LOST RAILWAY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 530, 13 May 1933, Page 3

LOST RAILWAY

startled/ city terrific explosion reminds london of its presence. ABANDONED IN 1863, In the New Year of seventy years ago Londoners bad their first ride beneath the City Streets on the first underground railway for passenger transport in the world, when, on Jan- I uary 10, 1863, the Metropolitan Rail- l •way was opened to the public. _ Over 30,000 passengers were car- • ried on that day, and from nine o'clock in the morning until noon it was impossible to obtain a place in the uptrains at any of the intermediary stations. As each train drew into the station the City band played, the men cheered, the women screamed, and the uproar was such that cab horses 'took fright and bolted. _ Thus it was that, at about the same time, the opening of another and even more remarkable railway than the Metropolitan passed almost unnoticed. It seems that this wonderful railway was destined to be forgotten by the general public from the beginning, which is perhaps an excuse for the al-arming event that, sixty-five years later, reminded Londoners in partieular of its existence. In 1859 a company called the Pneumatie Despatch Company was registered and granted statutory powers to lay tubes, pipes, and other apparatus in iand under any streets in the Metropolis. The company was formed for the purpose of conveying parcels from the General Post Office to Euston goods station by means of a sma.ll tube railway through which cars would travel by pneumatic pressure at a speed of thirty to forty miles per hour. . The first station of the tube was completed in January, 1863, and later the whole length — which ran from the Evershole Street P.O., down Seymour Street, under Euston Station, and along Tottenham Court Road, t coming under New Oxford Street. It continned under Holborn, running sharply down under the Viaduct and Farringdon Street, and rising by Newgate Street to its terminus in the old G.P.O. buildings in Cheapside. There was a considerable number of stations, the chief centre being at Holborn, where all the motive power was located. The tube measured four. feet in height by four and a half feet in width, and carried cars which fitted the tunnel to within an inch all round, the space being sealed with a rubber flange. These cars were driven by two methods. At one end air was pumped at great pressure into the tube, and at the other end air was sucked by centrifugal force from the front of the cars. The tunnel was ! made up of nine feet tubes of casi I iron nearly an inch thick, and was | roughly semicircular, wjith groovtes ! at the bottom for rails along which i the cars ran. ' The cars were some six feet in i length, and on one occasion a passn- ] ger was carried with the letters and paxcels. In the London Journal the lollowing paragraph appeared: — "Not only have letters and parcels been transmitted through the tube, but we hear also that a lady whose courage or rashness — we do not know which to call it — astonished all specta.tors, was actually shot through the tube, crinoline and all, wlthout injury to person or pettieoat." To the great disapp'ointment of its promoters, the pneumatic tube railway proved a signal failure and the whole scheme had to be abandoned. For years the railway remained inuenath! a maze of pipes and subways — and then it decided to make its presence felt. At about eight a.m. on December 20, 1928, when crowds of people were hurrying to work, a terrific explosion occurred and threw hundreds to the ground. Many people were seriously injured, and fire-engines and ambulances rushed from all districts to the amazing scene in Holborn. The first explosion was followed by others in various thoroughfares, and in a few moments a mile of streets between Holborn and Charing Cross was torn up. When official investigation was made to find the cause of the trouble, London's lost railway was found. Gas escaping from the mains, and bad air, had gradually filled the lost tnbe — and had exploded with disastrous results.