Going Deep into Underground Railway Systems

I decided to look deeply into the subject of underground railway systems when I kept coming across the fact that the railway stations of major cities are transportation hubs for all ground-based mass transit systems, including not only trains, but trams, underground rail systems, and buses.

All of these transportation inter-connections are part of an incredibly complex topic, of which I can only scratch the surface. As I read through the history of rail-lines, it is hard to process and digest all of the information because there is so much there. Beginnings, and then consolidation, and first it was called this, and then it was called that, and then it was taken over, and more consolidation, and so on. It is hard for me to even describe it. Look into it some time, and you will quickly see what I mean. Rapid-fire data points!

I will start in London, at the address of 55 Broadway, where the headquarters of the London Underground, and called London’s first skyscraper, said to have been built between 1927 and 1929.

It is interesting to note its location in London is just blocks away from the seat of British government ~the Palace of Westminster which houses the British Parliament; 10 Downing Street, the residence of the Prime Minister; and near Westminster Abbey, the traditional place of coronation, marriage, and burial for British monarchs.

Here you see what looks like old masonry at the 55 Broadway location.

The building is said to be faced with limestone from the quarries of the Isle of Portland, just off the coast of England…

…where we find megalithic-looking stone blocks lying all around.

The cruciform-, or cross-, shaped building at 55 Broadway was said to have been designed by Charles Henry Holden, and his Underground station designs were said to have become the London Underground Corporation’s standard design in the 1930’s.

In 1902, Holden was said to have won the architectural competition to design the Bristol Central Library, which opened in 1906…

…in 1906, he won the competition to design a new Headquarters for the British Medical Association on the Strand in London, said to have been built in 1907 and 1908…

…which is now the Zimbabwe House, the Embassy for Zimbabwe.

…and in 1909, we are told he won the competition for designing an extension to the British Royal Infirmary, said to have been built in 1911 and 1912.

The London Underground Headquarters he was given the credit for designing sits on top of the St. James Underground Station, said to have opened on December 24th, 1868.

The London Underground is said to be the oldest underground railway system in the world.

We are told the idea of an underground railroad linking the City of London with the urban center came up in the 1830’s, and in 1854, the Metropolitan Underground Railway was granted permission to build it.

Operations were said to have started in January of 1863 between Paddington and Farringdon, using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives.

Does that sound plausible? And gas-lit carriages underground? What about ventilation? Would this need have been accounted for in the mid-1800’s according to the history we have been taught?

Fast forward to the establishment of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in 1902 in order to finance and operate three tube lines – the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway…

…the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway…

…and the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway.

This was the Lots Road Power Station, said to have been built between 1902 and 1904 to power the newly created Great Northern, Piccadilly, and Brompton Line.

It was claimed to be the largest power station ever built, and eventually powered most of the railways and tramways in the Underground Group.

So we aren’t even out of the horse-and-buggy era when it was said to have been opened in 1904, with the mass production of automobiles not starting until 1908 with the Model T Ford, and yet we have the technology to build sophisticated electrical machinery generation like this?

And there are still places in the early 1900’s that use horses to pull rail cars along their tracks? What is going on here?

Not only that, there are a lot of abandoned underground tunnels and stations in London, not in use for a very long time. Why build them to then not use them?

This is an abandoned tunnel at Down Station…

…at Highgate Station…

…and Clapham South Station.

These are just a few examples, and London is not the only place with abandoned tunnels.

I also found a listing of former stations served by a London Underground line showing that around 50 have been permanently closed, and either demolished, or re-purposed, starting as early as 1871. The original Westbourne Park Underground Station was said to have been built in 1866 and demolished in 1871, replaced the next day by the current station shown here, to the east of the original.

Compare the similarity of the arches of the Underground Station in Westbourne with the arches of the Mezquita in Cordoba, the capital of Moorish Spain.

This is a map of the London Underground presented by Harry Beck, an engineering draftsman, in 1931.

His design is based on the principle of electrical circuit diagrams.

Power circuits transfer and control large amounts of electricity.

Could the builders of the London Underground have possibly created gigantic power circuitry, starting in a haphazard way in 1854 onward, with the creation of the Metropolitan Underground Railway?

In Hungary, Budapest is said to have the second-oldest underground railway system in the world, and the oldest electrified railway system, with the M-1, or the Millenium Underground Railway, said to have been in operation since May 2nd, 1896.

We are told the original purpose of the first metro line was to facilitate transport to the Budapest City Park along Andrassy Avenue without building surface transport affecting the streetscape…

…running from Vorosmarty Square, the city center…

… to Budapest’s City Park.

The Szechenyi Medicinal Bath is in an extensive City Park Complex, and is the largest medicinal bath in Europe. Its construction was said to have started in 1909, and opened in 1913.

The M-1 underground line was said to have taken two years to build, between 1894 and 1896, by the German engineering firm Siemens and Halske AG, founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske.

Just as a side-note, the Siemens and Halske AG company was also given the credit for the world’s first electric tram line, the Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway, in a suburb of Berlin.

This brings the total to three of places that I have found in my research claiming that distinction, the other two being Montgomery, Alabama, and Sestroretsk, in Russia near St. Petersburg.

Altogether, there are four lines in Budapest, each denoted by a different color.

I am going to put this here for consideration as a possibility. When I looked into electric circuitry, I found the same colors, with each having a different function in circuitry. We will see more examples of this correlation in other systems. They feature exactly the same colors.

I am postulating that these electric transportation systems and networks somehow functioned as electrical circuits in their own right in the original physical lay-out of the planetary grid system, and do not just pertain to the sophisticated electrical circuitry it takes to run them efficiently, day-in and day-out.

Before I leave Budapest, I want to bring to your attention that it is called the capital city of underground wonders.

Besides abandoned rail tunnels…

…there’s what is known as the Kobanya Cellar System…

…and the underground labyrinth of Buda Castle.

This half-head is found in the labyrinth. I find it to be extremely odd…and noteworthy. It looks more like a petrified head, covered up to the nose and ears by mud, than an intentional work of art.

We are told that Glasgow in Scotland has the third-oldest underground rail system in the world, opening on December 14th, 1896.

The fifteen stations of the subway are distributed over a 10-kilometer, or 6-mile, circuit of the West End and City Center of Glasgow, with eight stations to the north of the River Clyde, and seven to the south. There are two lines: an outer circle running clockwise, and an inner circle running counter-clockwise.

Circuit is a word in the English language that means: 1) a roughly circular line, route, or movement that starts and finishes at the same place; and 2) a path in which electrons from a voltage or current source flow. The point where those electrons enter an electrical circuit is called the source of the electrons.

This came up when I searched for “particle accelerator diagram,” showing counter-rotating beams in a circular accelerator, contrasted with the Glasgow subway’s outer and inner circle running in opposite directions from each other.

There are also abandoned rail-line stations in Glasgow, like the Botanic Gardens Station, said to have been built in 1896, and closed to passenger transport in 1939…

…and the abandoned tunnel at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow as well.

Again, why build heavy infrastructure like this to close it after only 45-years of use?

Next, here are maps underground systems of places throughout the world.

Berlin, Germany…

…Hamburg, Germany…

…Helsinki, Finland…

…St. Petersburg, Russia…

…Sydney, Australia…

…Beijing, China…

…Tokyo, Japan…

…New York City…

…Los Angeles, California…

…and Washington, DC, to name a very few.

While not identical lay-outs in all these places, there are definite similarities across countries and continents in how rail-lines are laid out, right down to color-coding all of them.

And they all look remarkably like an electrical circuit diagram.

I am going to end this post here. I have only scratched the surface of the earth’s subterranean infrastructure. When there is an overwhelming amount of information, I try to hit highlights.

In my next post, I am going to be looking at the topic of astronomical observatories, from ancient to modern.