The London Underground carries up to 3 million passengers a day and is the glue that holds the capital together. But although its drivers, inspectors, ticket office and platform staff are familiar to all who use it, behind - and beneath - the scenes is a hidden infrastructure of which most are entirely unaware. At the back end of a station in West London, housed in nondescript brick buildings and a large corrugated iron shed, a team of highly skilled engineers and carpenters deal with...
more »The London Underground carries up to 3 million passengers a day and is the glue that holds the capital together. But although its drivers, inspectors, ticket office and platform staff are familiar to all who use it, behind - and beneath - the scenes is a hidden infrastructure of which most are entirely unaware. At the back end of a station in West London, housed in nondescript brick buildings and a large corrugated iron shed, a team of highly skilled engineers and carpenters deal with 'Urgencies and Emergencies'. If a faulty rail is reported by 10.00 am, it can be cut, shaped and fitted anywhere on the network by the end of the day. Complex, newly fabricated track layouts are assembled and taken apart like jigsaw puzzles, ready for re-assembly in situ somewhere along the 250 miles of the tube system. In the train sheds of a depot in Tottenham, cleaners haul away sacks of discarded newspapers, while engineers work beneath the carriages checking and repairing wheels, brakes and electrics. Nearby, workers monitor screens and make tiny adjustments as massive machines shave the finest slithers of steel off the profiles of worn wheels.
As the system closes down each night, workers start arriving at an anonymous office block by the Marylebone flyover, where they receive detailed instructions for their night's work. They leave in small groups, dressed in high visibility jackets, steel-capped safety boots and carrying helmets, face-masks and white, hooded worksuits. Between about 1.00am and 4.40am the four-person Deep Cleaning Gangs spread out beneath the city to clean by hand, on a fortnightly rota, the track in each station and 50 metres into the tunnels either side, to prevent fire and smouldering of accumulated debris, which can result in costly line closures. Despite grumbles about delays and overcrowding, Londoners take the underground pretty much for granted. A brief peek behind the scenes makes it seem more like a minor miracle of engineering and logistics.
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