Underground Overground: A Passenger's History of the Tube by Martin Andrew

Author:Martin, Andrew [Martin, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781846684784
Goodreads: 16150424
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2013-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

BY THE WAY: THE ALDWYCH SHUTTLE

The shuttle services of the Underground have their cult followings, their runtish condition attracting the sympathy vote. We have ridden the Chesham Shuttle at the far end of the Met, and we will be riding the Epping–Ongar at the eastern end of the Central. But the machinations of Yerkes also created the only shuttle to operate in central London. I refer to the Aldwych Shuttle, which briefly gave rise to the glamorous ‘Theatre Express’.

The Great Northern & Strand Tube, it will be recalled, was the decongestant for Finsbury Park favoured by the Great Northern main-line railway company. It was originally going to terminate to the south at Holborn, but the LCC was engaged in a programme of slum clearance in order to create the above-mentioned rather blank and pompous thoroughfare called Kingsway and its companion-piece to the south, the Aldwych, which links the Strand to Fleet Street. So the plans for the Tube line changed. It would now encompass Kingsway by terminating south of the new street, somewhere in the vicinity of the Aldwych. When the plan for the line was taken over by Yerkes, he decided to combine it with the proposed Brompton & Piccadilly Circus Railway, by extending the latter from Piccadilly Circus to Holborn. The proposed Aldwych extension was thus left dangling, but the tunnel between Holborn and the Aldwych was dug nonetheless because it was felt that the theatres and new offices around Aldwych would be worth serving, even if the line towards it would be merely a spur to begin with.

Holborn station, incidentally, did not get the Leslie Green treatment because it was to be situated on Kingsway, and the LCC required it to fit in with the look of the new street. Therefore the station is clad in grey Portland stone. The station at Aldwych, which would initially be called Strand, was given a full coating of oxblood tiles. It was situated on the south side of the Strand, on the site of the Strand Theatre, and that was a bad omen. Here was a line meant to serve the theatres of the Strand, yet one of those would have to close to make way for it. The theatre closed on 13 May 1905 for building to begin, interrupting the run of a play called Miss Wingrove, written by a man with the titillatory name of W. H. Risque. Imagine the irritation of Mr Risque on learning that his play was coming off because the theatre was to be turned into a Tube station. His irritation would surely have been doubled had he known that the only reason the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton had pounced on that particular site was that it had offered the correct alignment for an extension of the spur line to Waterloo – permission for which would soon be rejected by Parliament.

The Holborn–Strand link was opened in November 1907, about a year after the rest of the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton had opened. Two-car trains shuttled back and forth in the two tunnels.

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