The Old Jubilee Line

today's video is sponsored by surfsharkvpn regular viewers will recall that the last time they sponsored a video i was captured by airship pirates for reasons unrelated to surf shark so it was that lionel and i found ourselves spirited off to the mountain stronghold of the notorious prince shadrach the evil supervillain who seeks to destroy the nations of the world prince shadrach i said as i stood trembling before him why do you seek this destruction he glared at me with fire in his eyes and then in a booming voice declared it is because when i go online shopping i keep getting ripped off because i can't take advantage of certain country-specific offers furthermore i yearn to watch the joy of painting on youtube but it's only available in the us by destroying all nations i can end this tyranny but prince s i said if you had surf shark that wouldn't be a problem you can use its servers in other countries to get around region-specific restrictions online and with its advanced encryption you can do so in complete privacy i don't know said the science pirate that sounds expensive not a bit of it i said visit surf shark and enter the code jgo at checkout you can get 83 percent off a two-year plan plus three months extra free plus a 30-day money-back guarantee surf shark can be used on an unlimited number of devices too well i'm convinced said shadrach i'm dismantling my organization forthwith hooray so that surf shark gives you security online helps you save money gets around regional restrictions and causes super villains to mend their evil ways i feel like i talk about the jubilee line east of westminster a lot but i hardly ever even mention the other section i think it's time to rectify that don't you so as you may be aware the jubilee line opened in two sections the new and exciting bit that everyone talks about opened in 1999 and involved a lot of complicated construction work as well as some very nifty design features but there's also the older section that opened in 1979 from stanmore to westminster and there's quite a story behind that actually the story of this bit goes back to 1932 long before the jubilee line was even thought of look at stanmore station and the architecture is a dead giveaway as to its original owner this style of architecture is the work of charles w clark of the metropolitan railway it's known as the domestic style with an obvious arts and crafts influence so it clues us in that this section of line was built by the metropolitan railway this style of architecture was very deliberately designed to evoke the idea of a house in the countryside you see most railways were authorised to acquire more land than they needed during construction just in case but they had to give the excess back afterwards not so for the metropolitan who wound up with lots of land to the north west of london so they got into property development not only building the railways but towns for them to serve this area became known as metroland the railway portrayed these new suburbs as affordable homes in the countryside yet within easy reach of the city the promotional campaign was so successful that the area was soon well not the countryside anymore the story of how the metropolitan railway expanded from baker street to the north west of london is a long and complicated one that's liable to overwhelm the entire video if i go into too much detail for now what you need to know is that in 1868 a line was opened from baker street to swiss cottage which was the metropolitan and st john's wood railway in 1872 sir edward watkin took over as chairman of the metropolitan railway and pursued a policy of aggressive expansion branch lines started being built out into the countryside to pull commuters into london the line from wembley park to stanmore was the last of these opening in 1932. it was the only branch of the metropolitan railway to be electrified from the start it was also the first line the company had opened since 1899 and a major reason for that was that the charing cross houston and hampstead railway had opened an extension of their own to nearby edgeware the ccehr was owned by the underground group and they were already making plans to extend further into the suburbs the met decided they had to act and so built their fancy new line to stanmore complete with a bus service to surrounding areas in the hope of poaching traffic from the underground this was in retrospect not a smart move what's important to note at this point is that at the time the metropolitan railway was not part of the underground it was a main line what this meant was that it had to charge fares in line with other mainline companies while the underground could set theirs deliberately low as a result traveling from stanmore into london could cost over twice as much as the same trip from edgeware in fact the buses wound up backfiring so to speak in that people were using them to travel from the metropolitan to the underground passenger numbers on the stanmore branch were so low in the early days that a single coach like this one was sufficient to carry them meanwhile at the other end of the railway the metropolitan was having the opposite problem all these branch lines were feeding passengers into london all right more than the line could handle fortunately help was at hand but not in a form that was entirely welcome in 1933 the london passenger transport board took over most of the underground lines including the metropolitan railway the met protested but to no avail the board or london transport to give it its more familiar name looked at the situation in the northwestern suburbs the line to edgeware was already badly overcrowded the obvious solution was to divert passengers onto the underused metropolitan line but there was already a bottleneck at finchley road and no way of getting extra trains beyond that the bakerloo line had extra capacity though if anything it was also underused so a plan was drawn up to build a new section of line extending from baker street to finchley road from here it would take over two of the metropolitan railways four tracks and the entire stanmore branch as well as the new tunnel the stations and signals had to be overhauled one very visible change was the lowering of the platforms to accommodate the much lower bakerloo line trains as a result the platforms from finchley road to stanmore are higher than floor level for bakerloo or jubilee line trains but lower than the metropolitan floor level the new bakerloo service opened in 1939 but as one problem was solved another one arose remember i mentioned that finchley road on the metropolitan line was a bottleneck well now baker street on the bakerloo line was the bottleneck as trains converged there from watford junction and stanmore following the second world war things only got worse a lot of companies had moved from the city to the west end in the wake of bombing the bakerloo line trains between baker street and oxford circus were overcrowded and there was no capacity to add any more the line that would become the victoria line was in the planning stages and whatever form it was going to take it was very clear that it was going to put even more strain on the bakerloo so a new line was proposed in 1964 which was to be called the fleet line it was to take over one of the bakerloo branches though whether it would be the stanmore or watford junction branch was uncertain at the time from there it would run to bond street green park and charing cross which in those days was known as trafalgar square then it would continue through the city as far as either fenchurch street or tower hill with the possibility of extending further east i made a series of videos on the plans for the fleet line the first of which should be popping up in the corner about now the new line was planned in stages stage one would be stan moore to charing cross stage two from charing cross defence street and stage three from there to wherever while london transport were pretty sure they wanted to run a line to charing cross nobody was really sure what would happen from there on in the 1960s the docks in east london were running down and the government weren't at all certain what to do with them in other words east london was liable to undergo a dramatic change in the next few decades and the transport needs of the area would depend on what form that change took so in 1971 approval was given for stage one of the new line while stage three was still under consideration the stations that stage one would serve were all pre-existing ones but almost all required significant expansion to cope with the anticipated growth in traffic the exception was green park which had already been rebuilt for the arrival of the victoria line in 1968 in 1977 the incomplete line was renamed the jubilee line to commemorate the silver jubilee of queen elizabeth ii at the behest of horace cutler head of the greater london council this caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth at london transport headquarters as they'd already started printing material referring to the line as the fleet and what was the point of calling the line the jubilee line when it wasn't going to open until 1978. on the 1st of may 1979 stage 1 of the jubilee line was opened by prince charles and it was a great success with obvious improvements being noted within six months overcrowding on the bakerloo line was eased with fifty percent of bakerloo passengers south of baker street switching to the jubilee the old stanmore branch saw a 10 increase in traffic as well along with a 50 increase in train frequency and so they all lived happily ever after hello all i hope you enjoyed this overcrowded tale from the tube if you did you may wish to click the like button there's also a dislike button but you don't need to worry about that you could of course subscribe for more videos like this i'd like as always to thank my donors on kofi and patreon you are the fleet line to my bakerloo line and i'll see you all again very soon for another tale from the tube oh wait before i go don't forget to check out the link in the description below to take advantage of surf shark's generous offer see you soon you

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 46,709

Rating: 4.9434242 out of 5

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Id: PKLbLPHIqx8

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021