- 10 minutes ago
Baker Street station opened in 1863 as part of the Metropolitan Railway, making it part of the world's first underground railway.
贝克街站是伦敦地铁中最具历史意义和文化特色的站点之一，因与著名侦探夏洛克·福尔摩斯的关联而广为人知。在纪录片, Secrets of the London Underground中，该站点及其背后的历史、设计和文化元素被深入探讨...
贝克街站是伦敦地铁中最具历史意义和文化特色的站点之一，因与著名侦探夏洛克·福尔摩斯的关联而广为人知。在纪录片, Secrets of the London Underground中，该站点及其背后的历史、设计和文化元素被深入探讨...
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TVTranscript
00:04This enormous cabinet is filled with the trophies of the various staff sports
00:10associations that London Underground employees could join. There's bowls,
00:14table tennis, golf, and that huge one there is for tug-of-war. But maybe the
00:20ones that raise the most questions are these, the shooting trophies. Because
00:25believe it or not there was once an underground shooting range somewhere
00:29on the network and incredibly remains of it are still there today. Just one of
00:35the many secrets of the London Underground. I'm Tim Dunn and we're back to
00:42reveal more hidden parts of the tube network. I am so excited I am standing on
00:47the wrong side of the escalator. The secret spaces with fascinating stories and
00:53incredible sights. Oh wow! This is extraordinary. My fellow explorer is Siddy Holloway.
00:59This looks like marble terrazzo to me. She knows these forgotten time capsules
01:05inside out. We are now walking underneath one of the busiest places in London.
01:11And has the keys to open them up. Ready? And show me places hardly anyone gets
01:16to see. Look at this. This is magic. We'll explore the history of stations lined at the London
01:25Transport Museum's depot and dive into its extraordinary archives. This is the good
01:30stuff isn't it? Most of this stuff won't have been seen. It's crammed with the
01:34secrets of the London Underground. And people have no idea it's here.
01:55Every time you walk into the depot you can't help but notice this enormous artefact. It's the
02:01departure board from Baker Street Station showing northbound departures on the Metropolitan Line.
02:06But actually it's double sided. One side faced the passenger walkway. The other faced into the tea
02:14room. And it's been restored to a working condition. It lights up. Destinations change as
02:19the trains pass through. Baker Street Station today is served by five lines. But really it's the Met
02:26line there that is the most special. And that's because it runs on a stretch of actually what was
02:31the first passenger underground railway not just in London but the entire world. And as you know
02:38Ciddy is the woman who's got the keys to all the best bits.
02:45For me the Tube is one of the marvels of the modern world. But if you were to travel back
02:51in time to its
02:52birth in 1863 it must have been a truly mind-boggling creation. Our first stop today
02:59is where it all started.
03:04Here we are!
03:07Finally, Sid, this is my favourite of all the stations.
03:10Why is it your favourite?
03:11As a small child I grew up out in Buckinghamshire. We come on the Metropolitan Line, come into town,
03:16and this is where London began.
03:18Oh, I love that. And I mean the layers of history here at Baker Street are extraordinary. We've got the
03:23Metropolitan Line, the Hammersmith & City, the Circle, the Bakerloo, the Jubilee Line. There are ten
03:28platforms here, more than any other station on the underground network.
03:32Well, it's more of a choice where to start, so where are we going first?
03:34Just you wait.
03:37Baker Street Station tells the story of the London Underground itself. Its creation, its expansion and its future.
03:49By the 1850s congestion in London had reached crisis point and a radical solution was called for to get around
03:56the city quickly.
03:58And that solution was the first passenger underground railway in the world.
04:04The plan was for the Metropolitan Railway to run from Paddington in the west, connect to the mainline stations of
04:11Euston and Kings Cross,
04:12before terminating at Farringdon on the edge of the city.
04:15And Baker Street was one of the first stations built on this brand spanking new invention.
04:23What makes this place so special to me is that as you stroll along with the original platforms, which today
04:30carry the Hammersmith & City line, you're really walking through history.
04:35Following in the footsteps of the underground pioneers who created these lines using the ingenious cut and cover method.
04:42But more on that engineering later. Just above these original platforms, City's got a hidden gem to show me.
04:50Come on in. This is so exciting.
04:54Now, this is a bit I've never been to of Baker Street.
04:58I know. Well, there were so many things to see here.
05:01So we've just come off that 1911 footbridge.
05:05But this is the original footbridge of the Metropolitan Line dating back to 1863.
05:12The passengers travelling on the world's first underground would have come and walked down this passageway.
05:17I mean, feel how low the ceiling is. It's really imposing.
05:21But when this was built, this was the first in the world.
05:25So they're just testing out how to do this.
05:28Really just this is brilliant engineering being implemented for the first time.
05:34The original footbridge has been closed off to the public since 1911,
05:38when Baker Street underwent more expansion and a redesign.
05:42But for those early tube travellers, nearly 160 years ago, this would have been like nothing they'd ever known.
05:51As one journalist reported at the time, it was an almost otherworldly experience.
05:58For the first time in the history of the world, men can ride in pleasant carriages and with considerable comfort.
06:05Lower down than gas pipes and water pipes. Lower down than graveyards.
06:12And just imagine the shock of coming into this station for the first time.
06:18Because if you'd gotten on at Paddington, it's actually in a cutting, so daylight would have been coming in.
06:23But here, it's completely underground. The first one on the line that you're completely in a tunnel.
06:30It would have just been bizarre.
06:32Because that was the scary thing, wasn't it, at the early time? People were terrified about this place.
06:35And, of course, these were steam-hauled locomotives.
06:39Fire-breathing devils.
06:40Just the smoke and the sulphur and the steam and, you know, the hecticness.
06:45And, of course, the lights. The lights would have been gaslit.
06:49So, actually, the platforms would have been quite dim.
06:52All of it is completely different from the experience we have on this very platform today.
06:58To find out more about how these underground tunnels and platforms were originally built,
07:03I've come above ground to meet director of the London Transport Museum, Sam Mullins.
07:09Sam, I wanted to ask you all about the cut-and-cover method of construction,
07:14because that's how they built the original platforms of Met.
07:17Yep. They dug a huge cutting in the middle of the Euston Road and bricked up the sides
07:22and then roofed it over and put the road back on the surface.
07:26A trench of around ten metres wide and six metres deep was dug.
07:31Brick walls were then built and the cutting was roofed over with a brick arch.
07:36A two-metre-deep layer of soil was laid on top and the road above was rebuilt.
07:43It might sound straightforward now to dig a cutting, you know, some big diggers and so on,
07:46but how was it done at the time?
07:48Mussels, shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows. It was pretty primitive.
07:52You know, later in the century you'd get heavy steam machinery deployed to do this kind of thing.
07:58But the Met in 1863 was just navvies with buckets.
08:03These early subsurface lines were incredibly practical,
08:07as you didn't have to dig very deep into the ground.
08:10But their cut-and-cover construction caused huge disruption.
08:15One journalist wrote,
08:17The calm of the main thoroughfare is soon disturbed by the arrival of steam engines, horses and carpenters.
08:24The sound of pickaxes, spades and hammers begin, never to cease for some months, day or night.
08:32Iron buckets and chains are at work, dragging up the heart of the roadway.
08:38And the location of the Metropolitan Railway made it even more difficult.
08:43Don't forget the new road which they're tunnelling underneath was built as a bypass, you know, to London in the
08:49mid-18th century.
08:50And here we are putting a cutting down the middle of, you know, the bypass.
08:53So it was a pretty big deal. It was pretty disruptive. It was supposed to last two years.
08:59It took three.
09:00Did it really?
09:01Nothing new there.
09:03And a huge amount of complaints about lost trade, lost business.
09:08The three-and-a-half-mile line was built at a cost of £1 million.
09:14128 million in today's money.
09:16And on January the 10th, 1863, the first ever underground passenger railway in the world opened to a city desperate
09:26to try it out.
09:27The Manchester Guardian reported that,
09:29By nine o'clock it became evident that neither the locomotive power nor the rolling stock was at all in
09:36proportion to the requirements of the opening day.
09:40It's estimated that 25,000 people took their first ride that day, but some issues did arise.
09:47It was understood that there would be no steam or smoke from the engines used in working this tunnel railway.
09:53All we can say is that on one of the journeys between Portland Road and Baker Street, not only were
10:00the passengers enveloped in steam,
10:02but it is extremely doubtful if they were not subjected to the unpleasantness of smoke also.
10:08They found that such was the problem with the atmosphere in the tunnels, where the smoke and the steam was
10:15kind of retained,
10:16that they had to build extra vents in the 1870s to try and dispel the steam.
10:21And here at Baker Street, those lovely glazed light wells that go into the station had to have the glass
10:28taken off the top to try and get the steam out through them,
10:31such was the problem with the atmosphere.
10:32But problems with pollution didn't put the punters off.
10:37They could now travel across town in just 33 minutes.
10:41The Metropolitan Railway was a commercial success.
10:45And where there's one successful railway line, soon others will follow.
10:58Citi and I are exploring the hidden secrets of one of my favourite and one of the first underground stations
11:05to be built in the world, Baker Street.
11:08The first line to travel through here was the Metropolitan Railway in 1863.
11:15It was such a success that there was sooner demand for more underground links and Citi's got the inside track
11:22on that.
11:24So this looks very different, doesn't it?
11:28It's very different indeed. It's much lower down. It's like a tube.
11:32It is. That's because this is the second railway to reach Baker Street, which came in 1906 called the Baker
11:38Street and Waterloo Railway, otherwise known as the Bakerloo Line.
11:43Right, so upstairs you've got going east-west, you've got the Metropolitan Railway, so this is coming in from the
11:49south and connecting up where?
11:51This would have been the terminus when the line first opened in 1906 and it would have taken you down
11:56to Waterloo, hence the name.
11:58Bakerloo Line. The Bakerloo Line, there you go.
12:03Unlike the first underground line into Baker Street, this one was much, much deeper, 25 metres below ground at its
12:10lowest point.
12:1240 years had passed since the Metropolitan Railway had opened and technology had moved on.
12:18So instead of using the cut-and-cover method, the Bakerloo Line was excavated using deep-level boring.
12:25It was the third deep-level tube line to pass under the River Thames, following the innovation of the Waterloo
12:31and City Line and what we now know as the Northern Line, which had gone before.
12:37This new link was financed by the American tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes, who had his finger in the pie of
12:44several other underground railway companies.
12:47When it came to designing the Bakerloo Line, he turned to a young architect whose famous oxblood red design is
12:54synonymous with the underground we know today, Leslie Green.
12:58What we can see here is kind of a typical Leslie Green passageway towards the lift.
13:04Just through here would have been one, two lifts.
13:07Over there, another two lifts in a lift shaft.
13:10And then furthest along, an emergency spiral stair shaft.
13:14So a very typical layout.
13:16So these lifts were in service until 1940.
13:19But funnily enough, they were put into service for one day only after they closed down.
13:26Can you guess what day that was?
13:28I think that day that shook all of London and they celebrated and we still celebrate it now.
13:33Was it not the E Day?
13:35The 8th of May, 1945.
13:37The immense crowds of central London just celebrating the end of the war meant that these lifts haven't been taken
13:46out of service or put to the task one more time.
13:50But then the lifts were taken out and they were turned into a ventilation shaft.
13:55So the VP1 stands for ventilation point one of the Bakerloo Line.
14:01Right, okay.
14:03These days, fresh air is pulled down into the station through the shafts.
14:08So, although passengers no longer use this area, they feel its benefits every day.
14:15It's gone through so many iterations of changes.
14:18It's not just that it had the deep tube and the subsurface.
14:23It really has evolved with London throughout the times.
14:27And that's why I think it's such a brilliant emblem of transport kind of progress.
14:32It really is.
14:34But even as time has marched on, Leslie Green's wonderful design work remains.
14:40Let's come down here.
14:43Oh, Sid, these routes you take us on, honestly.
14:47Well, it's always worth it though, because look at these tiles.
14:53Here we go.
14:54So these are the strip tiles that would have run throughout the entire station to give it its original identity,
14:58I guess.
14:59That's it, yeah.
15:00And just look at that colour.
15:01I genuinely don't think I've seen this combination or even that shade of blue in any other station.
15:08These are in pretty good nick.
15:10So when was this tunnel shut down?
15:11In 1939.
15:13And there's actually a little hint to that down at the bottom of the stairs.
15:18Come and have a look.
15:21So this is amazing, I think.
15:23Look.
15:25Oh, isn't this lovely?
15:26Look at this.
15:27Henry something Hattery.
15:29The Hattery.
15:30Yeah.
15:31Oh, look over here.
15:32It's got a royal warrant.
15:33It is by special appointment.
15:35It's just so cool.
15:36Honestly, these might be the best preserved and some of the oldest posters I've ever seen in a disused station.
15:43Over there, there's one for clearly Whitbread, the brewery.
15:47That's still going strong today.
15:48Oh, yeah.
15:49And look at all those bottles of beer.
15:54But Baker Street is so much more than home to five tube lines.
15:59In 1911, the Metropolitan Railway embarked on a huge rebuilding programme.
16:05And Baker Street was to be the new company headquarters and flagship station.
16:11Architect Charles W. Clarke's ambitious redesign also included Chilton Court, a huge block of 180 luxury flats built above the
16:20station.
16:22Completed in 1929, it soon became a prestigious London address with famous residents like the novelist HG Wells.
16:32It boasted its own restaurant, hairdressing salon and 30 separate rooms for staff accommodation.
16:39And hidden underground in the station is another curious provision for the company's staff.
16:46Now, here is something that I've been wanting to show you.
16:50Now, what on earth are these strange little rooms with strange backs to them?
16:55Well, we might not believe it, but we're actually stood in the London Transport shooting range.
17:02Of course we are.
17:03And what else could you expect to have in Baker Street station underneath Jilson Court?
17:07So here, this is where the target would have been placed down there.
17:14And then over there is where the marksman would have been placed.
17:18And that's where they'd be their shooting down.
17:21London Transport, when it was formed, really emphasised sports, recreation, unity.
17:27They had loads of different sports clubs.
17:29And it really was a huge part of kind of why you came to work for London Transport.
17:35It was a true community.
17:36I guess so.
17:37But it's been built underneath the escalators at the time the escalators are being built.
17:42So it's been thought about.
17:44Why have they put it in purposefully?
17:46Well, it was part of the building above us, which is Chiltern Court.
17:51So it's all been put in place from that time period after the First World War.
17:57You know, a shooting club like this one would not have seemed unusual at that time at all.
18:04Because, especially after the First World War, young people or people of a fighting age were expected to be able
18:12to shoot straight, you know.
18:13So for this to be here and to be premeditated in a sense is not really that unusual for the
18:20time it was built.
18:20But, you know, it's completely bonkers that they had this underneath such a vast station.
18:26And there's another reason why this forgotten shooting range is so intriguing.
18:31What's really interesting is that above our heads in Chiltern Court, the Special Operations Executive was formed.
18:39So that is the precursor to today's SAS.
18:45Formed in June 1940, this clandestine organisation waged a secret war of sabotage and subversion in enemy occupied Europe.
18:54Their HQ was on Baker Street and it's thought this underground shooting range may have been used for operatives to
19:01practice their marksmanship.
19:03I do wonder how many people on those escalators realise there are people firing pistols on their feet behind them
19:11and upstairs for Special Operations being formed.
19:18Baker Street is certainly full of surprises. And as you explore its rabbit warren of tunnels, you are travelling through
19:26the ages of its evolution.
19:29We've come to a completely just different looking part of this station, right? I mean, we can see the platforms
19:36right there.
19:37You keep saying there's layers of history here. I mean, there are layers of muck. This is disgusting. This is
19:43all tube dust, right? But where does it all come from?
19:45You know how we were stood in the lift shafts of the Bakerloo line earlier? And that was where fresh
19:50air was being pulled into ventilate.
19:52Well, here, the air from the underground is being pulled here and out. So we're getting a full blast.
20:00Great. So it's coming off the trains past my face right now.
20:03But it's part of the chart. So you know how we've been saying this station has got layers upon layers
20:09of history.
20:10Well, here, we're at the Jubilee Line point. So in 1972, they started constructing what was then known as the
20:19Fleet Line later became the Jubilee Line.
20:22And you can see on these tunnel lining segments here, 1972.
20:28That's really interesting, isn't it? Because you see these ventilation shafts in the later tubes.
20:32Well, it's absolutely crucial to have this mechanism to be able to ventilate the line properly.
20:38But should we maybe go in there to see what is powering all this wind?
20:43You can feel a train coming in and bring it through.
20:46Gosh. We could both be in like a hair advert in the 80s. Look up there. There's a giant fan
20:53just above us, pulling air out of the underground.
20:57Isn't this station incredible? Being one of the first stations on the first underground line in the world to how
21:06much it's changed and evolved.
21:08And now it's serving hundreds of thousands of passengers a year. The layers are incredible.
21:25As we've been finding out, Baker Street Station has been at the heart of London's transport network since its inception.
21:33And in 1949, it added another first to its records. It might look like a drab back office today, but
21:43back then, this was a symbol of modernity.
21:46The Baker Street canteen and training centre was a purpose-built centralised facility, which for the first time brought all
21:54of the organisation's catering staff together to learn their trade.
21:58As this 1950s film shows, the London Transport Army marched on its stomach.
22:04Well over 100,000 people come into London Transport canteens every day.
22:09They come at all hours, for they take their meal breaks when they can.
22:13A good meal, well cooked and pleasantly served, helps a man to do his job efficiently. That's what the canteens
22:19are for.
22:21The 1950s was a time of huge inequality in the workplace, with women being deemed only suitable for domestic, non
22:29-managerial work.
22:31Following the Second World War, London Transport suffered from a shortage of labour and women were specifically targeted for canteen
22:39work, with the perk of free food and travel.
22:42By this period, London Transport's catering department operated 178 canteens across the Greater London area.
22:50And, on average, 1,200 staff were trained at the Baker Street Centre every year.
22:57This film, with its outdated gender stereotypes, was shown to all the new recruits.
23:03At the Baker Street Training Centre, there are courses which prepare people for their new jobs or for promotion in
23:09the canteen service.
23:10It is here that the hungry, tired men get their meals.
23:15I've come to the depot to find out more about this forgotten slice of London transport history.
23:21Paul Furst started working for the organisation in 1960, and later became a procurement manager in the catering department.
23:29What was the catering output like of London Transport?
23:33They decided to have a standard meal that would be available each day, a different one, and as a sweet
23:40or dessert.
23:41In 1960, when I joined them, the set meal was one shilling.
23:46The key to delivering these mass-manufactured meals was London Transport's Food Production Centre in Croydon.
23:54Croydon doles out the supplies, and they are weighed, allocated, and checked down to the last ounce.
24:00And here, too, there's food preparation on a big scale.
24:04Pastries, meat pies, cakes and rolls are made and cooked here, and sent out to the canteens ready to be
24:11served.
24:13At the depot, there are some wonderful relics from that time, including London Transport's very own range of food products,
24:20which were sold under the Griffin brand.
24:23The team had their own brand tea they were selling as well.
24:27Yeah, you take that home, yeah.
24:29Oh, it's lovely.
24:29Now, what they served in the canteen wasn't actually Griffin brand, it was just tea.
24:36This was a sort of what we call a home sales item.
24:39Now, Paul, I am a sucker for anything in a glass display case. What is this?
24:44It's a jam tart dish. In the bottom, it's been engraved. In this dish, the one million jam tart was
24:54made at Croydon Food Production Centre.
24:57How long did it take to make a million jam tarts, then?
25:00Well, it's sort of in the period from October 1950 when it opened until whatever date is on there.
25:06So, in six months, that food outlet place made a million jam tarts for staff?
25:12Yeah.
25:15I just love this.
25:17I know. It's quite amazing.
25:21Masterclasses in pastry and cake making were just some of the areas that catering staff were trained in at the
25:27Baker Street Centre.
25:28Courses ranged in length from a week for a canteen assistant to eight weeks for cooks.
25:34Where they also learned about food preparation, hygienic cleaning practices and that all-important customer service.
25:42Putting it bluntly, I think us canteen assistants have a lot to put up with. Not all dinners pass over
25:48the counter that sweetly.
25:49Take this chap who's coming into the canteen now. He's tired and he's hungry and he's just come in for
25:55his dinner break.
25:55And look at the time. You can't expect him to be reasonable if his meal's not just as he fancies.
26:01And he doesn't intend to be reasonable either. Grumble, grumble, natter, natter.
26:06Really, there are times when you could push the food in his face.
26:10Now, there's a whole range here of lovely little cups and saucers. What is the time period of these?
26:17That was in use for many, many years, right up until the 70s.
26:23And it stamped LT on the bottom.
26:25Because, unfortunately, staff did have a habit of sort of removing them.
26:31So everything LT had in the canteens were badged somewhere.
26:35So, you know, this is a true little story.
26:38As a young lad, one of my friends, he invited me to tea.
26:42And his father was the night foreman at Norberton bus garage.
26:48So I went to tea with him and his mother got all the, um, cussery out.
26:53And every bill of it was stamped LT.
26:57By the early 1980s, eating habits were changing.
27:01The growing popularity of fast food outlets eventually led to the demise of the staff canteen.
27:08And in 1993, London Transport privatised their catering provision.
27:13Nowadays, only a handful of staff canteens still exist.
27:18But I think the last word on what was once a much valued service should go to those first canteen
27:24workers.
27:25Those 1950s women who worked tirelessly in a world dominated by men.
27:31So you see, by coming into canteens, you're taking on a useful job.
27:36Whether it's a large canteen or a small one, the men need food.
27:43And so they need your help.
28:05So, Tim, what do you think this piece of equipment might be?
28:09I think this is a really early computerised signalling system.
28:14And you would be quite right.
28:16So this is from the Victoria Line, installed in 1967.
28:20It's a ticket tape machine.
28:22This is what allowed the Victoria Line to be the first automatic train service in the London Underground.
28:29This machine would read this ticket and from that send electrical currents to different trains,
28:34telling them where they were going and at what time.
28:37And so this would run completely automatically without the interference of people.
28:42Believe it or not, this machine was still in service until just over a decade ago.
28:49It seems absolutely...
28:51That is extraordinary.
28:51It doesn't it?
28:52But what's amazing is that before machines like this,
28:57signalling had to be controlled by a person in signal cabins all over the network.
29:03And that's where I've just recently been.
29:10I'm following the route of the historic Metropolitan Line for my next adventure.
29:15Just one stop along from Baker Street, in fact.
29:18This station is one of the first stations on the London Underground.
29:23But there are actually two Edgware Road stations.
29:25This one and the Leslie Green station around the corner, which serves the Bakerloo Line.
29:30But the station is not really why we're here today.
29:33Inside is a historical relic that was fundamental to the running of the Underground for 93 years.
29:40And today I'm about to meet the person who operated that amazing machinery for the final time before it closed
29:47in 2019.
29:50As you pass through Edgware Road, you might not have even noticed the humble signal cabin that overlooks the tracks.
29:57To enter it, you need special trackside access.
30:01And luckily for me, I've got TFL signaller Charlie Monroe to lead the way.
30:09This may seem silly, but what is a signal cabin used for?
30:13It's not silly at all. It's essentially the air traffic control of the railway.
30:16You are keeping the trains running to the timetable, making sure they're every few minutes apart,
30:20making sure the right trains are going in the right platforms at the right time,
30:22and then going off to the right places.
30:24Why is this signal cabin so significant?
30:27Mainly just because of how long it kept running and the fact that it was operating for nearly 100 years
30:33from the day it was built in 1926 up until it closed in 2019.
30:37But it's not just the cabin's age that's impressive.
30:41The job it did was monumental.
30:44The four platforms here receive trains from the District, Circle and Hammersmith & City line,
30:50and it's a terminus for two of those lines.
30:53It's a very complicated area. It works about 56 trains an hour, so nearly a train a minute.
30:58I've never seen this before, so I'm so excited for you to show me around.
31:02So can we go inside? We can. I'm really excited to get back in. Let's go.
31:05Let's do it.
31:18I'm at Edgware Road to explore a very special signal cabin,
31:22which is now in the care of the London Transport Museum.
31:25After nearly 100 years, it finally retired from duty in 2019.
31:31It was the last of its type on the network, and my guide today is Charlie Monroe,
31:35who was the very last signaller to operate it.
31:41This is Edgware Road.
31:42Ooh!
31:44Wow, so this is it?
31:46This is where the magic happened.
31:50This is kind of what you're working from, right?
31:53These are your screens, almost.
31:55Yeah, so this is what we call our diagram,
31:57which is a sort of straightened-out version of the tracks that are outside.
32:02And when Edgware was live,
32:04all of these would have been lit up with this orangey-yellow colour.
32:08Today, most of the lights are off as the signal cabin is no longer live.
32:12But back in the day, this screen would have twinkled.
32:17When the lights are on, that means we're all good,
32:19we can send a train there, there's no trains.
32:21When the lights are off, as they are now, there's a train there, generally.
32:24If I walked in like this back in the day, I'd be panicking
32:27because that's a massive signal failure right there.
32:30This is the worst nightmare.
32:31How do you even operate this?
32:33You know, you're controlling, what, four platforms?
32:36How do you do it?
32:38If we were doing it for real back in 2019,
32:40we wouldn't be having a chance to talk now.
32:42I'll tell you that much.
32:43But your levers are basically everything that you do.
32:45So we've got our red ones.
32:46Right.
32:47Which are our signals.
32:48We've got our black ones, which are our points.
32:51We've got our white one, which is a spare.
32:53And we've also then got our yellows, which are a special type of lever
32:56called a release lever,
32:57where if for any reason a driver didn't turn up for a train,
33:00you want to be able to safely reset the system
33:03and then set up a different train to go instead.
33:07Edgeware Road's signal cabin has 38 levers.
33:11As a train is coming into the station,
33:13the signal operator checks the board to make sure the route is clear.
33:17Then using the levers, the operator sets the points on the track
33:21to the right position.
33:23And finally, signals to the driver that it's safe to go.
33:29Would it be just one person operating this here?
33:31There'd be two people on shift at once,
33:33but there'd only ever be one of us operating at a time
33:35because you can see it's quite a tight space
33:38and you just end up fighting over each other
33:40if you try and take both sides at once.
33:44When this machinery was installed in 1926,
33:47practically every station on the underground would have worked like this.
33:52There are now only two lever signal frames left in operation on the network.
33:58One at Harrow-on-the-Hill
34:01and the other at Rickmansworth.
34:04But this signal cabin was the oldest of them all.
34:09It's kind of amazing to see this because this seems so analog
34:12in our digital computerized world.
34:16Did it never feel kind of, I don't know, strange working with this equipment?
34:21When I very first started, it did.
34:23I had no idea that things like this still existed until I was doing the job.
34:27But you just had to get on and run the trains.
34:29Every moment you weren't moving a train,
34:32there were hundreds of people on that train.
34:33Why is my train not moving?
34:35So, when you are up here in the cabin
34:38and you need to talk to a driver that's driving a train,
34:40how do you do that?
34:41By 2019, we had our radio system.
34:44We didn't have radios in 1926.
34:46Yeah.
34:47But just over here, we have this button.
34:50I think you should press the button and find out what happens.
34:53OK.
34:54Give it a nice big push.
35:00And that was our whistle, which we would use.
35:02Oh, that's so cool!
35:03So, there were a series of different codes.
35:05You would maybe do two toots or three toots, one long, one short,
35:08to let the driver know what was going on.
35:10And then the trains would whistle back to also, you know,
35:13respond and say that they got the message.
35:16With the advent of modern radio,
35:18the old whistle was used much less frequently.
35:21But on the last night of the signal cabin's operation,
35:24Charlie gave it one last blast.
35:27You know, I should probably apologise to the residents around Edge of Road
35:30as well for sounding it at half past one in the morning on the night
35:33the cabin closed.
35:34Oh, I don't know. I'm sure the neighbours have forgiven you for that.
35:36The last night, 1st of September 2019, what was that like?
35:42Really surreal. It didn't really sink in, you know, until about midnight,
35:46half midnight on the morning of.
35:48We started doing the last times that each lever,
35:51kind of in series, was ever going to be a signal for a train.
35:55Oh, wow.
35:55But it was, yeah, quite a special occasion.
35:57And such a rich heritage too.
35:59I mean, you're the last person to move that.
36:02Exactly. A signal cabin that had been running for 90 odd years.
36:05It was a huge privilege, you know, something I'm incredibly proud of
36:09and will remember, you know, forever.
36:13To make travelling by tube safer, this incredible room of levers and locks
36:18is supported by an electrical locking system
36:21that send messages down the tracks.
36:24And to see that, we've got special access to the relay room.
36:30Oh, wow.
36:33So this, yeah, don't touch anything.
36:36I'm not touching anything.
36:37There's about 600 volts coming into the room,
36:40but this is very privileged behind-the-scenes access.
36:44Even for me, it's still a treat to come in here
36:45because this is the brains of the signalling.
36:48One little pull of the lever will potentially run through
36:51three, four, five of these
36:54and then allow our points to go from one way to another
36:56or our signals to go from red to green.
36:58I'm kind of lost for words because it just,
37:01it's such an assault on the senses.
37:03It's kind of overwhelming.
37:04Remember, we've got three rooms of equipment like this
37:06just to keep that one actually quite small signal frame working.
37:10The design of the relay is over 100 years old.
37:12Some of the fuses that are still there doing the job they're doing
37:15are marked up London Passenger Transport Board,
37:17which came to existence in the 1930s.
37:20Yeah.
37:20And it really is a very sort of remarkable space.
37:24But before I leave Edgware Road,
37:26I want to see what all this wonderful old technology has been replaced with.
37:31So we're now in the modern signal room
37:34and it's very different from the one we were in earlier.
37:37It really feels like a data centre really.
37:40But everything we've visited so far,
37:42the signal cabin and the relay room is now controlled by what is in these racks over here.
37:51And it's incredible because even though it looks really high tech and modern,
37:54the principle behind all of this equipment is still the same that it was 100 years ago.
38:02It's just been packaged more neatly.
38:06But it's really incredible to see that this is running this station.
38:13So next time you stop at a tube station,
38:17spare a thought for the signalling technology that spanned the centuries
38:21and keeps you on track every day.
38:36There's another behind the scenes operation on the London Underground
38:40that you might not think much about,
38:43unless you're as prone to mislaying things as I am.
38:47For 86 years, this vital service was based at Baker Street
38:51until 2019 when it moved to a modern premises in South London.
38:56Joining me at the depot is Paul Cowan, who runs this unsung hero.
39:02Paul, one of the things at Baker Street that I remember as a kid
39:05was the lost property office.
39:08So it's been there an awful long time.
39:10Since 1933.
39:12Amazing place.
39:13It's a dungeon.
39:14It was a proper Aladdin's cave.
39:16So you've moved it now, but I want to talk about the actual building
39:19and the place it was in back then.
39:21200 Baker Street, just across the road from 221B Baker Street.
39:25The home of Sherlock Holmes, of course.
39:28What was it like for you working in that office?
39:31Over the years we've had probably 15 million items come through,
39:35and they've all sat on these wonderful old iron shelves.
39:39These are original fittings in there since the 30s.
39:42And throughout the decades, the different type of stuff which has come through.
39:46So the ubiquitous umbrella was the most frequently lost item back in the 30s.
39:52But today, hardly any.
39:54Suppose somebody wants to get their object back or think they've lost something.
39:59How do they get it back?
40:00Customers would come through, come to the counter and say,
40:02help, I've lost something.
40:03And back in those days, it was just a huge ledger.
40:06You could write in, say, help, I've lost something.
40:09It wasn't really until sort of the late 70s that we started to get people phoning up.
40:14Now, of course, all computerised, people can just go onto the website,
40:17submit a form which helps us reunite property a lot faster.
40:20How does it then work?
40:22You take mobile phones as an example, we'd get over 100 per day.
40:26100 per day?
40:27100 mobile phones per day. And they're all similar.
40:29So the colour of the case, the fact that you said your screen was cracked,
40:34if we turn it on and it shows a picture of you down at the beach,
40:36that's the sort of information that we would capture
40:38because that allows us to differentiate one mobile phone from another.
40:42And some of those have been fascinating.
40:44I remember a few cases where I've really got to play Sherlock Holmes.
40:49You must have loved that, playing that game.
40:51It really was.
40:52You really are Sherlock Holmes, aren't you? Playing as detective.
40:54Do you know what? Our computer system, what was it called?
40:57Oh, God, what was it?
40:58Sherlock.
40:58Of course, of course it was. How do we track down lost properties?
41:01How long does stuff generally hang around in your lost property department?
41:05It's three months is the period that we hold property for.
41:09After that, it belongs to Transport for London,
41:11but that doesn't mean that we have to do anything.
41:13We can still keep it for longer.
41:15So if there's something which is of great value.
41:17We've had jewellery, you know, brooches worth 30,000, 40,000 pounds.
41:23It's a case of somebody lost this and it means something.
41:26So we hold those things for several years to try and then repatriate with the owner.
41:31There are then some things which people try and collect not quite as savoury.
41:36So we had some false teeth.
41:38A chap back in the 60s, come in for some false teeth.
41:41And how do you prove that that's your teeth?
41:43Well, just stick the choppers in.
41:45And he had to go through about three or four of these sets to try and know,
41:49we think this is yours.
41:50And the end was like, take your choice.
41:51If any of these fit, they are yours and away you go.
41:54You're so proud of the work your team does.
41:56Yeah, rightly so.
41:58Everything which has come to us, somebody's picked it up and made a choice.
42:02What do I do with this?
42:03At peak times we've had 330,000 items come through.
42:09They've all made that choice to hand it in.
42:11Now, it strengthens your faith in humanity.
42:16I love what we do and I love everything that Baker Street had and all the memories inside there.
42:33I love what we do with that.
42:35I love that Baker Street has a good storm.
42:44I love you.
42:44I love that.
42:45I love it.
42:48I love it.
42:50The big one.
42:51Go, go, go, go.
42:51You're supposed to be a rock and roll.
42:53You're supposed to be a rock and roll.
42:54You're supposed to be a rock available.
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