TLDR: Jago gives an example of why so few Tube lines were built south of the Thames, perhaps in hopes that you'll quit asking him why there's so little Underground service in South London.
The basic answer is that London is north of the Thames. Always has been, always will be. OK, so Southwark is a city (apparently), but the rest is just shapeless sprawl. The whole point of the first deep level tube was to get people out of the south and INTO London! In the days of the old London Bridge, they used to shut the gates at the southern end at night to keep the rabble out! It baffles me that this practise was ever abandoned.
@@paulhaynes8045 Re: "The basic answer is that London is north of the Thames. Always has been, always will be." I've heard this from plenty of North Londoners and it's a pretty nonsensical position to argue. By that logic only the City of London is "actually London" and there are people who live in Essex and Middlesex who use London Underground to travel to the City of Westminster and who hardly ever walk the "actual streets of London". In 1905 the London County Council (the governing body for the area around the City of London) had outgrown it's original building at Spring Gardens and decided to move their headquarters south of the river, opposite Westminster Palace. County Hall was completed in 1922. Following a period of "direct rule" imposed on Greater London by Central Government, the government of London returned to South London, in the form of a building called City Hall (which was actually owned by the government of Kuwait and rented to the Mayor of London). That building has been vacated now, and government of London moved to the London Docklands in 2022, but most Londoners have spent most of their lives being governed by politicians in South London.
Borough is my local station. I always considered it a pretty disinteresting and often vexing to use given its only on the bank branch of the northern line (especially apt at the moment) and only has lifts. I'd never heard of this before, very interesting indeed!
Amazing story Jago. Kudos to the driver and the guardsman for being so vigilant, they saved the day. I hope the guardsman's shoes and socks were able to be recovered.
The very reason for keeping guards on trains - safety. And the very reason why they're called 'guards' and not ticket collectors or train assistants...
Your reference to the clay soil of London reminded me of the excavation machinery at Paddington that couldn't bare the weight. It collapsed onto line 6 more or less. This caused huge delays in the peak period for several days. So, I always made a point of pointing it out when driving past to shut the complaining gobs of my opinionated passengers.
There was a bad crash on the Central line between Stratford and Leyton in 1953 that killed 12 people when the train ran into the back of a stationary train. It was the worst accident on the tube up until the Moorgate crash. Ta Jago.
Actually, thanks for making a separate video of this! I like how Mentour Pilot covers both serious incidents, as well as those where little had happend, or miraculously nothing happened at all. It's very educative, just as this event. Great job!
Heaven was smiling on that train crew. Thanks for the story, and for the many genuinely interesting and informative comments. (And the awful pubs - loved them)
What an amazing story! Just as well that there was a guard and that he was alert! It's also fortunate that this collapse happened under a street, not under a building or under the Thames!
In addition to the "darkness and confined space" adding "terror to an already nightmarish situation" you also have to watch out for Yeti - I seem to remember a documentary on that back in the late 1960s.
5:56 Look into the tunnel, At the top of the tunnel you can see a corridor where people are passing through. This suggests that there is glass here allowing you to see into the tracks / tunnel without being on the platform. That's honestly really cool and Ive never seen that anywhere else on The Tube
Yeah there's a few of them around. But the "windows" are down at foot level, so you can't really see much out of them unless you fancy lying on the floor.
@@kaitlyn__L Didnt look too hard for a glazed one in the vid, sorry - will wait for Jagos full vid on Borough ? If there are gratings along the tube wall, rather than a walkway over, then i cannot think of another station where you can look at tracks other than being at right angles to the tracks,
God. I have never been to the UK (or hell even that hemisphere) or have had much interest in London, but ever since I found this channel I'm completely hooked. Something about the tour and history of the ancient (by the standards of my home, I mean. around here a 120 year old European-descended-person built structure is absolutely ancient) railway makes me very happy.
I knew about the V2 rocket incident on Borough High Street in January 1945 but never knew about this "near miss" to the life and limbs and the tube passengers two decades before. Most interesting (as usual!).
That's a close call similar to the wartime GW Norton Fitzwarren derailment. A driver was on a sideline and he realised his mistake when another express on the main line overtook him. He ploughed into the dirt but the guardsvan of the just-managed-to-overtake express had a bolt from the leading bogie of the derailed express come through his open window and the paint of this last coach was scored by the ballast thrown up from the derailed 'King'class loco.
It gives you an insane amount of bragging rights too, given how many underground tunnels in the world used tunneling shields in their construction! (an insane amount)
Something similar happened in St Petersburg in the 1980s, but on a massive scale, the whole sections of the line were flash-flooding, and it was a real battle to save the subway. They made a nice movie about it, heroism and all..
You were going to do some vids on trams. I wonder, should street trams come back to London - our victorian and edwardian terraced streets are not that good for cars but swifter transport to more destinations is needed and as good as rail services are , trams carrying 80 + people a go must be a future factor in a world working to zero tail pipe emissions.
It would be an endlessly terrifying way to go, I'm glad nobody was hurt as that is a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. At least we learnt a lot from the incident.
This, in it's nature of water and gravel , and what could have happened, reminded me of the Balham disaster. It's a grim subject, but surely must be worth a feature?
Wow. I had a vague recollection from somewhere of some sort of serious incident during the tunnel expansion work, but I hadn't realised quite HOW serious it could have been. Great video
Spot on, Mr H. I particularly liked "a collapsing tunnel could put a crimp in your plans". Yes indeed. All most interesting. Is there an interesting story as to why the ground north of the Thames is clay while that south is gravel? If so, I think we should be told. Thanks, Mr H. Simon T
The Thames has shifted so often . It once ran through North Mimms and out via Romford before the glaciers reached Finchley. Since then, the shallow, natural banks have seen the river change shape according to changes in discharge and possibly glacial outwash in the load, plus rises and falls of sea level in even historic times. Layers of silt and gravel and peat are superimposed upon the London Clay, which, like Southampton, dates from being a gulf of the sea in geological times.
I recall when the pile driver head from the M11 link road crashed through the top of the tunnel at Wanstead . It disrupted the underground line there for a while . I think it damaged a train too ?
A similar occurrence happened on the Northern City Line near Moorgate a few years back. Developers up above were drilling down and breached the tunnel below. If I remember correctly, train passing reported debris on the track, the following one was sent through at caution and came face to face with a drillbit on the track which had probably gone though and broke off between trains. The tunnels weren't on the maps used by the developers so they weren't fully aware of the line's presence in respect to their drilling.
@@franciskolarik6802 I seem to recall that London is particularly bad: There's not actually a unified map of all this stuff, but rather a different one each for each type of wire, pipe, natural thingy, train tunnel, and old rune... and not even just one for each of those... and a lot of gaps in the records (that is, even the people who owned and/or used the thing didn't know it was Right There, or sometimes even that it existed). Perhaps this has been fixed in recent times.
When they dug the Jubilee line extension, there was a problem with bomb craters. They were filled in with loose fill at the time and then forgotten. As the tunnelling proceeded, there was a concern that the machine would take the bottom of the crater and let all that loose fill flow into the tunnel. South London is not a happy place for tubulating.
Great video - yet another bit of history I knew nothing about! I was going to comment on the madness of using a piece of wood to replace cast iron under compression, when it occurred to me that this is exactly the material that's been keeping mines (mostly) from collapsing since time began. A sobering thought...
Read about that disaster on the Clive's Underground Line site. Apparently service was then run in two sections (either side of the collapsed tunnel) for the rest of the day, and all the following day (the 28th), but that was the last time that C & SLR trains were used (they had both electric locomotive-hauled trains, as well as "joined motor cars", not like modern EMUs, but with masses of power cables joining them together (an arrangement similar to the original Waterloo and City stock). Actually, the northernmost section was completely closed and bustituted (Moorgate to Euston) from the start, there was some single-track operation, and the last month before the disaster, Sunday service was suspended, to have more time for expanding the tunnels. 19000 of the 22000 rings were expanded before this disaster (funny thing, at one time they considered joining the tunnels "as is" and having two seperate fleets of trains, but they decided against it) (also, the first "joined" name for the Northern Line? Take a deep breath, "Edgware, Highgate & Morden Line" (there were attempts at a Bakerloo style name, but they all failed)
Oh wow, I see what you mean about near-disaster! Nicely done, and yah, this seems like it _should_ be better remembered! (Also, last time I was this early, the tunnel hadn't been widened yet. 🙂)
its the little footnotes of otherwise forgotten history about what is now known as TFL that make your channel interesting!......keep up the tales Jago!
Extremely interesting again ! You have a string of extremely interesting videos. You've done it again ! Thanks so much. Aarre Peltomaa of Mississauga, Ontario. p.s. I am so jealous. You have no snow, and we have had 3 or 4 cm of it for over a month now ! Damn the snow.
Amazing how you explained about how tunnels were built when the London Underground was born and London needed a underground system to cope with people, tourists, commuters and so on. And I like how stations that were built have such amazing history when they were built to serve areas in and around London. I am so intrigued with your videos that you make it so interesting to listen and watch. 😁
Luck sometimes is the main factor. 14th of February 2003, a school yard sunk at night because of Line 14 extension works to build the new maintenance tunnel after the future Olympiades station. Luck was on our side, it was in the middle of the Winter Holidays and at night ! The school was partly rebuilt, ground consolidated and extension works could resume ONE year later... The only other times Paris metro tunnel collapsed were during Germain air bombing raids. Bolivar station during WW1 and in Boulogne near Paris in WW2, the workshop was completely destroyed, trainsets overturned.
There were two incidents,that are similar to that near miss,in the US,but I don't have any more information at hand! One,was a tunnel being built for the IND,which had a breach,and a laborer was literally pulled up to the top,and wound up in the East River! The second,was the breach[again],of the old Chicago Tunnel Company tube,by a pile driver,which flooded,the whole area of Downtown Chicago(Loop Area),and wasn't cleaned up for several months 😑! As an aside,the underlying strata,in Chicago,is quite similar to London,and the subways there were built using the same system as London,i.e.,carving the way through clay,using a shield! Oh,yes,Chicago has blue,and green clay layers,rather interesting contrast,with London! Thank you,Jago,as usual,an interesting video,and your tangent is as interesting as any main story! Thank you,for pursuing it! 🚇🚇🚇🚉
Why did “gravelly soil” make me laugh out loud? 🤣😂😅 Fascinating! I have a ridiculously large collection of railway books and several about the Underground, yet I confess I can’t remember hearing of this incident! Obviously I am no oracle, but even so I can’t believe I’ve never heard about it..then again, perhaps in light of the lack of casualties and the desire to up the patronage, perhaps this is one of those things they were happy to leave buried (no pun intended), whereas others like Balham couldn’t be forgotten. 🤷🏻♂️ As you say, if they hadn’t acted so quick it could so easily have been a tragedy…and then it WOULD have been just like Balham…😔 Splendid stuff as ever sir. Looking forward to the proposed follow-up. Maybe give it the Hollywood full beans, like “Borough II: Turn Of The Station”, or maybe the minimalist Terminator style “B2”? 🤔 Cheers, have great weekend 👍🍀🍻
That's a little spooky, watching the Hidden London Hangouts tour of London Bridge yesterday , they mentioned the widening of the tunnels. I thought that how they did the widening had the potential as Jago content. And here it is!
Thanks for the video, I had heard of the widening of the line whilst it was still open (sounds like sheer madness to do it these days doesn't it‽), interesting to see it covered here in more depth!
I wonder if this section of track is being used again? I live less than 300m SW of Borough Station and over the last 24 years I never heard any Tube activity. But, over the last 3-4 months, trains have become clearly audible in my basement kitchen. Every single train and, even that high-pitched squealing noise they sometimes make around curves. Thanks to 'TFL Live Departures' online, I can tell that the Northbound traffic is running closest to me. Quite why the Northern line has started using different tracks/tunnels, I don't know. It changed well BEFORE the recent Bank-Kennington temporary closure. Certainly, I had the impression - from stories about the defunct Borough to King William St. tunnel and about the WW2 Blitz shelters - that there's a lot of redundant tunnelling around Borough station.
Can you do the story of the runaway maintenance train on the northern line? I think there were news stories about it, and I got a first-ish hand account from an old boy from my school who went on to be the station manager at Finchley Central station
I believe there was also a runaway of empty carriage stock on the Bakerloo back in the eighties where a train had not been stabled properly or securely and ended up going down the ramp at Queen's Park and reaching quite dangerously high speeds. By a miracle no engineering work or maintenance was taking place otherwise any workers in the tunnel would have felt that sudden draught that indicated that a train was in their tunnel and fast approaching! I believe that gradients eventually brought the train to a stop around Piccadilly Circus otherwise there would have been carriages all over the place at the London Road Depot.
@@bobk4404 the one I’m talking about was fairly recent. A maintenance unit got loose north of the tunnels on the High Barnet branch, and proceeded to roll downhill towards Camden Town and beyond, and then back again, because - I’m told - Camden Town is the lowest point and everything is uphill either side of it. Apparently this happened close to opening time in the morning, so they still opened the line, and the signallers just had to keep letting this runaway train through around other trains until it eventually came to a stop near Camden Town station and was able to be towed away. It was essentially yo-yoing either side of Camden Town for a while with passengers watching a runaway maintenance carriage speed through stations as it did so 😂 A quick google search tells me this was on Friday 13 August 2010
It is the same now except rcc segments line the tunnels,now bored by earth pressure balance tunnel boring machines in kolkata(india) during tunneling hit an aquifer water entered the under construction tunnel and 18houses on top collapsed over three days thankfully no one inside the houses died they had time to run 👍 on 31.8.2019.
The picture you have at 1:30, I'm assuming that's not a tube tunnel. Looks like a 6ft diameter tunnel used on the Post Office Railway/Mail Rail, since the same system was used to dig that. Just wondering where you got the picture from! 😊 Or could it be the Tower Bridge underground crossing/cable-hauled carriage...
Hi Jago. Loved seeing the images of the early electric Underground locomotives - which reminds me that I made a request for a video on the evolution of these locos!
You may have heard of those medieval cases where they put animals on trial. That arises from a legal principle called Deodands. But deodands can apply to any non human defendant. Before health and safety legislation there were cases of people using deodands to receive compensation for railway accidents. The result of this was that trains were put on trial. That's not as daft as it sounds. In the event of a conviction the defendant became forfeit to the victim. So in the same way you could eat a convicted animal, you could sell the train (essentially back to the company) so as to receive compensation. See 'Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825 -1875' for more details.
A cruise ship recently docked in the Bahamas to avoid getting arrested in Miami for non-payment of bills. Actually, ships get arrested in port fairly often, either for debts or environmental sins.
@@SteamCrane One of the first things I learned at Bar School was how to arrest a ship. It was an exercise on how to use the library. 20+ years later I actually got to do it! Well, not me personally, we sent a process server. I'm not rowing into the middle of Falmouth Harbour.
Hello Jago.In 2005 a similar collapse occurred on the Chiltern line at Gerrards Cross.Someone had the bright idea of building a Tesco supermarket over a cutting.Essentially it was a cut and cover job.Tunnel rings were placed in the cutting and trains then ran through.Infill material was then tipped on top of the rings,however I believe the material was too wet and heavy resulting in a collapse just as a train approached.Luckily the driver stopped quickly enough to avoid a crash.It took a long long time to sort out.
I was idly wondering what was the mock-Tudor-style building almost next to the station. A quick search reveals that it is a pub now known as The Trinity, and before that The Hole in The Wall, and even before that St George's Tavern. Under that name it goes back at least to mid-Victorian times, but I couldn't find out when it turned Tudor. Presumably before planning laws.
Well, this is something I had never heard of before, well unearthed Jago! Well worth the separate episode and we look forward to the separate one on the history of Borough which is surely enough for an individual episode anyway. Good to see the pictures of Greathead's statue; I was surprised but pleased when I first saw it above Bank station, given the contribution he unwittingly made to the City's financial prosperity. Hadn't thought of this before, but Bank is the only location served by the first two deep level tube lines - City and South London (initially at King William Street) and Waterloo and City.
Really fascinating--and now gives even more weight to a followup of Borough with even more info. Is it too much to add extensive info about the origins and history of Borough Market? Maybe a 3-part history to cover all it's history? Thanks.
It was probably the time of year that added to the event. What had the weather been like, had it contributed to the burst water main and the soil collapse? Might be interesting to look that up.
In the 80's my dad showed me emergency equipment stashed under the seats of a Northern Line train. There were also labels under the line diagrams for what was stored there. Sound familiar to anyone? Any details of the inventory?
Curious, did this inadvertently doom City Road station? They didn't bother reopening it after the tunnels were widened, but if it hadn't closed along with the rest of the line, would they have thought to actively close it on an individual basis?
Thankyou once more Jago. As I was always told, health and safety regulations are based on death. Skip the rules at your and others peril. I can imagine a million H&S bods are muttering 'told you so'. Luckily no one died. It should not be about luck me thinks.
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It's the best kind of engineering failure: one where you learn a lesson without a tragedy.
And the tube said to it's self, in a gravelly voice: "I'm board today. Let's get stoned."
TLDR: Jago gives an example of why so few Tube lines were built south of the Thames, perhaps in hopes that you'll quit asking him why there's so little Underground service in South London.
he already made a video about that
The reasons valid in the past, are no valid reasons of today, as technology improves.
@@holger_p Tech may have improved but it's still quite expensive to dig underground, especially in unstable soil.
The basic answer is that London is north of the Thames. Always has been, always will be. OK, so Southwark is a city (apparently), but the rest is just shapeless sprawl. The whole point of the first deep level tube was to get people out of the south and INTO London!
In the days of the old London Bridge, they used to shut the gates at the southern end at night to keep the rabble out! It baffles me that this practise was ever abandoned.
@@paulhaynes8045 Re: "The basic answer is that London is north of the Thames. Always has been, always will be."
I've heard this from plenty of North Londoners and it's a pretty nonsensical position to argue. By that logic only the City of London is "actually London" and there are people who live in Essex and Middlesex who use London Underground to travel to the City of Westminster and who hardly ever walk the "actual streets of London".
In 1905 the London County Council (the governing body for the area around the City of London) had outgrown it's original building at Spring Gardens and decided to move their headquarters south of the river, opposite Westminster Palace. County Hall was completed in 1922. Following a period of "direct rule" imposed on Greater London by Central Government, the government of London returned to South London, in the form of a building called City Hall (which was actually owned by the government of Kuwait and rented to the Mayor of London). That building has been vacated now, and government of London moved to the London Docklands in 2022, but most Londoners have spent most of their lives being governed by politicians in South London.
Borough is my local station. I always considered it a pretty disinteresting and often vexing to use given its only on the bank branch of the northern line (especially apt at the moment) and only has lifts. I'd never heard of this before, very interesting indeed!
Uninteresting. Not sure there is such a word as disinteresting. I wdn't bother w such a trifling thing but there's no synonym for disinterestedness.
Amazing story Jago. Kudos to the driver and the guardsman for being so vigilant, they saved the day. I hope the guardsman's shoes and socks were able to be recovered.
And possibly also his shorts.
I imagine his shoes and socks dried out just fine.
*guard
A guardsman is a soldier in one of the Guards regiments
@@jamesbutler6253 Thanks. Something I wasn't aware of.
The very reason for keeping guards on trains - safety. And the very reason why they're called 'guards' and not ticket collectors or train assistants...
Your reference to the clay soil of London reminded me of the excavation machinery at Paddington that couldn't bare the weight. It collapsed onto line 6 more or less.
This caused huge delays in the peak period for several days.
So, I always made a point of pointing it out when driving past to shut the complaining gobs of my opinionated passengers.
*bear
@@Inkyminkyzizwoz There's a Paddington Bear joke lurking in here somewhere, I just know it.
@@creamwobbly He is when he shits in the woods!
@@creamwobbly I think Fozzy Bear covered that subject: "Good grief, the comedian's a bear!" - "No he's a-not, he's a-wearing a neck-a-tie"
There was a bad crash on the Central line between Stratford and Leyton in 1953 that killed 12 people when the train ran into the back of a stationary train. It was the worst accident on the tube up until the Moorgate crash.
Ta Jago.
Actually, thanks for making a separate video of this! I like how Mentour Pilot covers both serious incidents, as well as those where little had happend, or miraculously nothing happened at all. It's very educative, just as this event. Great job!
Heaven was smiling on that train crew. Thanks for the story, and for the many genuinely interesting and informative comments. (And the awful pubs - loved them)
Pubs or puns?
Imagine if the trains were driverless. Dave, I can't do that, Dave. 2001 A Train Tragedy
The Docklands Light Railway trains haven't left anybody on the wrong side of an airlock ... yet.
Interesting tale of the dangers of Borough-ing underground thanks Jago.
What an amazing story! Just as well that there was a guard and that he was alert! It's also fortunate that this collapse happened under a street, not under a building or under the Thames!
i love when you get side tracked - more interesting stories for us
This is the sort of event that gives you claustrophobia when you need to take the tube.
In addition to the "darkness and confined space" adding "terror to an already nightmarish situation" you also have to watch out for Yeti - I seem to remember a documentary on that back in the late 1960s.
Huzzah! We are EARLY. Will edit when done watching. This was indeed remarkably luck, wow, almost miracle-like... I would have never figured
Here before edited
5:56 Look into the tunnel, At the top of the tunnel you can see a corridor where people are passing through. This suggests that there is glass here allowing you to see into the tracks / tunnel without being on the platform. That's honestly really cool and Ive never seen that anywhere else on The Tube
there are a few places like that - Holborn I think is one.
Well noticed.
Yeah there's a few of them around. But the "windows" are down at foot level, so you can't really see much out of them unless you fancy lying on the floor.
@@highpath4776 wasn’t that a grating rather than a window? (Or maybe the one in the video was too, I didn’t go back to look.)
@@kaitlyn__L Didnt look too hard for a glazed one in the vid, sorry - will wait for Jagos full vid on Borough ? If there are gratings along the tube wall, rather than a walkway over, then i cannot think of another station where you can look at tracks other than being at right angles to the tracks,
I love your accent and enunciation Jago. Thank you for your videos.
Thank you for that. I'd known that the southern end of the Northern line had been closed for nearly a year in the 1920s, but not why!
4:33 I like the "just how close..." as that Transit only just makes it through the lights
God. I have never been to the UK (or hell even that hemisphere) or have had much interest in London, but ever since I found this channel I'm completely hooked. Something about the tour and history of the ancient (by the standards of my home, I mean. around here a 120 year old European-descended-person built structure is absolutely ancient) railway makes me very happy.
London is in both hemispheres.
You know what I meant, pedant.
@@jdb47games like geographically located or?
@@jdb47games Eastern and Western but not Northern and Southern. I just thought I'd clarify that for anyone who is unsure.
I knew about the V2 rocket incident on Borough High Street in January 1945 but never knew about this "near miss" to the life and limbs and the tube passengers two decades before. Most interesting (as usual!).
That's a close call similar to the wartime GW Norton Fitzwarren derailment. A driver was on a sideline and he realised his mistake when another express on the main line overtook him. He ploughed into the dirt but the guardsvan of the just-managed-to-overtake express had a bolt from the leading bogie of the derailed express come through his open window and the paint of this last coach was scored by the ballast thrown up from the derailed 'King'class loco.
6:28 Good to see Biggles off to get into his Sopwith Camel.
Didn't they release "Video Killed the Radio Star" in the 1980s? :P:D
@@cargy930 Biggles, Buggles, the mind Boggles!!!
@@CheshireTomcat68 Well, bigger me!
4:30 I love the irony of the "Keeping London's Roads Safer" sign overlooking the flying Transit van
Do feel free to get side-tracked again!
Very interesting.
I’m actually very closely related to James Greathead! It’s very cool to be able to ride on what he created every day.
It gives you an insane amount of bragging rights too, given how many underground tunnels in the world used tunneling shields in their construction! (an insane amount)
Is there any sort of memorial to this train crew? There should be.
Something similar happened in St Petersburg in the 1980s, but on a massive scale, the whole sections of the line were flash-flooding, and it was a real battle to save the subway. They made a nice movie about it, heroism and all..
Thanks for sharing this. Love hearing how the tube was built.
You were going to do some vids on trams. I wonder, should street trams come back to London - our victorian and edwardian terraced streets are not that good for cars but swifter transport to more destinations is needed and as good as rail services are , trams carrying 80 + people a go must be a future factor in a world working to zero tail pipe emissions.
Fascinating. Most uplifting collapse story ever.
It would be an endlessly terrifying way to go, I'm glad nobody was hurt as that is a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. At least we learnt a lot from the incident.
This, in it's nature of water and gravel , and what could have happened, reminded me of the Balham disaster. It's a grim subject, but surely must be worth a feature?
That was a very close call! It's nice that for once there was no human tragedy.
Indeed - did you see 4.31 when that van went through a yellow light?
Wow, that is a great story, thank you, Jago, fantastic stuff.
Wow. I had a vague recollection from somewhere of some sort of serious incident during the tunnel expansion work, but I hadn't realised quite HOW serious it could have been. Great video
It reminds me of that time, just a few years ago, when a foundation piling being dug broke through what is think was the Northern line in the city.
Thank heavens Jago gets sidetracked! 👏👏👍😀
Spot on, Mr H. I particularly liked "a collapsing tunnel could put a crimp in your plans". Yes indeed. All most interesting. Is there an interesting story as to why the ground north of the Thames is clay while that south is gravel? If so, I think we should be told. Thanks, Mr H. Simon T
Something to do with an ice age ?
The Thames has shifted so often . It once ran through North Mimms and out via Romford before the glaciers reached Finchley. Since then, the shallow, natural banks have seen the river change shape according to changes in discharge and possibly glacial outwash in the load, plus rises and falls of sea level in even historic times. Layers of silt and gravel and peat are superimposed upon the London Clay, which, like Southampton, dates from being a gulf of the sea in geological times.
@@johnjephcote7636 Thank you. Most interesting. Simon T
I recall when the pile driver head from the M11 link road crashed through the top of the tunnel at Wanstead . It disrupted the underground line there for a while . I think it damaged a train too ?
A similar occurrence happened on the Northern City Line near Moorgate a few years back. Developers up above were drilling down and breached the tunnel below. If I remember correctly, train passing reported debris on the track, the following one was sent through at caution and came face to face with a drillbit on the track which had probably gone though and broke off between trains. The tunnels weren't on the maps used by the developers so they weren't fully aware of the line's presence in respect to their drilling.
@@mjt8199 @david s i guess "call before you dig", or making reference to the information they had wasn't in the game for these developers. Wow.
@@franciskolarik6802 I seem to recall that London is particularly bad: There's not actually a unified map of all this stuff, but rather a different one each for each type of wire, pipe, natural thingy, train tunnel, and old rune... and not even just one for each of those... and a lot of gaps in the records (that is, even the people who owned and/or used the thing didn't know it was Right There, or sometimes even that it existed). Perhaps this has been fixed in recent times.
So lucky that the guard and driver were on the ball that day! Fascinating story.
When they dug the Jubilee line extension, there was a problem with bomb craters. They were filled in with loose fill at the time and then forgotten. As the tunnelling proceeded, there was a concern that the machine would take the bottom of the crater and let all that loose fill flow into the tunnel. South London is not a happy place for tubulating.
Great video - yet another bit of history I knew nothing about! I was going to comment on the madness of using a piece of wood to replace cast iron under compression, when it occurred to me that this is exactly the material that's been keeping mines (mostly) from collapsing since time began. A sobering thought...
Glad you got sidetracked, Jago. A most interesting "footnote" I'd never heard of...
Excellent Jago as always. Knew absolutely nothing about this.
Many thanks.
It's your sidetracks are what keep me coming back !:-)
Read about that disaster on the Clive's Underground Line site. Apparently service was then run in two sections (either side of the collapsed tunnel) for the rest of the day, and all the following day (the 28th), but that was the last time that C & SLR trains were used (they had both electric locomotive-hauled trains, as well as "joined motor cars", not like modern EMUs, but with masses of power cables joining them together (an arrangement similar to the original Waterloo and City stock). Actually, the northernmost section was completely closed and bustituted (Moorgate to Euston) from the start, there was some single-track operation, and the last month before the disaster, Sunday service was suspended, to have more time for expanding the tunnels. 19000 of the 22000 rings were expanded before this disaster (funny thing, at one time they considered joining the tunnels "as is" and having two seperate fleets of trains, but they decided against it) (also, the first "joined" name for the Northern Line? Take a deep breath, "Edgware, Highgate & Morden Line" (there were attempts at a Bakerloo style name, but they all failed)
Oh wow, I see what you mean about near-disaster! Nicely done, and yah, this seems like it _should_ be better remembered!
(Also, last time I was this early, the tunnel hadn't been widened yet. 🙂)
Never hear this story before.
its the little footnotes of otherwise forgotten history about what is now known
as TFL that make your channel interesting!......keep up the tales Jago!
Extremely interesting again ! You have a string of extremely interesting videos. You've done it again ! Thanks so much.
Aarre Peltomaa of Mississauga, Ontario.
p.s. I am so jealous. You have no snow, and we have had 3 or 4 cm of it for over a month now ! Damn the snow.
Not just a footnote any more. Bravo.
Amazing how you explained about how tunnels were built when the London Underground was born and London needed a underground system to cope with people, tourists, commuters and so on.
And I like how stations that were built have such amazing history when they were built to serve areas in and around London. I am so intrigued with your videos that you make it so interesting to listen and watch. 😁
Luck sometimes is the main factor. 14th of February 2003, a school yard sunk at night because of Line 14 extension works to build the new maintenance tunnel after the future Olympiades station. Luck was on our side, it was in the middle of the Winter Holidays and at night ! The school was partly rebuilt, ground consolidated and extension works could resume ONE year later...
The only other times Paris metro tunnel collapsed were during Germain air bombing raids. Bolivar station during WW1 and in Boulogne near Paris in WW2, the workshop was completely destroyed, trainsets overturned.
Reminds me of the Gerrard's Cross 'tunnel' collapse.
Fell JUST after a train had passed through it. Could have been even more disasterous!
There were two incidents,that are similar to that near miss,in the US,but I don't have any more information at hand! One,was a tunnel being built for the IND,which had a breach,and a laborer was literally pulled up to the top,and wound up in the East River! The second,was the breach[again],of the old Chicago Tunnel Company tube,by a pile driver,which flooded,the whole area of Downtown Chicago(Loop Area),and wasn't cleaned up for several months 😑! As an aside,the underlying strata,in Chicago,is quite similar to London,and the subways there were built using the same system as London,i.e.,carving the way through clay,using a shield! Oh,yes,Chicago has blue,and green clay layers,rather interesting contrast,with London! Thank you,Jago,as usual,an interesting video,and your tangent is as interesting as any main story! Thank you,for pursuing it! 🚇🚇🚇🚉
Why did “gravelly soil” make me laugh out loud? 🤣😂😅
Fascinating! I have a ridiculously large collection of railway books and several about the Underground, yet I confess I can’t remember hearing of this incident! Obviously I am no oracle, but even so I can’t believe I’ve never heard about it..then again, perhaps in light of the lack of casualties and the desire to up the patronage, perhaps this is one of those things they were happy to leave buried (no pun intended), whereas others like Balham couldn’t be forgotten. 🤷🏻♂️
As you say, if they hadn’t acted so quick it could so easily have been a tragedy…and then it WOULD have been just like Balham…😔
Splendid stuff as ever sir. Looking forward to the proposed follow-up. Maybe give it the Hollywood full beans, like “Borough II: Turn Of The Station”, or maybe the minimalist Terminator style “B2”? 🤔
Cheers, have great weekend 👍🍀🍻
That's a little spooky, watching the Hidden London Hangouts tour of London Bridge yesterday , they mentioned the widening of the tunnels. I thought that how they did the widening had the potential as Jago content. And here it is!
Excellent! I can now think:
'I did not know that'.
Thanks for the video, I had heard of the widening of the line whilst it was still open (sounds like sheer madness to do it these days doesn't it‽), interesting to see it covered here in more depth!
Wonderful; you got diverted. I wonder how many other hidden disasters have been forgotten. Not many I hope.
Balham springs to mind, although that was enemy action.
It would seem that the train that narrowly avoided disaster lived on Borough time and that this is what happens when you Borough through gravel.
The story went from 0 to 60 and ended wholesomely. Just the way I like it. 👍
A story that highlights the need for training when boroughing through unstable geology.
Fascinating. A story well told.
Thanks for getting side tracked Jago.
I wonder if this section of track is being used again? I live less than 300m SW of Borough Station and over the last 24 years I never heard any Tube activity. But, over the last 3-4 months, trains have become clearly audible in my basement kitchen. Every single train and, even that high-pitched squealing noise they sometimes make around curves. Thanks to 'TFL Live Departures' online, I can tell that the Northbound traffic is running closest to me. Quite why the Northern line has started using different tracks/tunnels, I don't know. It changed well BEFORE the recent Bank-Kennington temporary closure. Certainly, I had the impression - from stories about the defunct Borough to King William St. tunnel and about the WW2 Blitz shelters - that there's a lot of redundant tunnelling around Borough station.
Are you perhaps picking up Crossrail noise? That’s just recently gone into shadow timetable test runs
Can you do the story of the runaway maintenance train on the northern line? I think there were news stories about it, and I got a first-ish hand account from an old boy from my school who went on to be the station manager at Finchley Central station
I believe there was also a runaway of empty carriage stock on the Bakerloo back in the eighties where a train had not been stabled properly or securely and ended up going down the ramp at Queen's Park and reaching quite dangerously high speeds. By a miracle no engineering work or maintenance was taking place otherwise any workers in the tunnel would have felt that sudden draught that indicated that a train was in their tunnel and fast approaching! I believe that gradients eventually brought the train to a stop around Piccadilly Circus otherwise there would have been carriages all over the place at the London Road Depot.
@@bobk4404 the one I’m talking about was fairly recent. A maintenance unit got loose north of the tunnels on the High Barnet branch, and proceeded to roll downhill towards Camden Town and beyond, and then back again, because - I’m told - Camden Town is the lowest point and everything is uphill either side of it. Apparently this happened close to opening time in the morning, so they still opened the line, and the signallers just had to keep letting this runaway train through around other trains until it eventually came to a stop near Camden Town station and was able to be towed away. It was essentially yo-yoing either side of Camden Town for a while with passengers watching a runaway maintenance carriage speed through stations as it did so 😂
A quick google search tells me this was on Friday 13 August 2010
It is the same now except rcc segments line the tunnels,now bored by earth pressure balance tunnel boring machines in kolkata(india) during tunneling hit an aquifer water entered the under construction tunnel and 18houses on top collapsed over three days thankfully no one inside the houses died they had time to run 👍 on 31.8.2019.
The picture you have at 1:30, I'm assuming that's not a tube tunnel. Looks like a 6ft diameter tunnel used on the Post Office Railway/Mail Rail, since the same system was used to dig that. Just wondering where you got the picture from! 😊 Or could it be the Tower Bridge underground crossing/cable-hauled carriage...
Hi Jago. Loved seeing the images of the early electric Underground locomotives - which reminds me that I made a request for a video on the evolution of these locos!
You may have heard of those medieval cases where they put animals on trial. That arises from a legal principle called Deodands. But deodands can apply to any non human defendant. Before health and safety legislation there were cases of people using deodands to receive compensation for railway accidents. The result of this was that trains were put on trial. That's not as daft as it sounds. In the event of a conviction the defendant became forfeit to the victim. So in the same way you could eat a convicted animal, you could sell the train (essentially back to the company) so as to receive compensation.
See 'Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825 -1875' for more details.
Yes, it cropped up in the GWR Sonning Cutting derailment-caused by a slip.
A cruise ship recently docked in the Bahamas to avoid getting arrested in Miami for non-payment of bills. Actually, ships get arrested in port fairly often, either for debts or environmental sins.
@@SteamCrane One of the first things I learned at Bar School was how to arrest a ship. It was an exercise on how to use the library. 20+ years later I actually got to do it! Well, not me personally, we sent a process server. I'm not rowing into the middle of Falmouth Harbour.
Hurray for Jago getting side-tracked!
So here we are once again !
Marvellous bit of sidetracking, Jago.
Hello Jago.In 2005 a similar collapse occurred on the Chiltern line at Gerrards Cross.Someone had the bright idea of building a Tesco supermarket over a cutting.Essentially it was a cut and cover job.Tunnel rings were placed in the cutting and trains then ran through.Infill material was then tipped on top of the rings,however I believe the material was too wet and heavy resulting in a collapse just as a train approached.Luckily the driver stopped quickly enough to avoid a crash.It took a long long time to sort out.
i believe they were infilling, not in a balance way, and one side pushed over. silly mistake really.
I was idly wondering what was the mock-Tudor-style building almost next to the station. A quick search reveals that it is a pub now known as The Trinity, and before that The Hole in The Wall, and even before that St George's Tavern. Under that name it goes back at least to mid-Victorian times, but I couldn't find out when it turned Tudor. Presumably before planning laws.
Well, this is something I had never heard of before, well unearthed Jago! Well worth the separate episode and we look forward to the separate one on the history of Borough which is surely enough for an individual episode anyway. Good to see the pictures of Greathead's statue; I was surprised but pleased when I first saw it above Bank station, given the contribution he unwittingly made to the City's financial prosperity. Hadn't thought of this before, but Bank is the only location served by the first two deep level tube lines - City and South London (initially at King William Street) and Waterloo and City.
Really fascinating--and now gives even more weight to a followup of Borough with even more info. Is it too much to add extensive info about the origins and history of Borough Market? Maybe a 3-part history to cover all it's history? Thanks.
Not gonna lie, watching this in my hotel a stone’s throw from Borough station and Newington Causeway does hit a fair bit closer to home than usual
Another historical gem unearthed! Excellent stuff.
Thanks for the video Jago.
It was probably the time of year that added to the event. What had the weather been like, had it contributed to the burst water main and the soil collapse? Might be interesting to look that up.
Sounds like how mines work in Minecraft, tap the wrong bit of roof and a cascade of Gravel hits ya XD
As always, informative and entertaining.
Wow thanks Jago !
Gosh, we mercifully escaped the mugshot of C. Yerkes.
In the 80's my dad showed me emergency equipment stashed under the seats of a Northern Line train. There were also labels under the line diagrams for what was stored there.
Sound familiar to anyone?
Any details of the inventory?
Glad you got sidetracked. Accidents are so interesting. Hopefully by publicizing the story, we can avoid history repeating itself!
When anybody learn from history, certainly not bureaucrats!
Curious, did this inadvertently doom City Road station? They didn't bother reopening it after the tunnels were widened, but if it hadn't closed along with the rest of the line, would they have thought to actively close it on an individual basis?
How Exciting!
ha ha side tracked! nice one
Well done for excavating this little known story.
Good one Jago 👍
Fascinating!
Borough is the only Tube station currently closed - apart from Heathrow Terminal 4.
Great video
Intresting thank you
Thank you for an interesting and insightful video.
Thankyou once more Jago. As I was always told, health and safety regulations are based on death. Skip the rules at your and others peril. I can imagine a million H&S bods are muttering 'told you so'. Luckily no one died. It should not be about luck me thinks.