A post that does what its says on the label!
But first a lovely photo collage from the London Transport Museum….
Opening scenes, posters and futuristic station architecture. Source: Twitter
The Jubilee Line is, as some say, a silver fox. Its really so very old! Here’s a picture of the site where Queensbury station would be built. This was in the 1930s!
Queensbury station site 1930s. Source: Twitter
What follows is a series of pictures I never took….
Where else would you find a tube line that had been under the guise of these two earlier tube trains’ lines?
How about a modern 21st century tube line that also has 1930’s decor?
A tube line that is surprisingly rural?
One where its trains go up and down hills?
An automated tube line built for the 21st Century with stations built in the very early 20th Century?
A tube line whose retired trains adoringly overlook a major London street?
A tube line whose retired trains can be found on a secret base somewhere in England?
Stations that are colourful clones of the Victoria Line’s austere look?
Has deep level tube stations where the sun can be found shining at platform level?
Stations featuring different coloured tube roundels?
Features stations that echo the work of Charles Holden?
Where a special type of signal box can be found?
Even some staff letter boxes?
There’s just one tube line that could have all these and more – and yes its the Jubilee Line!
The Jubilee Line – its conception and development:
Its architecture takes in a period of maybe eighty or ninety years and depicts the early and later Metropolitan Railway, The London Passenger Transport Board (including Holden’s actual designs), architecture derived from the Victoria Line era, and finally modernist, almost brutalist, construction on a huge scale for the extension to Stratford, being the only tube line to date to have platform edge screens.
The Jubilee Line has very old roots. Parts of it were built by the Metropolitan Railway in the 1930s. Then the Bakerloo took over later that decade. During the fifties someone came up with the idea of splitting the lines and relieving pressure on the Bakerloo. Yes that line could cope but sadly that meant pushing it to its limits…. so the idea of a new tube line was born.
By about 1965 the shape of the new tube line as we know it from Baker Street southwards had been positively identified. It would go to Charing Cross via Bond Street, Green Park, and as the plans at that time proposed, go as far as Fenchurch Street. The map below shows these early proposals.
London Transport architects map with several tube extensions proposed including the Jubilee Line’s earlier namesake, the Fleet Line to Fenchurch Street and the Bakerloo Line to Peckham. Source: Twitter
Two route options in the mid 1970s for the Fleet Line beyond Fenchurch Street. The only stops on the ‘River Line’ section to be included in the Jubilee Line were Surrey Docks North (Canada Water) and North Greenwich. Source: Twitter
The Fleet Line was eventually built to go as far as Charing Cross, with the rest of it (wherever it would ultimately go) to be decided upon later. During the course of construction it became known as the Jubilee Line.
Parts of the line towards Fenchurch Street were actually built and include station buildings, air shafts and parts of tunnels. The biggest built structure for the Jubilee Line was the surface station buildings at Cannon Street. I have written about that here.
How Charing Cross looked during construction of the Fleet (later the Jubilee) Line. Source: Twitter
The Victoria Line is famous for its one and only ‘umbrella’ at Oxford Circus, however the Jubilee Line went further by having THREE! The picture above shows that at Charing Cross, another was at Bond Street and a third at London Bridge for the later extension to Stratford.
Construction of the umbrella at Bond Street. Source: Twitter
1978 Tube map with the route of the then Fleet Line. Source: Twitter
The construction of Bond Street on the then Fleet Line. Source: Twitter
Baker Street under construction. The Jubilee Line’s colours were a response to the rather austere style used on the Victoria Line. Source: Twitter
