Quick Quiz
Posted: Mon 27 June, 2005 Filed under: Travel 4 Comments »OK, now here’s a thing. At Waterloo Station (I’m talking about the Underground Station, as opposed to mainline trains, I should point out) I discovered there was an Underground line I’d never used before.
It’s nothing special – in fact, it just runs between Waterloo and Bank stations, and is called the “Waterloo and City line”. It looks like this (courtesy of a badly hacked map from Transport for London)
Now, what I want to know is this : why is it there? And what is its history?
I suspect I know who will know, but any answers will be appreciated.
It exist solely to get all the commuters who arrive at Waterloo mainline into the City quickly. Hence no service in the evenings or on Sundays.
I’ve used it once or twice. A friend of mine wasn’t sitting down when it started accelerating and was fired halfway across the carriage.
It’s called “The Drain”, as there were all sorts of technical issues with building it and getting it integrated with the other lines, and in the planning stages a memo from a high-up used a sentence along the lines of “will the commuters of london consent to being funneled through a drain?”
it does an incredibly useful service. go there anywhere near peak time to observe every tunnel leading to it absolutely ram-jammed with commuters rushing in a continuous solid wave of humanity, and all the gates are open rather than slow people down checking tickets. i shudder to think what it must be like if it breaks down.
Damn, they beat me to it 😉
More here.