere for a flat fee. Bromley which doesn't have an Underground System took the GLC to court over the travelcards and won its case meaning they had to scale back the sale of them. Camden Town has a portion of the station that's disused and also a disused line to Aldwych & London Transport are only too happy to show anybody round although only on request. It is part of their public relations programme. There are rooms filled with machinery that it would be too costly to remove and the ceilings are quite low as people tended to be shorter in those days. Christian is one of the most popular railway authors and fairly recently one of his books topped the History Chart on Amazon which is unusual for a railway book. He is a consistently good writer and I have read several books by him which I have enjoyed. It would be interesting if he updates this book to see what new developments have taken place. I did see a tv programme a couple of days ago that argued London swallows up far too much money developing its transport infrastructure and that it would be fairer to spend more money on other areas of Britain and help them catch up. Apparently they spend £5,000 per head in London and on average £700 elsewhere.