A Tube Train for the 20th Century: The 1906 Stock

today's video is sponsored by incogni of whom more in a little bit in the London transport Museum's Depot at Acton town There's an odd sort of part of a carriage this is the largest surviving remnant of the 1906 stock trains also known as the gate stock let's take a look at the first attempt to create a standard train for London 1906 was an important year for the London Underground or rather for the network of lines that would eventually officially become the underground this was the year when the first of the Yorkies tubes opened the American businessman Charles Yorkies had come to London at the beginning of the 20th century and begun the building of a public transport Empire to replace the ones he'd built and lost in the States among his Acquisitions were three tube lines that were in pre-production as it were but had stalled due to a lack of Finance these were the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway the Charing Cross Houston and Hampstead Railway and the Great Northern Piccadilly and Brompton Railway the Baker Street and Waterloo would eventually become the baker Lou line the Great Northern piccadillian Brompton would become the Piccadilly line and the Charing Cross Houston and Hampstead Railway would eventually form part of the northern line but would be nicknamed the Hampstead tube until then underground lines were nothing new at the start of the 20th century by the beginning of 1906 there were seven and that's if you don't count the East London line or the Inner Circle as separate lines but they had been built by individual companies that never envisaged the concept of an underground Network as we know it today everything was bespoke for them with little or no Mutual compatibility underground electric Railways of London or uerl the company Yorkies would co-founds to finance and manage his Acquisitions would do things differently everything was built to standard patterns from the tunnels down to the signage in the stations it was an early form of what we'd Now call a corporate identity that was one advantage others were compatibility and cost believe me when yucky's Financial dealings came to light after his 1905 death cost was a major consideration for uerl naturally this standardization would extend to the trains that's the background before we get on to the details of the trains themselves I think it's time to talk about today's sponsor in cogni so recently I was exploring the creepy tunnels under old Street Station when I was confronted by an equally creepy man Mr Azad I presume he said I I can't do the accent Mr razard I presume he said how do you know my name I demanded I've been a stealing yeah data off the internet he said impossible you ill-bread loon I replied because I use incogni I'm very aware that websites Harvest your information and sell it onto data Brokers making your private information available to anyone who pays for it I'm also aware of data breaches that can make you pray to identity theft but incogni is a service that cuts through the mumbo jumbo to automatically demand the removal of your information from the data Brokers per the laws of your country and I know it's working because they keep me regularly updated on the progress of my requests what's more the first 100 people to visit the link in the description description below and then to the code Hazard will get sixty percent off you don't scare me with your techno Babble old man how you got me Mr Hazard he said I've just been hiding in your house well that's all right then I said no hold on wait a minute that's not all right at all uerl commissioned their trains from a number of different companies in a number of different countries they were similar in design but not identical the earliest tube trains had consisted of a locomotive hauling unmotorized carriages but experience had shown that a better way to do things was to use multiple units that is where there's no separate locomotive the motors are mounted in the carriages and the train can be driven from either end the carriages of these trains came in three basic types motor cars as the name implies provided the power and could be driven control trailers were fitted with drivers cabs but had no motor and trailers had neither motor nor cab now I've been saying carriages but actually the more American term cars tended to be used a legacy of Yorkies and his business partners a lot of American terms were used on the Underground and indeed still are the baker Lou received 108 cars manufactured by the American car and Foundry Company in Pennsylvania and assembled at Trafford Park in Manchester then they were delivered by rail to Camden town and the rest of their Journey was made by Road electricity was still treated with suspicion in 1906 so fireproofing was essential these cars were made of steel with mahogany Interiors American car and Foundry also built the Hampstead tube's 150 cars but this time they were wholly manufactured in Manchester the British press were deeply suspicious of the American influence on the tube so uerl were careful to emphasize that these trains were built using British materials the Piccadilly trains were more of a mishmash one trailer was built by brush electrical engineering and another by the Metropolitan Amalgamated Railway carriage and wagon company both in Britain of the rest 108 cars were built by lezartellier do construction du nor De La France and the other 108 by the Hungarian Railway and carriage works either this book I'm reading is inconsistent about how it writes foreign companies names or it was remarkably considerate of the Hungarian Railway and carriage Works to name themselves in English as I say there were detailed differences between the different coaches numbers of seats couplings break blocks and deliveries all varied among other things there were consistent features between them such as the Westinghouse brakes and the dead man's handle again essential for safety the most distinctive feature they all had was the gates the carriages were entered via a balcony at the end which was fitted with Gates and of course this is why the trains were nicknamed Gate stock if that wasn't obvious oddly enough they weren't the first carriages on the Underground Railways to be so equipped City and South London Railway coaches like this one here had been fitted with them since 1890 yet no other carriages on the tube gained this nickname trains could be chopped and changed as required but the typical formation was six cars per train at peak times three cars at all other times Services began early in the morning around 5 30 a.m until half past midnight at intervals of three to five minutes it was an intense service from the start this was a novelty to Edwardian londoners who were used to the more leisurely pace of the surface Railways and objected most strongly to being hurried by staff not that the staff had it easy they didn't even get a lunch break speaking of Staff the gate stock had a lot of them first you had the driver or motorman as they were known in the early days then the guard then on the platforms between the carriages you had the gate men whose responsibility was to open and close the gates also to announce the stations and to assist the passengers gate men reported to the guard who reported to the motorman each one had a bell by which they could communicate passengers did not take too kindly to the gate men as well as the accusations of rudeness they claimed that the gatemen were apt to mispronounce station names Highgate apparently became iget and Hampstead became amsted some even wrote to the times though I don't know what they expected the times to do about it a writer for the railway engineer suggested that and I quote such methods are only importations from America where rudeness and noise from Railway servants are meekly tolerated if not appreciated nevertheless London has had to meekly tolerate if not appreciate it for about a decade and a half it wasn't a hatred of the Cockney accent nor anti-American bias that did for the gatemen but the march of Technology in 1919 40 cars were ordered from camel lead and Co for the Piccadilly line these were fitted with the exciting new technology of sliding doors powered by air with these time spent in stations could be reduced by over half there was no contest sliding doors were the future to work with the new cars 20 of the Piccadilly's French cars were retrofitted with the same now the staff on trains could be reduced to three driver and two guards but there was more coming since 1906 uerl's Empire had expanded massively ordering a few trains here and there wasn't going to cut it a new design appeared in 1923 the so-called standard stock a modern train to be used across uerl's tube lines these rapidly moved in on the 1906 stocks Turf some of the old trains went into departmental stock but most were simply scrapped in 1927 intercoms were introduced reducing the number of staff from three to two not that the guards were going down without a fight maybe the new trains didn't have Gates per se but technically the guards were performing duties formally performed by five people so in 1927 uerl reluctantly introduced the gate men's allowance a compensation payment made to the guards incredibly this wasn't withdrawn until 1985 several generations of Rolling Stock later the last Gate stock trains were withdrawn in 1930. well almost the last two of the rebuilt French cars were rebuilt into a double cab configuration in order to operate the shuttle service from Hoban to aldwich on the Piccadilly line these lasted until 1953 by which time they must have looked horribly old-fashioned the 1906 stock aren't the most fondly remembered tube cars no complete cars even survived into preservation but in their own way they were Pioneers many of the concepts introduced with them were copied and improved upon with subsequent generations of train not least of which is the idea of standardizing stock across the network wherever possible you might say they were the gateway to the future of the Underground well I hope you enjoyed this tolerable if not appreciable tale from the tube if so please do leave a like and consider subscribing for more I would like as always to thank my donors on Kofi and patreon and here on YouTube for your generous support you are the air operated doors to my Piccadilly trains I would also like to thanking cogni for sponsoring me to ramble on about Edwardian trains check out the link in the description below to take advantage of their generous offer and I will see you all again very soon for another tale from the tube

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 136,458

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Id: jkqoAXg2R2M

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023