London Passenger Transport Board Research Articles

Unruly Tramscapes

This article reappraises tramway closures in 1930s London by reading enthusiast memoirs of the events surrounding them. Literary representations in forms such as the novel and poetry of urban public transport experience often overlook experiences in peripheral urban zones and on modes such as the tramway which had a chiefly working-class ridership. Building a perspective around London’s tramscapes, and by practicing Deep Locational Criticism as part of a characteristically “humanities” mode, temporally focused, in mobility studies, the article reveals contestations including acts of disorder surrounding the closure events, deploying those in a rereading of mid-twentieth-century British history more broadly. The 1930s North London suburbs emerge through a reading of George Atkins’s account of 1938 closure events as sites of carnivalesque disorder and other bottom-up transport-focused activity, including the formation of enthusiast groups. This group of practices opposed the extremely top-down transport planning of the post-1933 London Passenger Transport Board’s management.

Compensating the passengers. A comparison of the management of three London underground crashes 1909–1975

This study considers organisational responses to three accidents on the London Underground 1909–1975. The private sector response to an accident at Moorgate in 1909 made generous awards. Responses to the Charing Cross crash in 1938 during the period of quasi-public governance by the London Passenger Transport Board show ongoing high levels of awards. Finally, a severe accident at Moorgate in 1975 reveals public sector management making low offers of compensation. This is congruent with other examples from the industry in each period. The study finds that the fall in compensation was linked to the roles of competition and media interest.

Beck Exportation: London and Sydney

Abstract. Henry (Harry) Beck’s schematic map of the London Underground is the foundation for most ‘modern’ representations of metropolitan rail systems. From its introduction in the 1930s, it has been the image of the London underground rail transportation system, and, indeed, the image of London itself. Following the launch of the schematic map in 1933 Londoners adopted his representation of the underground as the favoured transportation navigation tool, but also as a physical affirmation that they were citizens of a modern city, a city of electricity and the avant-garde. The London Underground map, as well as being the physical image of the underground rail system, became the signature of the modern city itself. It projected order, systematic transportation and commuter convenience. The map reinforced the general belief that a modern transportation system was at the very heart of what made a city a city. Building upon the success of the map, Beck, and the London Passenger Transport Board, explored how this ‘take’ on the representation of an urban transportation system might be exported to other European, and Antipodean rail networks. This paper provides a dialogue on how Beck’s concept for the ‘metromap’ was offered as an alternative navigational diagram to the, then new, Sydney underground system. It then outlines the results of an investigation about how this ‘Exportation’ of Beck’s design resulted in the 1939 Sydney metromap that was a clone of the London Underground map.

Rethinking the definition of the word ‘map’: an evaluation of Beck's representation of the London Underground through a qualitative expert survey

This paper reports on the results from a qualitative expert survey of members of the international geospatial community to elicit their view of Henry (Harry) Beck's iconic 1931 representation of the London Underground. It begins by providing a background to the publishing era when Beck's representation was developed under the ‘umbrella’ of the design style adopted by the London Passenger Transport Board to promote the image of ‘the new’ and contemporary Britain. It then outlines Beck's representation and his quest to develop a clearer and more understandable graphic information resource. This is followed by an overview of representative views from the design community about Beck's representation. Finally, it provides the results of research undertaken with an informed international cartographic community to determine whether they viewed the product as a map or a diagram. It is important to understand how Beck's representation is viewed from the perspective of the geospatial community. If it works as a map, albeit one where geography is generally abandoned, relative positions are favoured over the absolute and azimuth is distorted, then the view that successful (geo)communication artefacts must be linked to map designs that focus on precise and true representations of geographic information can be questioned.

For the People's Good: Hans Schleger (1898–1976), Poster Design and British National Identity, 1935–60

This essay explores the impact on British visual culture during the period c. 1935–47 of modernist graphic designer Hans Schleger (1898–1976), born Hans Schlesinger, who adopted the pseudonym ‘Zero’ in the mid-1920s. Comment is offered on the complex nature of Schleger's German-Jewish-Polish background and his Anglophilia, which can be dated to a period he spent working in advertising in New York (1924–9). Attention is focused on the accomplished design work he produced after he emigrated to Britain in 1932 for British companies and institutions such as Shell-Mex BP Ltd, the London Passenger Transport Board (London Underground), the General Post Office, the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Food, ICI, British Coal, the British Sugar Corporation and British Railways. Particular comment is made on the importance to the artist of the British and especially the English countryside of the Home Counties and the significance of his experiences in London during the Second World War in moulding his understanding of what he found attractive, admirable and praiseworthy about the British ‘character’ under duress. The essay concludes that it was Schleger's very ‘foreign-ness’, however skilfully camouflaged, which allowed him to study the British with an unusually forensic and revealing gaze. Since the publication in 2001 of a memoir on him by his widow, Schleger's work has featured prominently in a series of high-profile exhibitions held at: the Imperial War Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the London Transport Museum; the Ben Uri Gallery, the London Jewish Museum of Art.

Network Rail – forward or backward? Not-for-profit in British transport

This article examines the brief and unsuccessful career of the privately-owned infrastructure company, Railtrack, and its part in the privatised railway system in the UK between 1996 and 2001. It discusses the decision of the British government to discontinue public support for Railtrack and to set up a new not-for-profit company, Network Rail, to replace it. The ongoing public debate over these events and the prospects for the new company are analysed. Two earlier, and broadly successful, examples of not-for-profit companies in British transport history, are briefly considered for comparative purposes – the Port of London Authority and the London Passenger Transport Board.

Enid Marx: Designing Fabrics for the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s

Enid Marx: Designing Fabrics for the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s

Enid Marx: Designing Fabrics for the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s

Enid Marx: Designing Fabrics for the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s

Lorenzo of the Underground

BENEATH the smog and the traffic jams, cheerful, colourfully-dressed people glide down escalators, through clean white tunnels and in sleek silent bright , carriages are carried to every corner of the city. Their motion is effortless; there are no delays. This was the vision of travel as it might be, not a daily inconvenience, but a means to a richer life and itself a spiritual and uplifting experience. And such it was hoped London's Underground railways might become, a transport system fit for the celestial city. In spite of the present realities of staff shortages, dirt and mechanical failures, one can still glimpse the optimism as one stands in the faded glory of a suburban Piccadilly line station; and it is still true that of all the transport systems in the world, London's came closest to realising that dream of celestial perfection. Much of the character of London Transport was due to the dedication of one man in particular, Frank Pick, who between 1906 and 1940 managed successive parts and ultimately the whole of London's transport system. The centenary of his birth was 'celebrated at the Victoria & Albert Museum by a small exhibition organised jointly by the Museum and London Transport. Called Teaspoons to Trains, it covered his'interest in design both in his official capacity as manager of London Transport, and in his personal support of the Design and Industries Association.* 'London Transport as we know it today was formed out of the many different underground railway, bus and tram companies that were merged with the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (UERL) between 1912 and 1933 under the chairmanship of A. H. Stanley (created Lord Ashfield in 1920). In 1933, the combine became a public corporation, the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB). The very remarkable story of the mergers and the ultimate formation of the LPTBis told by T. C. Barker and Michael Robbins in volume two of their History of London Transport, published in 1974. Pick joined the UERL in 1906 and from 1912, as commercial manager and subsequently managing director, had the job of making this miscellany of companies work. Pick's own view was that the whole of London's transport should be run as one united operation, under a single management, a goal which was partly though not fully achieved with the LPTB. While it was Ashfield who engineered the mergers and made the ideal of a single management possible, it

Nationalization and the Professional Ideal

There is no evidence that the choice of the public corporation as the preferred form of public enterprise in Britain was the result of a rational decision-making process (AST 1951c: 23-24; Shinwell 1955: 172-173; Hanson 1961: 28). It would be rather surprising to find that, after a review of all the possible forms of public enterprise, the public corporation just happened to be the most suitable form for all the industries and services that have been nationalized in Britain, and that it should remain the most appropriate form, despite all the social and economic changes since the establishment of the first corporation in 1926. Nor does the selection of the public corporation appear to have been a political choice. Pre-war Conservative and Conservative-dominated governments pioneered the public corporation in this country when they nationalized the BBC, the London Passenger Transport Board, the Central Electricity Board and BOAC (Imperial Airways). Whilst there was a long, and at times bitter, debate within the Labour Party before and after the first World War over the desirable form of future public enterprises (Dahl 1947, Hanson 1954, Tivey 1966: 37), virtually all Labour nationalization measures have adopted the same structure. The British appear, in fact, to have established some of the largest organizations the world has ever known, in a intuitive manner, and to have taken the form more or less for granted. One may infer, therefore, that the form they have chosen expresses, in part at least, a cultural preference, especially as, by contrast, with the French, Italians, Swedes and others, they seem to have been very consistent in this respect. In this paper, I will attempt to identify this cultural preference. The limitations of available data give little opportunity of doing this with a fine degree of precision, but one may reasonably attempt a piece of sociological detection: to try and make sense of the evidence we have, to state some tentative conclusions and to provide some concepts and questions for future investigation.

Some Uses of Industrial Sickness-Absence Data.

During the 1930s there were allegations that London bus drivers and conductors had an undue amount of sickness, especially gastric disorders. Dr Bradford Hill (1937) was asked to investigate this allegation, but found that the data were limited. The London Passenger Transport Board determined that in the future adequate data for such investigations should be available. This was not possible until after the war. In 1948 the Central Record of Staff Statistics was set up to compile sickness-absence statistics and for other purposes. This lecture is mainly an account of the uses made of the statistics produced: how they can be used to study the effect of sick pay provisions, the secular trend of sickness absence in occupational groups, and the differences in sickness-absence experience between groups of various kinds. If the experience of these groups is related to the employees' work and the conditions under which it is done, the results are valuable in answering questions on health from management and unions. The data collected can also be used in medical administration and for research into the causation of disease.

A Comparison between Public Passenger Services in Paris and London

Résuméby Pierre Ruais.This article aims at comparing the public passenger services of London and Paris, with particular reference to their dissimilarities.Public transportation in the Paris area is the joint concern of the State and of a regional agency: the « Office Régional des Transports Parisiens ». This is apparently the first and only attempt at regional management in this field, in France.The entire surface and underground networks have been entrusted, by gradual process of law, to one single body: the « Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens» (R.A.T.P.). Similarly all suburban road passenger services have been grouped in the « Association Professionnelle des Transports Routiers de la Région Parisienne », acting as the « opposite number » to the Office Régional.The area involved covers approximately 1,200 sq. km., within a 20 km. radius. « De jure », the State continues as the concession-granting authority, but the powers devolved upon the Office Régional are wide, and include determining the participation of the four «départements» (counties) and the municipalities in the budget of the R.A.T.P.The London Transport Executive's competency covers some 5,000 sq. km. within a 30 to 50 km. radius, and includes every type of transportation, with the exception of taxis, long-distance buses, and railways. It is a geographical unit of the British Transport Commission and is the successor of the London Passenger Transport Board, which itself replaced 170 individual operators.In London, public transportation is fully nationalised. In Paris there remains a sector of private enterprise, viz. suburban motor-bus services.In London, a monopoly granted to a single operator in in force. In Paris there are several, and there is no monopoly in the eyes of the law. Co-ordination between the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer, the R.A.T.P. and the privately-owned bus lines is ensured by the Office Régional.In the Parisian system, financing is borne jointly by the local authorities and the State. In London, the several networks: Underground and bus lines on the one hand, railways on the other hand, mutually compensate their relative budgets in ratio of mileage, after balance of the income and outlay of each.In London, a special tribunal protects the passengers’ interest against that of the operator. In Paris, this task is the concern of the Office Régional.The British system lays managerial responsibility mainly on a small number of specialists. Paris has, even to a fault, respected the principle of representation of all the interests involved.This may lead, within the management, to differences of opinion between the operative side and the passengers and personnel. The British have given preference to laying the onus of protecting these to outside bodies: the Tribunal and a Wages Board respectively. Greater efficiency thus accrues to the management.The London « Pooling Scheme » was of value only as long as there were, as under the London Passenger Act of 1933, several joint operators, viz. the London Passenger Transport Board (buses and Underground) and the four railway companies serving the suburbs. It has become pointless since 1947, when, with full nationalisation, the British Transport Commission took over the total unified operation.In Paris, the networks being completely distinct, any such scheme would be supererogatory, in so far as season or other tickets valid for transfer between the several types of transportation, do not give rise, financially at least, to joint operation.The author does not feel that any transposition of the London regime to Paris would be beneficial. He admits however that remedy should be sought for the present financial situation, though the predominance of the concept of « public service » must ever remain in the forefront, in the case of passenger transportation.

The “Closed Shop” Controversy in Postwar Britain

Discusses the closed shop controversy in postware Great Britain. Refusal of trade union members to tolerate the presence of nonunionists; Repeal of the trade disputes and the Trade Unions Act of 1927; Agreement between the union and the London Passenger Transport Board. (Abstract copyright EBSCO.)

Financial Aspects of Britain's National Coal Board

Both in Britain and America financial success, in terms of commercial standards, has been the yardstick commonly employed in evaluations of the public corporation. Private enterprisers have always insisted that self-support is the only valid criterion, while the nationalizers themselves have often agreed. Certainly this was true of successive Conservative Governments which created the first British corporations in the period between the two great wars. In the view of contemporary Socialist philosophy, however, the traditional criterion has lost is pre-eminence, becoming secondary if not irrelevant. Today the public corporation per se tends to be viewed as nothing more than a convenient means of achieving most effectively the proper end of public enterprise a wider and cheaper distribution of goods and services than was possible under the British system of private ownership. Indeed, Socialists add, there may exist a fundamental disparity between the end of 'public and that of financial self-sufficiency. The danger of a rigid application of the financial criterion is most clearly illustrated by those British public corporations which have operated under a heavy indebtedness, incurred by excessive compensation payments. To meet oppressive financial obligations, they have sometimes been forced to compromise their proper role. In the London Passenger Transport Board particularly, the objective of public service was subordinated to the fetish of financial success.' As a result, the public received an unfortunate impression of Socialism in action, while disenchanted employees were obliged to strike in order to obtain justifiable wage increases. Finally, it is maintained, the criterion of financial self-sufficiency overlooks the existence of subsidy programs in the field of private enterprise; or if recognized, the practice is often summarily dismissed as a deviation from the norm.2 However, it would be

London‘s Transport System

THE fourteenth annual report, recently issued by the London Passenger Transport Board, makes interesting reading. Since the undertaking is now vested in the British Transport Commission, this is the Board‘s final report, and it has therefore devoted one section to a review of the way in which it has discharged its functions since July 1933.

Railway Signalling on London Transport

ACCORDING to a paper read recently in London by R. Dell before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the power-signalling installation on the railways of the London Passenger Transport Board now covers 160 miles of double track. There are 3,281 stop signals, 2,726 of which are fitted with train-stops. Track circuits number 4,347 and there are 1,326 pairs of points. Although automatic signals are used wherever possible, 112 signal cabins are in use at junctions or connexions in the track layout. The passenger-train car-miles run each year total approximately 159,150,000. Power signalling has been in use practically throughout the system since it was electrified. The electrification of the District Line and the installation of power signalling commenced in 1904 and was completed by the end of 1905. The London Electric Tube Lines were equipped with power signalling from the start—the Bakerloo and the Piccadilly Lines in 1906 and the Hampstead Line in 1907. The Central London Railway was converted to power signalling in 1913 and the City and South London Railway in 1919. Except for these last two installations, the whole of the signalling system was originally operated on D.C. and track circuits were of the D.C. type with polarized relays in order to avoid improper operation by stray current from the traction system.

Diesel–Electric Tube Locomotive

THE London Passenger Transport Board is utilizing parts of old railway coaches from the “Central Line” of the underground system for building at its Acton works Diesel locomotives for hauling ballast and maintenance trains, or for emergency use in the ‘tubes’. These duties are at present performed by tank–type steam locomotives. It is arranged to collect current from the live 600–volt track rail, or be propelled by its self–contained generating set as circumstances may require, and it is capable of hauling a 600–ton train on the level or one of 300 tons up a 1 in 34 gradient. The length of the vehicle is 57 ft., its width 8 ft. 2 in., its height 9 ft. 5 in., and the tare weight in running order is 62 tons 12 cwt. According to the Electrical Review of May 16, only the oil engine and generator with some switch–gear had to be purchased in fabricating the train. The passenger compartments of two old driving cars were cut off, leaving the equipment compartments with motors and driver's cabs; these were joined together. The locomotive can be controlled from either end. Its engine is of the Petter ‘superscavenge’ airless injection, two–stroke cycle, cold starting type. The six cylinders develop 506 b.h.p. at 675 r.p.m. The engine is started by means of compressed air at 350 lb. per sq. in. The generator, which was made by the Brush Electrical Engineering Co. Ltd., is a level–compounded shunt machine with a continuous rating of 750 amp. at 450 v. The traction equipment consists of two series–parallel sets with automatic relay controlling notching.

Awards in Engineering

THE following scholarships for 1940 have been awarded by the Institution of Electrical Engineers: Duddell Scholarship, annual value £150, tenable for 3 years, to D. LaW. W. King (Northampton Polytechnic); Silvanus Thompson Scholarship, annual value £100, plus tuition fees, tenable for 2 years, 1938 award to H. Darnell (University of Liverpool) renewed for a third year, no new award made this year; William Beedie Esson Scholarship, annual value £100, plus tuition fees, tenable for 2 years, renewable in approved cases for a third year, C. H. Bickerdike (London and North Eastern Railway Co.); David Hughes Scholarship, value £100, tenable for 1 year, J. H. Nicoll (Merchant Venturers' Technical College, Bristol); Salomons Scholarships, value £60, tenable for 1 year, H. H. Rosenbrock (University College, London); value £40, tenable for 1 year, P. H. W. Whyman (University College, London); Thorrowgood Scholarships, annual value £12 10s. each, tenable for 2 years, R. J. Post (London Passenger Transport Board), R. P. Gasson (Southern Railway Co.). No award of the Ferranti or Swan Memorial Scholarships or of grants from the War Thanksgiving Education and Research Fund have been made this year.

Operation and Design of Trolleybuses

A PAPER by G. F. Sinclair, of the London Passenger Transport Board, on the trolleybus system was published by the Institution of Electrical Engineers on November 9. The trolleybus has been adjudged by the Ministry of Transport an electric vehicle, and its construction and operation are governed by the Ministry's regulations. These allow the vehicles to be built one ton heavier than other forms of road passenger vehicle. They can be designed with large seating capacities with accommodation up to seventy passengers.

Cosmic Rays

PROf. P. M. S. BLACKETT took “Cosmic Rays” as the subject of the thirtieth Kelvin Lecture which he delivered before the Institution of Electrical En-gineers on Thursday, April 27. He gave a resume of what had been done to discover the nature of these mysterious rays, from their properties. As a rule, engineers consider natural phenomena first of all to find out some possible utility for them. In addition, Prof. Blackett stimulated the imagination of his audience to consider all manner of possible consequences which might arise from the bombardment of the earth from outer space by some twenty particles per minute at astronomical values of electron volts. The effects of cosmic rays can be obtained, shown by experiment and recorded photographically without much difficulty and with quite simple apparatus, but calculation of these effects depends upon equations which, although easily written down, can only be approximately solved with great labour. The labour can be lightened by the use of calculating machines invented by engineers, but it is a lengthy operation. There is little exact knowledge about these rays and it is assumed that they are due to radiation from the extra-solar universe. Interesting accounts were given of the attempts that had been made on these rays by researches in the upper atmosphere, by investigations on the surface of the earth and by experiments below its crust. He said that, in the last case, the necessary apparatus had been installed in one of the underground platforms of the Holborn station of the London Passenger Transport Board, but it was found that the symmetry of the readings was effected by the presence overhead of the tunnel which carries the electric trams below Kingsway.