- 5 days ago
Explore the disused, closed-off Jubilee line platforms and hidden tunnels at Charing Cross station. Closed to regular passengers since 1999, this subterranean complex now serves as a major film set, staff training facility, and operational testing zone.
深入探索了伦敦地铁网络的历史、设计及其背后的故事。其中，查令十字站（Charing Cross） 作为伦敦地铁的重要枢纽，在节目中多次被提及，尤其与 朱比利线（Jubilee Line） 的历史延伸密切相关...
深入探索了伦敦地铁网络的历史、设计及其背后的故事。其中，查令十字站（Charing Cross） 作为伦敦地铁的重要枢纽，在节目中多次被提及，尤其与 朱比利线（Jubilee Line） 的历史延伸密切相关...
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04Just look at this. It's a 1983 stock tube car that ran on the Jubilee line. Now it's one of
00:12just a few
00:13of these things that are still left. But when it comes to rare artifacts linked to the Jubilee
00:19line, they don't come much rarer than this. This little sign is for a circuit breaker switch for
00:26the platform lights at Charing Cross. But the key feature here is that it says Fleetline, which is
00:32what they were originally going to call the Jubilee line. And this is the only piece of hardware in the
00:39museum's entire vast collection from the Fleetline. It's another secret of the London Underground.
00:48I'm Tim Dunn, and we're back to reveal more hidden parts of the tube network.
00:53I am so excited. I am standing on the wrong side of the escalator. The secret spaces with
00:59fascinating stories and incredible sights. Oh, wow. This is extraordinary. My fellow explorer is
01:07Siddy Holloway. This looks like marble terrazzo to me. She knows these forgotten time capsules
01:14inside out. We are now walking underneath one of the busiest places in London. And has the
01:20keys to open them up. Ready? And show me places hardly anyone gets to see. Look at this. Oh, this
01:28is
01:28magic. We'll explore the history of stations and lines at the London Transport Museum's depot and dive
01:35into its extraordinary archives. This is the good stuff, isn't it? Most of this stuff won't have been
01:40seen. It's crammed with the secrets of the London Underground. And people have no idea it's here.
01:57One of the things I love about coming to this depot is the rolling stock. Looking around trains from
02:04across the ages, from the very old to the much more recent. And one I could look at for hours
02:12on end
02:12is from the 1980s. Isn't the inside of this train splendid? The bright yellows and oranges instantly
02:20remind me of those newer Jubilee line stations in the centre of London. But actually, this is a second
02:27generation Jubilee line train. When that line first opened up in 1979, the trains using it were already
02:34old hat. They were 1972 stock. There you go. Prince Charles riding in the driver's cab the day before the
02:41line opened to the public. And you can see in this picture, the commemorative headboard attached to
02:46the front of the train. And here is that very same headboard. It actually went missing for years and
02:55years. No one knew where it was until it was discovered behind a filing cabinet at Neesden Depot
03:01in 2019. On that opening day in 1979, though, Prince Charles's train terminated at Charing Cross,
03:09which of course is no longer on the Jubilee line. So when Sidney told me she got hold of the
03:14keys
03:15to that whole Jubilee line area still down there, I insisted we go and explore it.
03:26Charing Cross Station sits in the heart of London. Underground, it's home to a busy interchange between
03:34the Bakerloo and Northern Lines. Over 3.4 million passengers pass through here every single year
03:42on their way to the theatre district off the Strand, as well as Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.
03:54Now, Sid, we're standing outside this fabulous building at Charing Cross, which I know pretty
03:58well. Yes. But it's not obvious, is it, where the actual tube station is? No. Well, the tube here has
04:04got a very complicated history, a lot of name changes and a lot of different stations called
04:09Charing Cross. But the first underground station to reach this part of London was actually behind
04:14you, over there, called Trafalgar Square. So that one opened in 1906 and was a part of the Bakerloo
04:20line. Then a year later, another station opened, called Charing Cross, which served the Northern
04:26Line. But that later got called the Strand. And so these two separate stations were never
04:30united until the 1970s. But today, this station is a unified one between the Northern Line, the
04:38Bakerloo Line, and then, of course, the Jubilee Line. It's the Jubilee Line. That doesn't go here now,
04:44does it? No, it doesn't. But it used to. So this station was the original terminus of the Jubilee
04:49Line when it opened in 1979. Well, if its history has been complicated, that suggests underground is going
04:56to be complicated. The original plan was for the Jubilee Line to run right through Charing Cross. When
05:13construction started in 1971, it was called the Fleet Line. It would have run from Stanmore in the
05:261906. The line was to be built in four stages, with Phase One terminating here at Charing Cross. That section
05:33opened in 1979. The completed line was expected to cost 57 million pounds. That's nearly a billion in
05:43today's money. An expensive business. Later, when they decided to honour the Queen's Silver Jubilee and no longer
05:53on the live network. It sits quietly behind locked doors. But you can guess who has the keys.
06:17Not quite what you expect, right? Oh, hello. Welcome to the Jubilee Line Concourse.
06:27Plans for the next phases of the Jubilee Line changed in the 1980s. The original layout proved too expensive,
06:35so it was rejected. The line was re-routed in the 1990s to serve the massive redevelopment of the London
06:42Docklands.
06:46The extension started one station back at Green Park, headed south of the Thames, through Canary Wharf,
06:53and north to Stratford. When the extension opened in 1999, it went under the river four times. All this
07:03meant Charing Cross Station was now bypassed. The Jubilee Line platforms here closed the night before the new
07:11stations opened to the public. So, what do you think? Well, not really funny, this feels pretty much
07:19exactly the same as Bond Street and Baker Street. Yep, and Green Park, because all of them were built
07:25at the same time and opened in 1979. Because the big giveaway here, right, is this is a map of
07:31the
07:31Jubilee Line at the time, and it's going all the way down to Stanmore. So, it's obviously, when they built
07:37these new stations, it doesn't yet go up to Stratford, round the corner. Yeah. But this used
07:42to be the Bakerloo Line, didn't it, going up past this? It did, yeah. The Bakerloo Line used to split
07:47into two different directions, one going to Harrow and Wealdstone, and one going up to Stanmore. And so,
07:52when they built the new stations of the Jubilee Line in the 70s, they merged that with the old
07:58Bakerloo Line branch going up to Stanmore, and created this new line called the Jubilee Line. Right,
08:03so actually the Jubilee Line itself isn't really that new at all, lot of it. Well, parts of it are,
08:09but parts of it aren't. Even though this platform no longer sees passengers, there are still regular
08:17station announcements. There are even live arrivals boards, but they actually show the trains that are
08:24arriving at Green Park, just up the track. This platform is used for all sorts of things,
08:32it's used for training of staff, emergency services, it's used for maintenance,
08:37they test out a lot of ideas on these platforms before they're rolled out onto the wider networks.
08:42Like what? Well, like this. The tactile pavement that's here,
08:47there's no yellow line, as you can see, but there is a testing line just here, and if I do
08:54this...
08:57Oh, that's clever. It's a self-reflective one, so if there was a power outage or something like that,
09:03that would light up the edge of the platform. This, however, was never rolled out on the network,
09:08just because this kind of luminous strip wasn't really needed, because there's so many backup
09:13generators for the underground, they would never really have a proper power outage down here. Other
09:18things that have been tested here, like the platform hump. I've had to say, of course, to enable level
09:23access to some of the carriages. Yes, so because we want to provide as much level access as possible
09:29throughout the network, they were trialling this out here first before they started rolling it out
09:33onto the regular underground network. Now you see them everywhere. This one's elsewhere in Charing Cross,
09:41on the Northern Line. Although hidden away, the Jubilee Line area is probably one of the most visible
09:51parts of the network. It has a new life as a film and TV location, regularly used by major Hollywood
09:58productions, who also have to create their own platform adverts when filming down here.
10:05I'm meeting Kate Reston, who manages TFL's film office.
10:12Oh, Kate, now I think I know where we are. I recognise these escalators. Is this not where
10:17James Bond comes zooming down in Skyfall? Yes, it was. And they actually used both sets of escalators.
10:24Daniel Craig slides down the escalator, chasing Javier Bardem, the villain, and they ended up on the other
10:29escalator on the other side. But they must have made some adaptations. I can see here that they've
10:34taken out some bits of it. Yes, to avoid injury. That could have been quite painful if they'd left
10:40them in, yeah. So they had to remove what we call the Toblerones and the emergency stop. But the whole
10:46place is used for filming, isn't it? So it's not just Bond films, but it's used for loads of things.
10:51Yeah.
10:51This whole section of the station, as well as other parts of the network, have seen the stars and crews
10:57of
10:58films like The Bourne Ultimatum, Sliding Doors, and even Paddington, that you might have thought
11:05they'd film exclusively at Paddington. And Charing Cross is used to depict more cities than just London.
11:15So it has been dressed as a New York subway, which is pretty impressive. The art department,
11:20I think, are amazing. They can change most things. So they might change the posters,
11:24for example, or the maps, different things. Because I can see these posters down here
11:30are not real, because I'm sure they're not real, because that one up there says,
11:34I think, Death of a Designer, the greatest play of the 20th century, Death of a Designer.
11:41It's amazing what you think they have to change. So for New York, for example, they had to cover over
11:46all the signage because people would have known it was London Underground and not the New York subway.
11:51We also bring all the equipment in via a train. It comes in from Stanmore. Yeah,
11:56that's for people with a lot of equipment. Now, I have to ask you, how much is the rate card
12:01to
12:01come and fill down here for a day? Ish. So we charge the same for everybody. And we are expensive,
12:07apparently. Probably one of the most expensive metro systems in the world. But for your own train,
12:14and all this, you're looking at about between £3,000 and £4,000 an hour. Is that all? I mean,
12:20brilliant. I mean, I did that for a party. I guess it means that you can take that money and
12:25put it
12:25back into train services, upgrades and so on as well. Yes, it's completely reinvested back into the
12:30network. It's incredible how much these closed parts of Charing Cross still benefit passengers today.
12:37But we're about to see one area that no one gets to visit. Tim, look! Wow!
12:57Siddi and I are exploring the disused parts of Charing Cross Underground Station.
13:04Oh dear. You get it to the best places, right? I knew you would love this. During the Jubilee
13:16Line's construction, engineers were faced with a logistical problem. How do you excavate hundreds
13:23of metres of tunnels without disrupting traffic on the strand above? Or stopping the hustle and bustle
13:31of Trafalgar Square? So this is the construction tunnel for the entire Jubilee Line concourse
13:39and the station we've walked through today. Now, this curve here is really unusual because it's
13:46actually avoiding Nelson's Column's foundations. So we're just about walking underneath Trafalgar Square.
13:53So that little S kink in this tunnel is to get around the foundations of that national landmark.
14:00And the fact that we are now walking underneath one of the busiest places in London. It's just amazing.
14:07And I guess this is here because you couldn't really quarry stuff out from the tunnels and take it up
14:11to the strand
14:12because it's so busy, right? Yeah. They found an empty plot of land, actually where the Sainsbury's wing
14:17of the National Gallery is. Then they sunk a shaft there and dug all of this tunnel out in order
14:24to build
14:24the entire station without disturbing traffic above. And actually there's a little hint as to the fact
14:31that this was the first part of the station to be built. On the tunnel lining rings it says...
14:37Yeah. 64 and 1965.
14:39Mm-hmm. But the Jubilee Line wasn't built until the 1970s.
14:43Right. That is there because this is leftover tunnel lining stock from the Victoria Line.
14:52Engineers also designed this tunnel with a very simple and time-efficient feature. Now,
14:59I can't help but notice this tunnel is actually on a pretty constant gradient all the way down,
15:04yet we're going away from the underground. It gets deeper the further we go away. Why?
15:09Well, they're just utilising gravity. To utilise gravity, they would put it on a slight incline.
15:15So those heavy skips full of stuff would just slide on down here all the way down to the shaft
15:20to be extracted.
15:22So it's a whole two-foot-gauge railway network built just to construct the big railway over there.
15:27Yep. Small railway here, big one over there.
15:33While the Jubilee Line's platforms are long abandoned, its ventilation system remains crucial.
15:40It now works as the lungs of the Northern and Bakerloo Lines.
15:50So, this is really cool. So this is the ventilation point for the Northern Line,
15:55and if you just look down, there's a train coming. Whoa!
16:05All of the hot air rises from the train and escapes down the ventilation shaft.
16:13So, do you want to go and see it? Let's go and have a look.
16:18And following the breeze, we can see where all that hot air goes.
16:23So, welcome to the Craven Street ventilation shaft.
16:27Oh, look at that. Oh, this is huge.
16:29So, all of this was constructed for the Jubilee Line coming to Charing Cross.
16:33So, this is ventilating the Northern Line and the Jubilee Line below.
16:37You can actually feel it. It's pulling a lot of air around.
16:40You can.
16:41And then from the bottom of this shaft all the way to the top...
16:44It's a very long way.
16:45It's about 70 metres. Oh.
16:47So, if you were stood at the top of this shaft, you'd be about level with Nelson's column.
16:52That's a long way up.
16:54It is.
16:56Can you see it from the street, this ventilation shaft?
16:59If you know where to look, yes.
17:02And on the street, who would have thought something so high above ground and camouflaged as an office building was
17:10part of the tube?
17:13Now, there's one part of this place that's more secret than most.
17:17Normally, it's completely off limits.
17:19In fact, it's so hard to get to that very few station staff have ever been there.
17:25Because the Fleet Line was supposed to go underneath Fleet Street, they actually tunneled way beyond Charing Cross, almost towards
17:33Oldwich,
17:34because that was supposed to be the next leg of the line.
17:38So, about 500 metres down that way, there's still a tunnel running all the way underneath the Strand.
17:44Really? With tracks in it as well?
17:45Yep. With tracks, you can actually fit two full-sized underground trains in these tunnels.
17:51That's extraordinary. I had no idea.
17:53Well, how do you feel about going to visit them?
17:56I think it's time we did.
18:05This section of Overrun Tunnel starts at Charing Cross
18:08and follows the line of the Strand to within 100 metres of the old Oldwich Station.
18:15It's now used for emergencies or if they need to park a spare train in central London for a while.
18:22To give Citi and me this exclusive access is Roy Kenneth.
18:26Now, he is the one person who might rival Citi's knowledge of underground secrets.
18:31To get to the good bit, we first walk along a ventilation tunnel.
18:35Now, what exactly is it you do in this tunnel and what's it for?
18:39OK, well, my particular role within the Emergency Response Unit is I'm the Emergency Planning Manager,
18:44which means I have to make sure our teams are ready to respond in all scenarios.
18:48But it also means that I need to know things about the infrastructure.
18:51So, for example, knowing where all these hidden spaces are.
18:55Where we are at the moment is a ventilation shaft.
18:57The reason I need to know where all of these are is because we could use them for emergency equipment
19:01storage.
19:02Oh, so you must know every nook and cranny of us.
19:06Every tunnel, nook, cranny and hidey hole.
19:10So, where are we now?
19:11So, we're in one of the ventilation tunnels for the extension to the Jubilee Line from Charing Cross.
19:18So, the track is just behind the fan, which is providing the ventilation.
19:21Can we go and have a look?
19:22Absolutely.
19:22Let's do it.
19:24On the other side of the fan, a fascinating section of track is waiting to be revealed.
19:30They've turned the current off so that we can be here safely.
19:34Oh, look at this.
19:36But we've been warned, we may need to leave at very short notice if the tunnel is required to go
19:42back into service.
19:43This tunnel stretches all the way up and down there. This is phenomenal.
19:47So, I've read about how long this overrun is so many times and sort of in theory always has understood
19:53it.
19:53But being here actually puts it into perspective how, well, huge this overrun is.
20:00I mean, the fact that you can fit two full trains in here is extraordinary.
20:04And also I've spotted that these concrete tunnels are just that.
20:08They're not normal cast iron tunnels, right?
20:10So, these must be some of the oldest concrete tunnels on the London Underground.
20:14Now, the concrete ones are actually cheaper and easier to make because they fit into the tunnel a little bit
20:20snugger.
20:21So, it's an easier one for people to kind of transport.
20:24Tell me about this concrete construction in front of me.
20:26I can see it tapers inwards so it gets the tunnels smaller to larger.
20:29What's happening here?
20:31So, that's what we call a venturi.
20:33So, basically, the tunnel widens as it comes to this open space leading to the vent shaft.
20:38When the trains are coming through, they're pushing a column of air through.
20:41It allows it to dissipate slightly to spread out before it hits the vent shaft and avoid being over-pressurising.
20:47Now, Roy, down there is a red light. Is that the end of the tunnel?
20:52No, it isn't. The red light is for when they store trains and that's as far as the trains would
20:55go.
20:56The tunnel itself actually carries on for another 400 metres beyond those red lights.
21:00So, there's actually underground train track on the Jubilee Line that's never been used by passenger trains at all, ever.
21:06That's true.
21:06What a remarkable station this is.
21:09And there's even more to learn about Charing Cross.
21:13This is a kind of weird little episode, I suppose, in the underground.
21:27I'm back at the London Transport Museum's depot to continue digging into the history of Charing Cross Underground Station.
21:35It's been known by various names at different times, which gets quite confusing.
21:42The man to explain everything clearly is head curator Matt Brosnan.
21:46And he suggested the best place to do it is the sign store.
21:51Now, this one fascinates me because it says embankment.
21:55Now, I've got a funny feeling this is part of Charing Cross, is that right?
21:59That's right, yeah.
22:00And you can actually see the kind of the outline of the letters of Charing Cross just underneath it.
22:04So, you've got a C there, a couple of S's at the end, and it's basically been slightly inexpertly covered
22:11with a vinyl sticker with embankment over the top.
22:13OK, that makes sense.
22:14But why has it therefore got District and Circle that was above Charing Cross?
22:19Because I thought the embankment was always down where the District and Circle is, down by the river.
22:23What's going on?
22:24Well, yeah, this is a kind of weird, you know, little episode, I suppose, in the underground,
22:29where you've got a couple of stations that are ridiculously close together that have had changes of names a bit
22:35like musical chairs.
22:36So, what we now know as embankment was the first of these stations in 1870 on the District line.
22:42And you had just a stone's throw, another station that spent most of its life as Strand, but actually started
22:48life as Charing Cross.
22:50And then a few yards to the west of that, you had a station called Trafalgar Square.
22:54And Trafalgar Square and Strand are today's Charing Cross.
22:59So, they were two stations amalgamated together.
23:01We think we know the name of a place, but actually, it's really informed by what TfL and Untransports called
23:06it.
23:06So, they've got the power to change our whole psycho-geography of the whole city.
23:11Clapham South originally was conceived to be Nightingale Lane, but never got opened like that.
23:15That's right, and there's loads of examples on the network like that.
23:18But as a Spurs fan, Gillespie Road, Arsenal, it should be Gillespie Road still, to be honest.
23:23But that's obviously been renamed for reasons of the football club moving from South London to North London.
23:28And more recently, talking about football, Southgate on the Piccadilly Line was temporarily renamed Gareth Southgate Station in honour of
23:35the England manager.
23:35So, yeah, you do get these little quirks over time.
23:44Now, I want a look at more rather delightful trains.
23:50We're heading to another favourite of mine, the 1972 stock, which we now know was the first train that ran
23:57on the Jubilee Line to Charing Cross.
23:59But it spent most of its life on the Northern Line.
24:04I do love this bit of kit, actually. It's a lovely one. This one went on the Northern Line, didn't
24:08it?
24:09It did, yeah. And it was in service until the 1990s.
24:12And one of my favourite parts of this train is this.
24:17Strap hangers. Strap hangers.
24:19That you could hold on to as the train is moving.
24:21But these were actually discontinued on the underground. Do you know why?
24:25Well, is it because they're actually quite violent?
24:26If you're squandering around, hitting in the head.
24:28They're quite dangerous. They would actually, yeah, as you say, people would hit their heads on them.
24:32And so now there's just a handrail that people hold on to.
24:37But the reason I thought it'd be nice to show you this particular stock is because this train used to
24:44run through the place I'm next going to.
24:47It is the part of the network that is connected to the latest expansion of the London Underground.
24:54It goes straight through it. It's the Kennington Loop.
24:58Oh, I'm so jealous. You've got to see this.
25:04It's 10pm in South London and I've come to visit this Grade II listed building.
25:10Kennington was opened by the City and South London Railway in 1890 and is the oldest surviving tube building in
25:18the world.
25:20The line ran from King William Street in the city to Stockwell in the south.
25:25But what makes this station even more special is what is hidden underneath Victorian tunnels fused with 21st century engineering.
25:39Kennington is actually one of the oldest deep tube stations in London and it's the only one that still retains
25:47its original structure, including that incredible dome up there, which is over 130 years old.
25:55Many people don't think much about this station because it's small. It's in a residential area, but underneath the surface,
26:03it's like an iceberg with one of the most important junctions on the northern line.
26:08Two of the newest stations on the London Underground connect here with Kennington, Nine Elms and Batsy Power Station.
26:18Now, the reason we're here at night is because we're going to go and see it in a way that
26:24very few people ever get to.
26:27But before we go down, I want to first go up to that intriguing architectural dome.
26:52I'm inside Kennington's Dove and what you're seeing and hearing around me is the lift winding equipment of the station.
26:59These massive motors are what bring lifts from the ticket hall and down to the platforms.
27:05But what is incredible is that this space has, since it first opened in 1890, housed the lift winding equipment.
27:12But back then, it was powered by water and not by electricity.
27:19And Kennington wasn't the only station to have a dome. Elephant and Castle, Oval and Stockwell had one too, which
27:29also held their lift winding mechanisms.
27:36This is the only dome left of that original city in South London line.
27:42And it's just incredible to think that this space is still being used for that same purpose today.
27:51In 1890, it cost two pence to ride the tube from Kennington station.
27:58The lifts took passengers 18 metres down to platform level, where they would have to wait five minutes for a
28:06slow-moving three-car train.
28:11Tonight, once the train stopped running, I've got special clearance to access the most extraordinary part of this site.
28:19So, while I wait, there's time to explore the rest of the station.
28:28Wow. This is so amazing.
28:32So, these are original tiles from 1890 from the City and South London Railway.
28:39And this would have been the passageway off the platform and up here and up into those hydraulic lifts.
28:47But just look at how well-preserved they are, because they're so incredibly old, over 130 years old.
28:55They've got this beautiful fleur-de-lis pattern, which was the signature of the City and South London Railway at
29:01the time.
29:02Later on, they changed their signature colour to black.
29:05So, these brown tiles are incredibly rare.
29:09They changed to black and green tiles when the line was modernised and rebranded in the 1920s.
29:18And it's in this platform cupboard where we can see how it would have looked.
29:25Wow. This is incredible.
29:28These are original tiles from 1924.
29:32And then look at this, the posters from the 1960s that are still clinging to the walls.
29:38And up there is the frieze, the old-style Northern Line frieze saying Kennington.
29:43And it's just amazing to think that passengers pass by these doors all the time without realising that they are
29:50passing a little pocket of history.
29:57But the thing Kennington is most famous for is the Kennington Loop.
30:03It's a U-shaped stretch of tunnel that allows trains to turn around and head in the opposite direction.
30:09And it's the only one on the modern network.
30:14It was built in 1926 when what we now know as the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line arrived
30:19here.
30:20Two extra platforms were built, joined together by the new loop section.
30:25And the loop runs beneath the original bank branch of the line, so there's no obstruction to that traffic.
30:32All very clever.
30:35It's 12.30 and this is tonight's last train leaving the southbound platform to go through the loop and head
30:42back northbound.
30:43And I've been given special clearance to ride in the rear cab.
30:52This is a view that most people don't get to see.
30:57It's from the back of the train looking into this reversing loop.
31:05This train will arrive back at Kennington Loop.
31:09It's a little bit noisy because it is a loop, so it has a lot of twists and turns.
31:15And because of that, there's a lot of friction on the wheels.
31:19And you'll notice the other tunnels that peel off from the loop.
31:24Instead of turning round, trains can now continue down the new line to Battersea.
31:32Now, some of you might have ridden the Kennington Loop accidentally by maybe falling asleep.
31:38But this is a really exciting part.
31:42But the reason we're here so late at night is because we're going to go a step further than just
31:47riding the loop.
31:48We're actually going to go and walk the loop.
31:54And now you can see why Tim was so jealous.
32:15I'm exploring the hidden parts of Kennington Station.
32:18And what I'm about to do is what very few have done before.
32:23And that's walk the loop.
32:32It's 2.15am. All the passengers have left.
32:36And the maintenance crew has arrived.
32:39Welcome to Kennington Station.
32:42What we're after here is safety, all the times.
32:44Because we want everybody to go home safely.
32:46I receive a full safety briefing from TfL officer Gabriel.
32:49Before we go on the track, I've got this thing here to check the current is on or off.
32:55Go on the track, check it.
32:56If it's on, that means we cannot go on the track.
32:58If it's off, then we can go on the track.
33:01Who then checks the current has been switched off.
33:08And after the all clear, I'm allowed to do something that feels so wrong.
33:15Climb off the platform.
33:21The loop goes up that way, curves around and then comes back into a platform over there.
33:28Now, I have done some really amazing track walks during my time at Transport for London.
33:34I've never done the Kennington loop.
33:41It was six years from the Battersea Extension's groundbreaking ceremony in 2015,
33:48to passengers connecting with the underground network here on the Kennington loop.
33:54100 metres into the 500 metre tunnel was where they joined.
33:59And it's something pretty special.
34:05It's called a step plate junction, which is where tunnels of different diameters are joined.
34:18That tunnel leads down to Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station.
34:23And that is the Kennington loop.
34:26And what they did to construct this is that they left the Kennington loop in situ,
34:32and excavated all around it until they had created all, cut into the loop.
34:38First, the top half, and the trains kept running through, and then the bottom half.
34:42And so this big space was created.
34:47During construction of the new Northern Line Extension, 850,000 tonnes of spoil from the tunnels was taken down the
34:55Thames by 700 barges,
34:58to create farmland and a nature walk in Essex.
35:03What's really interesting is that we see that some lessons have been learnt throughout the years that are really evident
35:10here.
35:10So, for example, there is a walkway to the side of the track,
35:13so if there is any maintenance that needs to be done or any track walks, as we're doing today,
35:19you've got a much easier path to get down to the station as opposed to having to cross the tracks.
35:27Which is what I have to do to get back.
35:29All in all, it takes about 15 minutes to walk the entire loop.
35:40And here we are, back on the northbound platform.
35:50Someone who's been round the Kennington Loop more than most is Alex Garnett-Shearer.
35:56He's a former driver who is now part of the management team for the whole of the Northern Line,
36:01including the new branch to Battersea.
36:04Now, I'm sure every driver's got a favourite part of the line they drive, but what's your favourite part of
36:08the Northern Line?
36:09I think I'd have to say Camden Town, probably.
36:12I think the complexity of that junction for what it does,
36:16I think we really do take that for granted.
36:19The engineering principle is just to build it
36:21and just to keep that railway running in terms of the points and how the tunnels align
36:26and the complexities of that junction really are the reason the Northern Line is as successful as it is.
36:32One of the things I loved about Kennington is the fact that they actually constructed
36:36that big separation down towards Nine Elms and Battersea,
36:40whilst still running trains through the original tunnel.
36:45I mean, did you ever go driving through that?
36:47Yes, I did drive when actually they'd cut the tunnel in half.
36:50Yes.
36:50And we now had this complete expanse that we were going into.
36:53You went into this very, very tight tunnel and this huge tunnel,
36:56and then you went back into the original loop.
36:58And obviously then it happened on the other side as well.
37:01Yeah.
37:01And then you were then starting to see people appearing in the new extension
37:05and they were doing all of their works whilst you were going round.
37:07What was that like? I mean, could you hear the works going on around it?
37:11You didn't always know what you were going to hear, but I've also spoken to engineers
37:15and our tunnel technicians who were obviously doing the day-to-day actual tunneling out.
37:20And they could also hear on the flip side,
37:22this train will be returning to Kennington shortly or this train terminates here
37:26or the next station is Kennington.
37:28So I think for both sides you could hear sounds you weren't necessarily used to
37:32and go, oh, okay then.
37:33When the Northern Line extension first opened, did you have any of your drivers
37:38fighting over who got to be the first drivers on the line?
37:41In the end, it literally was by chance.
37:43Really? Somebody was assigned the duty
37:45and it was somebody who'd recently passed as a train driver.
37:48No balloting? No pleading? No drives?
37:52No, no, none of it.
37:54Now the Northern Line extension has opened.
37:56It has.
37:57And it's beautiful. I mean, those two new stations are absolutely stunning.
38:01What were the biggest challenges of this new spurt down to Battersea?
38:05So it's a huge challenge that our timetables teams have really taken on board.
38:08We're continuing to increase the frequency towards Nine Elms and Battersea in the future,
38:14hopefully to at least a 12 trains per hour peak.
38:16That's what I love about the Tube. It's constantly evolving.
38:19It never stays still.
38:20It was something new to add and change and be reflected somewhere else.
38:24Kennington is now home to the only turning loop on the network,
38:28but I've heard there were once others.
38:32Including at one of those Charing Cross stations.
38:35To find out more, I'm heading to a real treasure trove,
38:38the museum's drawing store.
38:41To explain everything, Chris Nix, the museum's assistant director.
38:45We're going to have a look at what we have on loops here.
38:48They're a really great idea, but only if you've got the space to build them.
38:52You need a lot of space to do it.
38:54It's at least half a kilometre of track to kind of turn it around.
38:57So, let's have a look at what they actually did at Charing Cross.
39:02This is a drawing I've seen before. I love it. It's cut away.
39:05Look at the trams up here, on the embankment, down to these tunnels below.
39:10But there's a good reason I'm sure you've got this out to show me,
39:13because there's also a drawing here of another loop at embankment that isn't there now.
39:19Right. So, when this loop was built, it was known as Charing Cross,
39:24and the Charing Cross Euston Hampstead Railway had extended down from Strand to Charing Cross
39:30and built this reversing loop.
39:33And where we see it here is after it's closed.
39:37So, the loop was built in 1914 and closed in 1925 and bypassed when they extended south.
39:43So, that is this line coming around here, right?
39:47That's right.
39:47Oh, wow. Now, is that loop there now?
39:50Well, it is, but it's sealed off at both ends as it went underneath the River Thames,
39:55just in case it was ever breached.
39:56And it was for the best that that happened, because during the war,
39:59the only tube tunnel underneath the River Thames that was hit by a bomb was that one.
40:04And it did flood, but thankfully the flooding was contained because they'd sealed it off.
40:09So, is that still there now?
40:10Is it still there now?
40:11Yeah, yeah.
40:12But it's sealed off.
40:13You can see where the loop is still.
40:15Oh, on the northern line?
40:16It's the southbound platform, yeah, because it only had a northbound platform before,
40:21because you came round on the loop and you terminated on the northbound to go up.
40:25And if you've ever wondered why it's got such a deliciously sharp curve on that.
40:31I can hear the wheels squealing now.
40:34I know, you know, because it was built on the curve.
40:36The mind the gap announcements, it's all there, and that's why.
40:40It's because they built that platform on the curve.
40:43So next time I'm standing there, I'm standing on that bit of the platform,
40:47I'll know I'm actually standing on part of the old Charing Cross Loop.
40:52There was an even more extraordinary example of it at Wood Lane on the central line.
40:57So we have here some of the central London Railway plans.
41:02We have this diagram showing part of the Wood Lane Loop here.
41:08So what's happening here at Wood Lane? Help me orientate myself.
41:11Well, what you've got here is the end of the central London Railway, or the central line as we know
41:16it today.
41:17Loops take up a lot of space.
41:19Now, if you've got to buy all of that land, build that big loop, well, it makes sense to use
41:26that land for other things.
41:27So logically, why not put a lot of your infrastructure inside it?
41:31And you can see they've put an engine house, boiler house, and a lot of their work stuff inside of
41:37that loop.
41:38This end of the platform is a bit of a problem, because it's a very, very sharp curve.
41:44It's so sharp that at one end of the platform, the gap was just too big.
41:48They would have been losing passengers down in between the train and the track.
41:52You don't want that. That's frowned upon.
41:53What they did was build a wooden, articulated platform, which could be moved into position when the train came.
42:02So if the train was on this inner curve, they would retract the platform.
42:07And if the train was coming in on that one with the passengers, they would swing it out into position
42:12to fill the gap.
42:14This extraordinary platform lasted until 1947, when Wood Lane was replaced by White City Station just up the line.
42:25So loops can be a great thing for helping a train, a system to run to a high frequency service.
42:31But they do give engineers and passengers and staff some additional problems they didn't bargain for.
42:37But what a lot of fun.
42:42Next time, we discover the parts of the Waterloo and City line you never get to see.
42:49Be still my beating heart.
42:52And City explores a forgotten station that's been hidden away for nearly 60 years.
42:58Oh, my goodness.
43:12We'll see you next time.
43:13Bye.
Comments