Victoria Line; Out with the old, in with the new!

It may seem an implausible tale to tell today but when the Victoria Line opened in 1968 it was the greatest thing to happen to London in a very long time and represented the cutting edge of technology! It had dramatic looking automatically controlled trains with gleaming bodies with a tapered front, no driver side doors and unpainted brushed aluminium bodies.


Victoria Line 1967 Stock with the brushed aluminium skin

Amazingly it still had the first trains, known as 1967 Stock, which operated on the original line. Now after 43 years and millions of miles later these are being replaced. The 1967 Tube Stock was designed specifically for the Victoria Line. It was the first train in the world to be specially designed for a fully automatic railway designed from scratch.



Original 67 Stock interior


The line is equipped with an Automatic Train Operation system (ATO); the train operator (driver) closes the train doors and presses a pair of "start" buttons, and if the way ahead is clear, the ATO drives the train at a safe speed to the next station and stops it there. This system has operated since the line opened in 1968, making the Victoria line the world's first full-scale automatic railway.


Trains being produced at Derby: the Class 378 Electrostar for London Overground, the S-stock MOVIA for London Underground's SubSurface Lines and the MOVIA metro for London Underground's Victoria Line.

After 43 years in service the '67 stock Victoria Line trains are being replaced. 30th June 2011 was the last scheduled serviced, for two trips between Seven Sisters and Brixton. The videos offer comparisons between the 1967 Stock (so called because it entered service in 1968!) and the replacement 2009 Stock (so called because it entered service in 2010!)

For the full story of the Victoria Line see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/04/onwards-to-victoria.html

Single to Totenschinken Hofstrasse, bitte

Click on the map for a larger image

I’m grateful to Ross Lydall of the London Evening Standard for the heads up on what the London Underground map may have looked like if Germany had won WWII. Never mind the map of Europe, this is how the map of the London Underground could have been redrawn if the Germans had won, or would it? An Austrian university librarian has imagined how the Tube network would look if we all spoke German, renaming the capital's 270 stations from Heidenreihe (Heathrow) to Hahnenzuchter (Cockfosters).



Horst Prillinger has used a mixture of wit and linguistic dexterity - Heidenreihe most accurately translates as "heathen row" while Hahnenzuchter could be read as "chicken farmer" - in adapting the station names. Mr Prillinger said the map had translations that preserved the meaning of the English words, such as Burnt Oak becoming Verbrannte Eiche, and "deliberate misunderstandings".

While the suffix "ham" means "home", he translated it as the meat, so West Ham becomes Westschinken. Here is Horst’s website;

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/metro/english/network_maps.html



For the history of Mr. Beck’s iconic London Underground Map see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/11/mapping-world.html

Der Untergrund

Die Linien, Bahnhöfe und Zonen von London Underground, London Overground und Docklands Light Railway (DLR). Als Klassiker des Designs macht die U-Bahn-Karte das Fahren im Londoner U-Bahn-Netz denkbar einfach. Diese übersichtliche Karte enthält einen Schlüssel zu allen eingezeichneten Stationen sowie die 6 Gebührenzonen.


Click on the map for a larger image

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