The Tube: An Underground History

Five, four, three, two, one!

CHEERING

-Happy New Year!

-Happy New Year!

It is all fun on the underground as well.

It is the beginning of 2013.

London Underground is 150 years old this year.

What about happy new year? Come on!

LAUGHTER

The city would be unthinkable without it.

London is the greatest place on the Earth. It is the place to be.

The Bible talks about heaven, this is heaven.

Come through, my bredren.

The Tube will be spending its anniversary year

celebrating its own history.

It is our 150th birthday,

we were the first subterranean railway in the world.

They are sending a steam train back underground...

..and inviting royalty to inspect the latest upgrade work.

150 years I've worked at Farringdon and I have never met a Royal.

On the Tube, history is everywhere.

Down every tunnel.

Makes you realise how much we owe to these people, I think.

In every sign and design.

And in the lives of the unsung people who built it

-and run it today.

-Worst shift in my bloody life.

There are little-known stories of ambition, innovation and troubles.

The money in the ticket machines had actually melted into one block.

That is how hot it was.

With access to all areas of the network,

this is the Tube's hidden history...

First-time users would come through here and just think, "Wow, this is it. We are underground."

..revealing why the Tube was first built

and how it's shaped London ever since.

This man is more responsible than many people for modern London.

150 years ago,

the very first underground train arrived at this station.

Farringdon, the original terminus.

5am, and like his colleagues, every morning for 150 years,

station supervisor Iain McPherson is opening up.

Let's open the show!

You are kidding me!

Right. OK then. OK, mate. Right.

Looks like I am going to have to do points.

There is a track failure and it looks like I will have to go on the track.

The signals, our points, are failing.

It is probably because of the rain.

Oh, God, I can't believe it.

Today! Of all days.

Rain has been causing problems at Farringdon

since the Underground began.

Today, Iain suspects it has caused the electrical points to fail.

Just, aye, hold it there. All of the signals are at red now.

Nothing can move. The track is live. It is only 630 volts.

Iain needs to go on the track to secure the points.

But at 630 volts DC, putting a foot wrong could be fatal.

Jesus Christ! This is the worst shift I have ever had to experience

in my bloody life!

Farringdon is prone to flooding.

The track is built along the bed of a river.

We are on the bed of the River Fleet in effect.

It is now, in the 21st-century, it is down in sewers below but

when there is heavy rain it floods.

And hence, even today, constant signal failures

because of all the water egress.

The Victorians always, if there was a cheap answer,

they usually went for it. It has got to be said.

In the 1850s, London was facing a now familiar problem.

'The problem which no big town in the world has been able to

'beat is one of too much surface traffic.

'Snarl-ups and the delays

'they cause are unpleasant facts of modern city life.

'Traffic hold-ups make running to time all too much a matter of chance,

'causing bunching, slow running and a lot of passenger irritation.'

In 1800, London was 1 million people. By 1850 London was 2.5 million.

That's a 150 percent increase in population, it just exploded.

And there was no room to move.

The Industrial Revolution had created new factories,

and sucked in workers from the countryside.

The financial centre was flourishing,

and London had become the largest city in the world.

You had a total of around 300,000 people altogether coming into the city

every day on buses, carts, and walking.

During the boom years of the railways, a law was passed

stopping stations from being built in the centre of London.

Rail companies had been forced to build their main stations like

Paddington, Euston and King's Cross along the edge of the central area.

With no other way to reach the square mile from the stations,

the streets were full. London was choking on its own success.

Looking on at the influx of labourers into London was

the great, great, great-grandfather of this woman, Caroline Hutton.

Looking at London, it must have changed completely,

because there were more machines there was less

need for people in the country,

and because there was less need for people in the country they were

coming up to London, they were coming up to London to make more machines.

It is a vicious circle, isn't it? It goes on and on.

Charles Pearson was a wealthy lawyer who had risen up through

the city's ranks.

By 1839 he had become the solicitor for the City of London.

Pearson was concerned about the problem of transport

for London's new labourers.

With no way to commute in or out of the city

they were being crammed, 30 or 40 per house, into slum dwellings.

He spoke about how recent arrivals pined for the countryside.

"The passion for a country residence is increasing to an extent that

"it would be impossible to persons who do not mix much with the poor to know.

"You cannot find a place where they do not get a broken teapot

"in which to stuff, as soon as spring comes, some flower or something to give them

"an idea of green fields and the country."

Oh! Verbose!

It suggests that he has great sympathy with people,

with the poor who like the country.

And perhaps are even thinking about their fathers who came

up from the country, who knows? Who were labourers in fields

and actually had flowers and things around them.

In 1845, Pearson had a brainwave.

His idea was to run trains in drains under the streets of London,

connecting the stations ringed around the city and providing

a way for workers to travel from better houses further away.

Pearson spent eight years lobbying city authorities for permission

to build the railway on the grounds of social reform, with no success.

In 1853, he changed tack, making the case that business would

leave London if transport didn't improve.

Finally, the House of Commons approved a bill,

allowing Pearson's railway to go ahead.

Do you feel like people are generally aware of the existence of Charles Pearson?

No, not really.

He is not a name that sticks out, not like Brunel or someone like that.

So it is a shame. It is a shame.

Pearson persuaded a ragbag of investors to back the risky venture.

A private company called the Metropolitan Railway was formed.

Work would begin on the next phase, construction.

But building the railway brought its own problems.

In the 1850s, the area around Farringdon was one of the poorest in the country.

Not a salubrious place to be in at all.

So by the time of the 1840s and 1850s,

it was not a pleasant place to be.

They say Fagan's Den in Oliver Twist was actually based,

well, they reckon Turnmill Street or Cowcross Street.

If you wanted to be murdered in London

you came to the Clerkenwell area in the 18th and 19th century.

The first underground lines were built just under the surface,

using a technique called cut and cover.

They dug a trench, placed the railway inside, and put a roof on top.

It was impossible to do it without causing considerable disturbance on the surface.

A terminus at Farringdon, still half a mile from the city, was chosen.

Let's get it as far into the city at the lowest possible cost

and the furthest end it could get, Farringdon.

Any further would have started to cost big bucks.

With little by way of compensation, over 12,000 people were moved out

of their homes to construct the line between King's Cross and Farringdon.

The middle classes saw it as good

because it was cleaning out slums, it was getting rid of scum.

And cleaning up the city.

It was seen as socially improving because you are environmentally

improving the area by demolishing all of these dens of iniquity.

The gin dens, the brothels. And all the rest of it. So overall,

society, London in particular, definitely benefited.

But there were always casualties and, as usual,

it was usually the poor.

And it usually is the poor that suffer. That's life.

Progress marched on for the railway,

and a line was constructed from Paddington, east to Farringdon.

The company then turned its attention to the actual

trains that might run on it.

Various outlandish schemes had been suggested.

A smokeless way, running on atmospheric power.

Trains pulled by hydraulics and cables.

Instead, they chose a cheaper option.

Steam.

Special locomotives were designed, with condensing boilers meant

to trap the steam rather than release it into the tunnels.

Today, steam is returning to the Underground.

They will be running a steam train packed with

VIPs around the oldest stretch of the circle.

We have an older carriage which is a Jubilee carriage

for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, no less.

It was a chicken shed

about 20 or 30 years ago and now is a beautiful first-class carriage.

It is our 150th birthday,

we were the first subterranean railway in the world.

Chief operating officer Howard Collins wants to celebrate the Underground's past,

without making the Tube look like it is stuck there.

I have this reoccurring, almost nightmare, that an American tourist

would saunter onto the Tube and think, "Gee, haven't improved much in the UK!

"They still have steam down there."

Think about it, 1863, there was a civil war in America still going on.

Queen Victoria hadn't been around that long on the throne.

In a West London train depot, an original Metropolitan Railway locomotive

is being coaxed back to life.

Heritage operations manager Andy Barr is in charge of getting

her back to the track she left over 100 years ago.

So much of this technology has not changed.

The essentials are still the same.

Some source of combustion, heats up some sort of source,

usually water, always water, and that makes the thing go forward.

They are very, very, very simple machines.

Exactly 150 years ago,

the Metropolitan Railway was ready for its grand opening.

They invited 79-year-old Prime Minister Lord Palmerston

but he declined, saying he hoped to remain above ground a little longer.

Undeterred, the company held a gala banquet at Farringdon station

for the investors and all the politicians they could muster.

Morning, Leon. How are you? That is a lovely tie.

Hi, Nick.

In 150 years, not much has changed.

Stephen, morning, an historic day.

Good morning. If it all goes wrong, you just sack me, sack me!

Except today, the investors and politicians are one and the same.

There's more Lords in one compartment than in the House of Lords.

Thank you. That's great.

On 9th January 1863,

the first ever Underground train pulled away from Paddington station.

It was so popular on its first day

that Farringdon had to close due to overcrowding.

Howard is leading from the front today.

Money can't buy this. This is the best position to be in.

I suppose it's one of the perks of being the boss of the Underground.

I'm sure these chaps won't mind if I blow the whistle.

WHISTLE TOOTS

How was that?

That was great!

Oh, look.

Look at the smoke!

Imagine it used to be like that all the time.

Imagine that back and forward every few minutes, 100 odd years ago.

In its first year, the railway was so in demand that services were

increased to a train every ten minutes.

But with more trains, passengers began to

complain about the sulphurous atmosphere underground.

The company reacted by running a vigorous PR campaign,

promoting the health benefits of steam and smoke.

Passengers piled on

and the Metropolitan paid a healthy dividend to the shareholders.

# Take that night train to Memphis Take that night train to Memphis

# When you arrive at the station... #

In the next few years, driven by steam and profit,

other companies joined in.

The District Railway opened in 1868

and a reluctant joint-venture between rival companies

drew a circle around the centre of London by 1884.

So far, all the Underground lines were shallow,

running only metres below ground.

In 1890, all that would change

thanks to a revolutionary piece of equipment.

It's still here, abandoned in disused tunnels underneath Moorgate.

Paul Cowell is station supervisor.

The echoes of history.

HE LAUGHS

This big shield here, that's what they used to build it with.

I think it's called the Great Head Shield.

Look, it says it on there - Great Head Shield.

Great Head, Great Head Shield. They just left it all there.

The Great Head Shield was the tunnelling machine

pioneered by the Brunel family,

that made it possible to dig through the clay deep under London.

Labourers would crouch in the compartments

and dig out the clay with shovels.

I think what they did, they worked in front of it, digging it out,

then the holes that they dug,

this was pushed while they are digging it out,

and then all the spoil was taken out and then they just go through

the whole process again and start digging a little bit at a time.

The shield gradually pushed forward while the labourers dug

and protected the earth around it from collapse.

It's very, very similar to what they do today.

It's just that men aren't used to do it, it's a bloke sitting behind it, pushing a button and off it goes.

BANGING

Oh, that's the pumps. I should have warned you about the pumps!

In 1890, the City and South London Railway pioneered the machine,

digging the first railway tunnel under the River Thames,

from Stockwell to the City.

Your body must have ached like hell at the end of the day,

once you've done probably a 12-hour day of digging in wet soil.

Makes you realise how much we owe to these people, I think.

It does cross my mind, though.

Would they be proud of us, like we are proud of them? I wonder.

You would like to think they would, but who knows?

There are now dozens of disused stations and tunnels under London,

abandoned as demand has changed.

You've still got some old wartime posters.

There's not much left of them now, but there's still a few there.

The deep Tube line was a great success.

With little regulation, there was a frenzy of investment

with more companies opening new lines,

like the Waterloo & City Railway in 1898

and the Central London Railway in 1900.

But one other innovation drove this extraordinary expansion.

Every new deep level line had trains running not on steam,

but on electricity...

..like the one driven by modern-day Piccadilly line driver, Dylan Glenister.

That must have been quite an experience -

rather than seeing Maxim arc lamps outside,

to see electric lamps and electric bulbs,

to get into a railway carriage and have electric lighting in it.

For the kids, it must have been a real treat.

MUSIC: "Malambo No 1" by Yma Sumac

Probably better than their front room, do you know what I mean?

They probably thought, "This is great, why can't our house be like this?"

I love all that. It's like everything was in its infancy.

Dylan's particular passion is the array of unique tiling patterns

found in the early Underground stations.

At home he has a collection of over 800 discarded tiles.

In the early days - 1905, 1906 - a lot of Londoners...

Not all of them, but most of them couldn't read or write.

They had quite a poor education.

The only way, apparently, that they could identify which station they were at

was by recognising the colours or the patterns on the platform.

If they were travelling to Covent Garden, they'd think,

"I need to get off at the station with the orange bands over the top."

Or, "I'm getting off at Gloucester Road, that is the one with the green and white patterns."

But it's a great little legacy, to still see that.

It makes perfect sense. What more simpler method could you use?

"What station are you from?"

"The one with the orange bits going over the top." It's great.

-You can imagine it?

-Yeah. "Coming out for a beer, Alf?"

"Yeah, I'll meet you at that station with the green things over the roof."

"Yeah, all right."

Thrusting competition between the private companies

created a labyrinth of tunnels underneath London.

The problem for the passengers was that the companies didn't work together.

You had to buy a separate ticket for each line.

At some stations like Holborn,

you couldn't change lines without coming up to the surface.

'Of course, I remember what transport in London used to be like.

'No proper system, cut-throat competition between rivals,

'stealing each other's customers.

'That's how it was when I was a schoolboy.

'In 1933, somebody did something about it

'and formed London Transport as we know it now.'

In 1933, intense public demand to make the system simpler led Parliament to create a new body,

bringing all the different private companies together - London Transport.

It was a public corporation but commercially funded.

'The chairman, Lord Ashfield, with his deputy, Frank Pick,

'felt that now the whole system, all 2,000 square miles of it,

'was all of a piece, it ought to look all of a piece.

'All the parts should have the same sort of style.'

For the Underground, it was to be a new era of commercial ambition

led by visionary design.

TANNOY: The next station is St James's Park.

Under the new regime,

crucial jobs would be given to people like this man.

Mike Ashworth is the Tube's head of design and heritage.

He is responsible for the look and feel of the whole system.

For him, the past is part of the present.

I love this. My home station, I do love this.

This was originally one of the WHSmith newsagent stores.

This is where you bought your paper and your magazines and your cigarettes.

This is actually one of the last ones that survived.

Some of them, you can still see the lettering on the board.

Mike is on the job from the moment he sets off for work.

The silly things that annoy me -

this is one of the most useful things we've ever put on our stations,

and unfortunately, when we come to fit them, we managed to leave...

One of the things I hate most, is galvanised junction boxes.

I don't want to sound as if I'm the conscience of the Underground.

Put that on my gravestone, you know?

"This man cared so much for London Underground,

"he conked out in a fit one day over a piece of galvanised cable."

But we are a civic monument to London, we are an international brand

and I want our stations to be still looking good in 40, 50, 60 years' time.

The secrets of the Underground in the 1930s are revealed by Mike's office,

the Tube's Westminster headquarters at 55 Broadway.

'This is our address, the headquarters of London Transport.

'It is from here that a goodly proportion of our day is organised.

'Shunting us to and fro over the torturous expanse

'of brick and stone which is London - the largest city in the world.'

Built in 1929, at the time 55 Broadway was the tallest office block in London.

The corridor here on the seventh floor,

which is one of the plushest corridors,

this used to be the corridor of power.

Originally, these were senior officers' rooms.

In fact, tucked away behind the copier and mail room

there is still the executive officer's bathroom.

There is still actually a bath in this building.

It was one man's ambition that drove the construction of 55 Broadway -

managing director and later chief executive, Frank Pick.

Pick is, in many respects, an incredibly complex character.

There is still an awful lot we don't know and probably never will know about Frank Pick.

Pick was a shy man.

This rare footage is one of the only moments he was ever caught on camera.

He's on the right, leaning on his umbrella.

So, yes, always wrote in green ink.

Occasionally, I sometimes buy a green cartridge for my fountain pen

and sign documents thinking that I'm Frank Pick.

He was very, very tenacious.

He famously once was on a journey on the Metropolitan line

and saw some men leaning against shovels on the trackside.

When he got off the train, the story goes that he actually wrote

a memo to the line manager to ask why they were leaning on the shovels.

Pick had been rising through the ranks since he started as an assistant in 1906.

He had pioneered early design, including a font

specially commissioned from calligrapher, Edward Johnston.

With the characteristic diamond over the I

and a perfect circle as the O, it's been in use ever since.

Suddenly in charge of the largest transport group in the world,

Pick went all-out on design.

'More ephemeral than most art forms, the poster can afford to be

'up-to-the-minute, stylish, sometimes even flippant.

'In a series of posters illustrating the diverse opportunities

'that the capital and its countryside offer the people

'seeking rewarding use of their leisure, modern artists have made

'the Underground stations a constantly changing picture gallery.'

This is the man who really introduced the whole idea of typeface and brand.

This man really is more responsible than many people for modern London.

Innovative posters like this one drew new passengers into the Underground.

You think you're lost in London and you see the Underground symbol,

you know that you're safe, so to speak.

From there, you know you can get to where you really need to get to.

This wasn't just some pleasant pastime,

this wasn't just somebody with a bit of artistic know-how

indulging himself and going, "I think we should have some lovely posters."

This is, at the end of the day, absolutely considered.

This was about making money for the shareholders of the company,

it was about making the company more effective,

and it was about making the brand recognisable.

They certainly got it right,

for the simple reason that we haven't changed that symbol since 1920.

We've occasionally played with it,

but that symbol still means the Underground.

The circle and crossbar design has been the logo for the Underground since 1908.

'By its easily recognised visual characteristics,

'London Transport signposts the traveller

'and speeds him through this giant sprawl -

'the circle and crossbar on every bus stop and station.'

London transport is taking credit for it here.

In reality, nobody knows its origin,

although there are rumours it was stolen from the Paris Metro.

It was all part of a plan to aggressively increase the number of passengers.

Deep level tunnelling was expensive and had to be paid for.

In 1935, Pick had a big idea to boost income.

He would build cheap overground extensions to the deep level lines,

drawing people in from further and further away.

In the north London suburb of Highgate,

there's a disused 1930s station once intended to form part of Pick's plan.

Dylan is here, on the lookout for an historic item to add to his collection.

Found an old milk bottle.

"This bottle costs 4d, please rinse and return. Contents, one pint."

Isn't that amazing? 4d. It's got to be pre-1971.

What a lovely little thing to find.

I wonder if it was the last pint of milk they drunk in the old stationmaster's office.

"There you go, Bert, that's the last cup of tea, mate, and this station will be finished."

Yeah. Incredible.

Everything tells a story.

Built in 1939, this station was to be the beginning of a new branch

of the Northern line, extending into the countryside outside London.

The Second World War interrupted construction

and the platforms here never saw a Tube train.

It would have been interesting, just to see

if they did put posters up, what they would have had there.

What do you think?

Actually, I suppose, being a fairly new station,

it might have had stuff like, you know,

"Buy a new house in Highgate and escape to the country air.

"New houses from £600. £40 deposit and pay by instalments"

or something mad like that.

I know a lot of the garden suburbs came about

as the Underground extending out into the countryside.

With the construction of stations

like Morden, Edgware and Bounds Green, a major change was occurring.

And the Underground system, over which it presided,

had grown since 1914 to look like this.

Instead of meeting demand for transport,

the Tube was now creating it.

Actively selling the suburban dream to an aspiring middle class.

New stations to the east, new stations to the west.

I wouldn't be surprised if estate agents at the time thought,

"Oh, we've got a bit of advertising space there.

"Let's advertise the fact we can sell-off this lovely selection

"of houses, starting from £400, you know, or a detached house for £600."

You know, all these new families coming out and thinking,

"Oh, this is great. We're out of London now. We've got our own house.

"We can afford to buy a car," and all that sort of stuff.

It must have been amazing.

I know, I can just imagine,

I'd like to think there was a poster from, I don't know,

Willard & Co estate agents. You know, just little houses.

Escape to the countryside. You know, that dream.

Yeah, we'll have some of that, you know. No mobile phones then.

It would have been writing the number on the back of a ticket stub.

Highgate 65992, or something. Lovely! Off you go.

Nearly 10 million people, all wanting to go somewhere.

Travelling to work, travelling for pleasure.

Moving in and out and through London.

10 million Londoners alone

and visitors on top of that, all needing transport.

The Tube was creating new suburbs - extending the borders of London.

Transport lives by people.

By those who travel on it, by those who run it.

Innumerable passengers, thousands of vehicles...

But the new suburban stations created their own problems

for the Tube.

The system had grown up as a tangle of different lines.

This is how the Underground map looked in 1932.

That was the year one man would change the way

we understand the Tube.

Harry Beck, the designer of its now famous map.

Ken Garland is a graphic designer and was Beck's friend.

Beck left Ken his original drawings of the map.

This is the first edition.

It's the first poster version

of Beck's diagram.

It is, to me, amazingly elegant.

It's a strange thing to say about a diagram

and very few diagrams could be called elegant

but I think this can.

It has, in its colours and its lettering,

and its configuration, a sort of rightness about it.

And I love it so much.

Harry Beck was a lowly electrical draughtsman,

who'd occasionally worked as a freelancer for the Tube in the 1920s.

In 1932, he was unemployed.

Then he had a brainwave. A new way of viewing the Underground.

Based on his experience of drawing electric circuits.

He would emphasise connections and simplify everything else.

He stretched and shrank distances.

Kept to horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines

and rounded every angle to 45 or 90 degrees.

Unsolicited, he sent the sketch to the Underground headquarters.

Hard to believe that the Publicity Department of the Underground,

or whatever it was called then, just couldn't understand

how this could mean anything to the general public.

And they just rejected it.

He went back with it and they said, "Oh, all right, we'll give it a go."

And this is the go they gave it.

It says on the back, "a new design for an old map.

"We should welcome your comments.

"Please write to the publicity manager."

It looks to me from this as thought they weren't at all sure.

They printed a trial quantity.

They put it in three or four of the most prominent Tube stations -

Piccadilly Circus, Tottenham Court Road.

And, later, the following day,

they went to say, "How's it going?"

They said, "Going? They went within an hour! The public love it!"

Harry Beck's life project had begun.

Although still a freelancer, Beck would be custodian of the map -

drafting by hand a new version for every alteration.

But, in the 1950s, disagreements emerged between Beck

and his employers over geography.

Look at this!

Here's a diagonal going out this way and a horizontal going that way.

Both of them lead to Wimbledon.

This is a little bit whimsical, perhaps.

Just a little bit. In this was the seed of future disagreements.

In 1960, Beck went to his local Tube station and was met by a new map,

with someone else's signature at the bottom.

Beck could not believe it. He was deeply, deeply shocked.

He had thought the diagram was his, to be modified at his hand

at the suggestions of his clients.

For the last 14 years of his life, Beck carried on creating maps

at home and sending them in as the Underground evolved.

They were all politely - but firmly - rejected.

He and his wife had no children

and I formulated a notion that this was, in a way, his baby.

Could you bring across the next one?

It was that close to him?

It was very, very close.

-Why do you think they let Beck go?

-God knows!

I think, maybe they'd had enough of this guy.

This guy's been doing this bloody diagram ever since 1933.

It's time we had a go.

I think they probably, in view of what's happened on this diagram,

were upset about the separation of the Wimbledons.

Beck was posthumously recognised in 1997

and his name now appears on every map.

It's a bugger to get in. These are so badly designed.

I've told them about this, you know.

The map gets an update every time the system changes -

roughly every six months.

The biggest change in this one

is the new Outer Circle line.

You can now do an outer circle without coming into the city centre.

Beck's design has influenced the look of Metro maps

all over the world.

It takes you north, south, east, west.

On top or inside, above ground or below.

It carries you along with 11,999,999 other people every day.

After the war, the Tube was nationalised.

But it received no subsidy.

Bakerloo line, madam. Platform five, that way.

In the age of the car, passenger numbers started dropping.

In the booming economy,

the cash-strapped Tube struggled to find people to work for it.

'Ours is a crowded island but, for many years now,

'there's been full employment.

'You gradually become more prosperous.'

In 1956, they found a creative solution.

Not only did they advertise for staff across the UK,

they set up recruitment offices in Barbados and Jamaica.

They even offered to put up many of the new arrivals in hostels.

'Now, take getting a train away.

'New staff had to learn how to do that

'because there's only one right way.

'But that's not all there is to working on a platform.

'Rules, regulations, timetables.

'They had to combine common sense and knowledge with a bit of psychology.

'And we had to teach them.'

Let the passengers off the car first, please.

Mind the closing doors. Thank you. Mind the doors, please. Stand away.

Rasta man, take them beautiful people away.

Stand clear. Mind the doors.

# We've got to move it, move it. We've got to move it. #

I'm on my way to do that now, over.

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen.

Customer service assistant Steve Parkinson, known as Parky,

-has been working for the Tube for 35 years.

-Very, very soon.

He's dealing with a rush-hour crush

of over 21,000 passengers at Moorgate.

What happens - if your platform is overcrowded

and there's too many people going down there - it becomes dangerous.

-We pay you, my friend.

-Yes, sir.

Our wages and these people and the Government.

That's why I'm protecting you, sir. You're not going on there.

-Too many people on it. Somebody will get killed.

-Yeah, yeah.

Oh, thanks very much.

A couple of minutes, ladies and gentlemen. A couple of minutes.

Parky grew up in Jamaica.

I come from a village, somewhere you have never heard of.

And, if my wife sees this, she would laugh because she says,

"You come from a place where nobody knows about.

"They cannot pronounce it."

When Parky was 13, recruitment officers came to his village,

looking for staff to work for the Tube.

When somebody come around to make speeches

on top of a pick-up truck with a loud-hailer, it's excitement.

You know. Everybody gathering in the village.

"Your mother country needs you, come to England."

In those days, the average wage was 30 shillings a fortnight.

£1.50 - today's money.

And he tells us, you're going to get £8, £9, or £10 a week.

You're going to go to England. That's what people did.

Aged 17, Parky was sent to London by his parents.

This man was a friendly face among you. Mixing freely with the crowd.

But like many others, he found the reality of living in London

was worlds away from his expectations.

I've heard that you've got rooms going.

-I have got a room but I'm afraid I can't let you in.

-I beg your pardon.

I've can't let you in.

Well, when I first started working for London Underground,

you couldn't get a job as a supervisor or manager

or anything of that sort.

You were just given the low grade - the menial grade.

And that's how it is - that's how it was.

It wouldn't make me angry. Just make me more determined.

That's why I'm still here.

The United Kingdom has benefited from it.

In many ways. Have a look around.

There we go, ladies and gentlemen.

# A distant echo... #

Nowadays, around a third of Londoners

and around a third of TfL staff are non-white.

# To take them home to

# The ones that they love... #

The lip's hanging off, mate.

It's all hanging off. I'm pissed.

You go and enjoy yourself.

Look at that! Yeah, man. Thank you, darling. Have a nice New Year.

Keep it real.

# Cold and uninviting... #

Starved of funds in the '70s and '80s,

the Tube's passenger numbers were falling.

By 1982, they'd dropped by 30% from their post-war peak.

The Tube became a beacon of dishevelled chic

for bands like The Jam.

# I said I was down in the Tube station at midnight... #

And a source of inspiration for photographers like Wozzy Dias.

# Down in the Tube station at midnight. Oh, oh, oh

# Don't want to go down in the Tube station at midnight... #

But it was still pulling in people from far and wide to work for it.

This was a briefcase that I bought

when I was the health and safety rep at King's Cross

many...20 years ago.

Aha, it works! Aha!

Iain grew up in the Scottish Highlands in the 1970s.

I didn't want to join the Underground or anything

but unemployment in Scotland was...

This made my father so proud.

The Evening Standard. 11th December, 1990.

It was just about five months before he died.

"This is the face behind the mystery voice,

"which is currently doing the impossible on London's Underground -

"making commuters laugh.

"Even the most hard-faced travellers crack when they hear

"the dulcet Scottish tones of King Cross platform announcer

"Iain Macpherson, whose wit and wisdom

"is causing something of a stir."

If there was a signal failure or anything had happened,

it was like, what do you do?

I felt really uncomfortable.

I was standing there in full uniform,

everyone was staring at me and expecting an answer.

I have no answer.

I told them what I was told.

I said, "You'll never guess what's happened - again! I know.

"The points have failed at Baker Street. Can you believe it?"

That bulb has blown at Great Portland Street again -

the one that blew last Wednesday.

People can see through bullshit.

And they can. And if you make it all up, it just doesn't work.

If I didn't know, I would say,

"Passenger, I don't know what's going on."

They told me they liked the honesty

because they felt I was being honest.

On 18th November, 1987,

the years of neglect brought King's Cross station to a tragic low.

At 7:25pm, an unknown smoker stubbed a cigarette out

on the wooden Piccadilly line escalator, starting a fire.

In the minutes after the fire began, staff members failed to operate

the water sprinkler systems that would have doused it.

There's smoke billowing out of the exits.

Firemen running all over the place -

trying to get in to help trapped people.

Customers were still coming into the station,

ten minutes after the fire began.

When I was halfway up that escalator,

almost immediately the fire broke through into the roof

and debris started falling and rolling down the escalator.

At 7:45pm, fanned by gusts of air from trains below,

the fire flashed over - gushing upstairs

and filling the ticket hall with heat and smoke.

Here, the oven-like temperatures had incinerated the ticket kiosks

and melted paint and plastic from the ticket machines.

I mean, the money in the ticket machines

had actually melted into one block of solid metal.

That's how hot it was.

When the fireball went up the Piccadilly line

and through the ticket hall.

Threw two firemen about 100-odd yards down the corridor

and slammed them against the far wall.

31 people died in the fire.

The fact of the matter is that it looks as though

the interests of safety are being sacrificed

from the point of view of trying to save money.

The escalator mechanism, where the fire began,

was discovered to be greasy.

The grooves filled with flammable particles

from years without a deep clean.

For all the Underground's faults,

it had been neglected for so many years by all political shades.

And it woke up, I think, governments - left and right.

It certainly woke up London Underground.

After the fire, public money began being spent on upgrading the system.

It now receives nearly half its income in the form of subsidy

from the Government.

You'd better work, lift.

-Stand clear of the doors.

-Don't you say that to me.

Thank you.

The Tube is now undergoing a £10 billion upgrade.

The oldest station on the network, Farringdon,

is on the way to becoming the newest.

Just make sure these are OK.

All clear.

Today, the renovation work

is receiving a special anniversary inspection.

We're just waiting for Prince Charles and Camilla to arrive.

Hopefully they'll see our sign.

A bit nerve-wracking.

150 years I've worked at Farrington and I've never met a Royal.

By 2018, Farringdon will see up to 150 trains an hour,

making it one of the busiest stations in the country.

Morning! How are we doing? All right?

Howard Collins is praying for sunshine.

I hope the rain holds off.

Oh, God, the rain's coming on!

After seeing the construction work, Charles and Camilla

will take trip on the Tube from Farringdon

to a revamped King's Cross.

It's quite a big deal.

We've never had so many VIPs at Farringdon before.

It deserves it though, this station. All these years.

All the flashes and the rain comes on. Welcome to Farringdon!

Just to spoil it.

Spoil our one moment of fame.

Ladies and gentlemen...

He's really pleasant. He's very quick but pleasant.

He said, "How do you put up with all of this madness?"

I struggle through. I struggle through.

Struggle through. What else can you do?

Since the Tube began, London's population has grown

from 2.5 million to 8 million.

It's set to grow again - another million by 2030.

If we're going to continue expanding at the rate we've been doing,

the Underground has got to expand and got to continue expanding.

I suppose, one of the ways you could do it is just have a continuous train

from one end of the line to the other - similar to an escalator -

that just goes round in a loop and the end of the train goes under

a big tunnel underneath and comes back on itself

and pops up at the other end.

Or maybe just take the trains away and have a conveyor belt

and you just step on it.

The Underground can keep up if the people are behind the Underground.

If London's behind the Underground.

Or, an even better idea, just take all the tracks up

and have like a laminated flooring all along where the track used to be.

When people come into the station, instead of buying a ticket,

just pay £1 and get a pair of roller skates.

Londoners will essentially still be Londoners in 150 years' time.

And I'd like to think they'd still be using the Tube.

So, yeah, especially like this, when they celebrate Underground 300,

it will still be the world's oldest Metro system -

it will just be 150 years older than it is now. So, yeah.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd