Portal:London transport/Selected articles - Wikipedia

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The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is a light rail public transport metro serving the redeveloped Docklands area of east London. The DLR is separate from the London Underground, with separate tracks and rolling stock. The two systems share a single ticketing system. The DLR appears on the London Underground’s Tube map.

All the trains are computer-controlled and have no driver: a passenger service agent (PSA) on each train is responsible for patrolling the train, checking tickets, making announcements, and controlling the doors. PSAs can also take control of the train in case of computer failure or emergency. Operation and maintenance of the DLR has been carried out by a private franchise since 1997. The current franchise, due to expire in April 2013, belongs to Serco Docklands Ltd, a company jointly formed by Serco and the former DLR management team.

Since opening on 31 August 1987, the system has been extended and upgraded many times to increase the extent of its coverage and increase capacity with new branches being constructed to take the network to Bank in the City of London, London City Airport, Lewisham and Woolwich Arsenal.

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The Tube map is the commonly-used name for the schematic diagram that represents the lines, stations, and zones of London's rapid transit rail system, the London Underground.

The first coordinated map of London's underground railway lines was produced in 1908 and highlighted the routes on a traditional map also showing other geographical features. During the 1920s attempts were made to make the map more readable by removing unnecessary information until only the River Thames remained; the maps remained geographic.

The current version is a schematic diagram and no longer represents geography but relationships. It considerably distorts the actual relative positions of stations, but accurately represents their sequential and connective relationships with each other and their placement within the zones. The basic design concepts, especially that of mapping topologically, have been widely adopted around the world for other route maps.

The original schematic map was designed in 1931 by Underground employee Harry Beck, who realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the travellers; only the topology of the system mattered. Beck based his diagram on a similar mapping system for underground sewage systems.

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Stratford station is a railway station in the London Borough of Newham, East London served by National Rail, London Underground and Docklands Light Railway lines. It is in Travelcard Zone 3.

Stratford station was opened in 1839 by the Eastern Counties Railway (ECR). London Underground Central line services started on 4 December 1946. Services were extended to Leyton on 5 May 1947 and then on to the former London and North Eastern Railway branch lines to Epping, Ongar and Hainault progressively until 1949.

The Docklands Light Railway opened on 31 August 1987 reusing redundant rail routes through the Bow and Poplar areas to reach the new Docklands developments on the Isle of Dogs.

The Low Level station (served by the North London line) underwent a major rebuilding programme in the late 1990s as part of the Jubilee Line Extension works. This saw the construction of a large steel and glass building designed by Wilkinson Eyre and a new replacement booking hall. The Jubilee line opened to passengers on 14 May 1999, with services initially running only as far as Canning Town station.

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The Oyster card is a contactless smartcard, with a claimed proximity range of about 10 cm. The scheme is operated by TranSys, and is based on Philips' MIFARE Standard 1k chips, provided by Giesecke & Devrient and SchlumbergerSema.

The Oyster card may have been inspired by Hong Kong's transport system, which uses the similar Octopus card. As with the Octopus card and other pay-as-you-go smartcards, also notably in Japan, there is the potential for future expansion of the Oyster card to act as an e-money payment system.

Travellers touch the card to a distinctive yellow circular reader (a Cubic Tri-Reader) positioned on automated barriers at London Underground stations to 'touch in' and 'touch out' at the start and end of a journey (contact is not necessary, but the range of the reader is only a centimetre or so). Tram stops and buses also have readers, on the driver's ticket machine or, in the case of articulated buses, near the other entrance doors as well. Oyster cards can be used to store both period travelcards and bus passes (of one week or more), and a pay-as-you-go balance.

The system is asynchronous with the most up-to-date balance and ticket data held electronically on the card rather than in the central database. The main database is updated periodically with information received from the card by barriers and validators. Tickets purchased online or over the telephone are "loaded" at a preselected barrier or validator.

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The Northern line is an underground railway in London, that is coloured black on the London Underground Tube map. The line's two branches carry 206.734 million passengers per year—the highest on the London Underground system. For most of its length it is built as a deep-level tube line. Despite its name, it is the Underground line that extends furthest south. There are 50 stations on the Northern line, of which 36 are underground.

The line has a complicated history and the current complex arrangement of two northern branches, two central branches and the southern branch reflects its genesis as three separate railway companies that were brought together and combined in the 1920s and 1930s. The original routes were extended several times so that by 1926 the line served Edgware in the north and Morden in the south. Ambitious plans to take over and incorporate London & North Eastern Railway's Northern Heights branch lines and extend the line to Bushey were mostly cancelled following the Second World War. (Full article...)

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The London congestion charge is a fee for some motorists entering the Central London area. The organisation responsible for the charge is Transport for London (TfL). The fee was introduced on 17 February 2003. The daily charge must be paid by the registered keeper of a vehicle that enters, leaves or moves around within the congestion charge zone between 7 am and 6 pm (previously 6.30 pm), Monday to Friday. Failure to pay the charge means a fine. In February 2007, a western extension of the congestion charge came into effect, but this was ended in December 2010.

The scheme makes use of CCTV cameras to record vehicles entering and exiting the zone. Cameras can record number plates with a 90% accuracy rate through automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology. There are also a number of mobile camera units which may be deployed anywhere in the zone. The majority of vehicles within the zone are captured on camera. The cameras take two still pictures in colour and black and white and use infrared technology to identify the number plates. These identified numbers are checked against the list of payees overnight by computer; unrecognised plates are checked manually.

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The Leyland Titan was a model of double-decker bus produced by the Leyland Truck & Bus division of British Leyland from 1977 until 1984, almost exclusively for London Transport. The Titan was first conceptualised in 1973 as project B15, and was intended as a replacement for the Leyland Atlantean, Daimler Fleetline and Bristol VRT. Following the success of the single-deck Leyland National, it was decided from the outset that the vehicle would be very standardised, and of integral construction. This allowed more flexibility in the location of mechanical components, and allowed a reduced step height. The move away from body on chassis construction caused concern for the bodybuilders who had already lost market to the Leyland National. Talks regarding licensing agreements were held with Alexander and Northern Counties, both major suppliers to their respective local markets, but no agreements were reached. This, in combination with other factors, led Northern Counties to develop the Foden-NC, and Alexander to develop a close working relationship with Volvo with the Volvo Ailsa B55.

The Titan entered service in 1978 with London Transport, which ordered a total of 1,425 of the model up until 1984. Titan buses operated mainly in the east and south-east of the capital. The model was withdrawn in stages from 1992 with the final bus being taken out of service in 2003. (Full article...)

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Westminster is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster, close to the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey. The station is located beneath Portcullis House at the corner of Bridge Street and Victoria Embankment.

The station was opened as Westminster Bridge in 1868 by the District Railway when the company opened the first section of its line from South Kensington.

As part of the Jubilee Line Extension the station was completely reconstructed to designs by Michael Hopkins & Partners. During the reconstruction, a 39 metres (128 ft) deep void was excavated underneath the old station to house the escalators, lifts and stairs to the deep-level Jubilee line platforms. This made it the deepest ever excavation in central London. One of the most difficult problems the engineers faced was to construct the station around the Circle and District line tracks, which continued in service throughout the construction. The tracks had to be lowered by 300 millimetres (0.98 ft), an operation achieved a few millimetres at a time during the few hours each night that the system was closed. Nothing of the old station remains. (Full article...)

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Oxford Circus is a London Underground station serving Oxford Circus at the junction of Regent Street and Oxford Street, with entrances on all four corners of the intersection. The station is an interchange between the Central, Victoria and Bakerloo lines.

The station was originally opened by the Central London Railway in 1900 and an interchange was provided with the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway when it opened in 1906. The original station buildings are each side of the junction of Oxford Street and Argyll Street. Access to the platforms was originally by separate sets of lifts, but the first sets of escalators were installed in 1914. More escalators were installed in 1923 and 1928, although the lifts continued to be used.

The current arrangement of the station dates from the reconstruction in the 1960s for the Victoria line. A new ticket hall was excavated beneath under the road junction using a temporary bridge structure called the umbrella spanning the works to keep the junction open. New escalators were provided for the Victoria line which was constructed to have a cross platform interchange with the Bakerloo line. The station is third busiest on the London Underground network with almost 73 million passengers entering and exiting the station in 2008. (Full article...)

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The A1 in London is an A road in North London. It runs from the London Wall to Bignall's Corner, where it crosses the M25 motorway and becomes the A1(M) motorway, continuing to Edinburgh. The London section passes through four London boroughs: the City of London, Islington, Haringey and Barnet. Whilst the route of the A1 outside London closely follows the historic route of the Great North Road, the London section for the most part does not.

The current route of the London section of the A1 road was mainly designated as such in 1927. It comprises a number of historic streets in central London and the former suburbs of Islington, Holloway and Highgate and long stretches of purpose-built new roads in the outer London borough of London Borough of Barnet, built to divert traffic away from the congested suburbs of Finchley and High Barnet.

The London section of the A1 is one of London's most important roads. It links North London to the M1 motorway and the A1(M) motorway, and consequently serves as Central London's primary road transport artery to the Midlands, Northern England and Scotland. It also connects a number of major areas within London, and sections of it serve as the High Street for many of the now-joined villages that make up north London. (Full article...)

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The London Transport Museum, based in Covent Garden, central London, seeks to conserve and explain the transport heritage of Britain's capital city. The majority of the museum's exhibits originated in the collection of London Transport, but, since the creation of Transport for London (TfL) in 2000, the remit of the museum has expanded to cover all aspects of transportation in the city. Galleries cover subjects including the development of transport in London from the 19th century, the construction and operation of the London Underground, London's bus and tram systems, the expansion of suburban London and transport design.

The museum also operates the London Transport Museum Depot at Acton in west London, which provides 6,000 square metres of storage space for over 370,000 items of all types including very large items such as rolling stock, buses and trams. The depot is no permanently open to the public, but hosts a number of open days throughout the year. (Full article...)

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The City & South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway in the world to use electric traction. Originally intended for cable-hauled trains, the collapse of the cable contractor while the railway was under construction forced a change to electric traction before the line opened – an experimental technology at the time.

When opened in 1890, it served six stations and ran for a distance of 5.1 kilometres (3.2 mi) in a pair of tunnels between the City of London and Stockwell, passing under the River Thames. The small size of the carriages with their high-backed seating led to them being nicknamed padded cells. The railway was extended several times north and south; eventually serving 22 stations over a distance of 21.7 km (13.5 mi) from Camden Town in north London to Morden in Surrey.

Although the C&SLR was well used, the company struggled financially. In 1913, the C&SLR became part of the Underground Group of railways and, in the 1920s, it underwent major reconstruction works before its merger with the Group's Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway, to form what is now the Northern line. In 1933, the C&SLR and the rest of the Underground Group was taken into public ownership. (Full article...)

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The Chesham branch is a short single-track branch line in Buckinghamshire, England. Although no part of it is within London and it runs entirely above ground, it is owned and operated by the London Underground. It runs from a junction at Chalfont & Latimer with the Metropolitan line and the Chiltern Railways route to Aylesbury, and runs for 3.89 miles (6.26 km) northwest to its only other station at Chesham.

The line was built as part of Edward Watkin's scheme to turn his Metropolitan Railway (MR) into a direct rail route between London and Manchester, and it was envisaged that a station outside Chesham would be an intermediate stop on a through route running north to connect with the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Although the relationship with the LNWR soured, it was decided to build the route as far as Chesham anyway. The line opened in 1889 and Chesham became the terminus of the MR. In 1892 the MR opened an extension to Aylesbury and on to Verney Junction and the Chesham line became a branch line. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway became part of the London Underground. For most of its time as a branch the service operated as a shuttle, but, since the introduction of new rolling stock in 2010 the branch operates a through service to and from London. (Full article...)

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Johnston or Johnston sans is the typeface widely used by Transport for London for its publicity material and signage across the whole of its activities. The typeface was commissioned by the London Electric Railway in 1913 as part of a drive to strengthen the company's corporate branding and replaced a variety of typefaces used across its services. The font was originally simply called "Underground" but is now named after its designer, Edward Johnston, who also designed the London Underground roundel. The use of the typeface survived the merger of the LER into London Transport and spread to be used across the entire system.

Intended for posters and signage, Johnston's design originally consisted of just capital letters, numbers and punctuation symbols but the widening of its usage saw the addition of lower case characters and different type weights. The typeface is sans-serif and features a perfectly circular capital letter O and diamond-shaped full-stop and dots over the letters i and j. The current version of Johnston in use was designed to be slightly heavier than the original and is named New Johnston. (Full article...)

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The Central London Railway (CLR), also known as the Twopenny Tube, was a deep-level, underground "tube" railway that opened in London in 1900. Today, the CLR's tunnels and stations form the central section of the London Underground's Central line.

The railway company was established in 1889, funding for construction was obtained in 1895 through a syndicate of financiers and work took place from 1896 to 1900. When opened, the CLR served 13 stations and ran completely underground in a pair of tunnels for 9.14 kilometres (5.68 mi) between its western terminus at Shepherd's Bush and its eastern terminus at the Bank of England, with a depot and power station to the north of the western terminus. After a rejected proposal to turn the line into a loop, it was extended at the western end to Wood Lane in 1908 and at the eastern end to Liverpool Street station in 1912. In 1920, it was extended along a Great Western Railway line to Ealing to serve a total distance of 17.57 kilometres (10.92 mi).

After initially making good returns for investors, the CLR suffered a decline in passenger numbers due to increased competition from other underground railway lines and new motorised buses. In 1913, it was taken over by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), operator of the majority of London's underground railways. In 1933 the CLR was taken into public ownership along with the UERL. (Full article...)

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Hammerton's Ferry is a pedestrian and cycle ferry service across the River Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, London, England. The ferry links the northern bank near Marble Hill House in Twickenham with the southern bank near Ham House in Ham. It is one of only four remaining ferry routes in London not to be replaced by a bridge or tunnel.

In 1908, local resident Walter Hammerton began hiring out boats to leisure users from a boathouse opposite Marble Hill House, and in 1909 began to operate a regular ferry service across the river at this point using a 12-passenger clinker-built skiff, charging 1d per journey. In 1913, William Champion, and Lord Dysart, operators of the nearby Twickenham Ferry, took legal action against Hammerton to remove his right to operate the ferry. Although Hammerton won the initial case, the judgement was reversed on appeal. Following considerable public interest in the case, a public subscription raised the funds for Hammerton to take the case to the House of Lords, which ruled in his favour on 23 July 1915. (Full article...)

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The A215 road is an A road in South London. It runs from Elephant and Castle in the London Borough Lambeth to Shirley in the London Borough Croydon via Walworth Road, Camberwell Road, Denmark Hill, Herne Hill, West Norwood and South Norwood.

Beginning as Walworth Road, the A215 becomes Camberwell Road—much of which is a conservation area—after entering the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell. Crossing the A202, the A215 becomes Denmark Hill, originally known as Dulwich Hill, but renamed in 1683 to commemorate the marriage of Princess Anne (later Queen Anne) to Prince George of Denmark. After passing Herne Hill railway station the road becomes Norwood Road, Knights Hill, and then Beulah Hill at its crossroads with the A214. Beulah Hill was the site of Britain's first independent television transmitter, built by the Independent Television Authority in 1955. Descending towards South Norwood the A215 becomes South Norwood Hill and then Portland Road, just after crossing the A213. A short section starting at the junction with Woodside Green is known as Spring Lane, leading to Shirley Road, the final section into Shirley, Croydon. (Full article...)

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Battersea Bridge is a cast iron and granite five-span cantilever bridge crossing the River Thames. It links Battersea south of the river with Chelsea to the north and replaced a ferry service that had operated near the site since at least the middle of the 16th century.

The first bridge was a toll bridge commissioned by John, Earl Spencer, who had acquired the rights to operate the ferry. Although a stone bridge was planned, difficulties in raising investment meant that a cheaper wooden bridge was built instead. Designed by Henry Holland, it was opened to pedestrians in November 1771 and to vehicles in 1772. The bridge was poorly designed and dangerous and, due to its location on a bend in the river, boats often collided with it. To reduce the dangers to shipping, two piers were removed and the sections of the bridge above them were strengthened. Despite its problems, the bridge was the last surviving wooden bridge on the Thames in London and was the subject of paintings by many significant artists such as J. M. W. Turner, John Sell Cotman and James McNeill Whistler.

In 1879 the bridge was taken into public ownership, and in 1885 it was replaced with the existing bridge, designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and built by John Mowlem & Co. The narrowest surviving road bridge over the Thames in London, it is one of London's least busy Thames bridges. (Full article...)

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The Ruislip Lido Railway is a 12-inch (305-mm) gauge miniature railway, running around the popular tourist attraction of 'Ruislip Lido' in Ruislip. The railway runs along a 1.5-mile (2.4-km) track around the lake and through the Ruislip woods. It started operation around 1945, with short trains being hauled by "Prince Edward" an Atlantic type steam locomotive over a line about a third of its current length.

The railway was built by the Grand Union Canal Company as part of the leisure facilities at the Ruislip Lido which is a reservoir for the canal. When the Grand Union was nationalised in 1948 to be part of the British Transport Commission, control of the Lido and its railway passed into the hands of Ruislip-Northwood Urban District Council which, in 1965, became part of the London Borough of Hillingdon. Under local authority control the railway was neglected and, following an accident in 1978, it was closed. In 1980, the volunteer run Ruislip Lido Railway Society Limited reopened the railway using a petrol powered engine and gradually expanded the route around the Lido and added additional rolling stock. With Pinewood Studios nearby, the Lido has been used as a filming location for scenes in a number of films including The Young Ones starring Cliff Richard. (Full article...)

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The AEC Routemaster is a model of double-decker bus that was first built by Associated Equipment Company (AEC) in 1954 and was produced until 1968. Primarily front-engined, rear open platform buses, a small number of variants were produced with doors and/or front entrances. Introduced by London Transport in 1956, the Routemaster saw continuous service in London until 2005, and currently remains on one heritage route in central London. In all, 2,876 Routemasters were built with all but a few delivered to London Transport. Approximately 1,000 are still in existence.

A pioneering design, the Routemaster outlasted several of its replacement types in London. The unique features of the standard Routemaster were both praised and criticised. The open platform, while exposed to the elements, allowed boarding and alighting away from stops; and the presence of a conductor allowed minimal boarding time and optimal security, although the presence of conductors produced greater labour costs. The traditional red Routemaster has become one of the famous features of London, with much tourist paraphernalia continuing to bear Routemaster imagery, and with examples still in existence around the world. (Full article...)

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Bow Back Rivers or Stratford Back Rivers is a complex of waterways between Bow and Stratford in east London, England, which connect the River Lea to the River Thames. Starting in the twelfth century, works were carried out to drain Stratford Marshes and several of the waterways were constructed to power watermills. Bow Creek provided the final outfall to the Thames, and the other channels were called Abbey Creek, Channelsea River, City Mill River, Prescott Channel, Pudding Mill River, Three Mills Back River, Three Mills Wall River and Waterworks River.

The rivers have been subject to change over centuries, with Alfred the Great diverting the river in 896 to create a second channel, and Queen Matilda bridging both channels around 1110. Because the river system was tidal as far as Hackney Wick, several of the mills were tide mills, including those at Abbey Mills and those at Three Mills, one of which survives. Construction of the New River in the seventeenth century to supply drinking water to London, with subsequent extraction by waterworks companies, led to a lowering of water levels, and the river was gradually canalised to maintain navigation. Significant changes occurred with the creation of the Lee Navigation in 1767, which resulted in the construction of the Hackney Cut and the Limehouse Cut, allowing barges to bypass most of the back rivers. A major reconstruction of the rivers took place in the 1930s, authorised by the River Lee (Flood Relief) Act, but by the 1960s, commercial usage of the waterways had largely ceased. Deteriorating infrastructure led to the rivers dwindling to little more than tidal creeks and they were categorised in 1968 as having no economic or long term future.

However, British Waterways decided that their full restoration was an important aim in 2002, and the construction of the main stadium for the 2012 Summer Olympics on an island formed by the rivers has provided funding to construct a new lock and sluices which have stabilised water levels throughout the Olympic site. It was hoped that significant amounts of materials for the construction of the Olympic facilities would be delivered by barge, but this did not happen. Improvements to the channels which form a central feature of the Olympic Park have included the largest aquatic planting scheme ever carried out in Britain. (Full article...)

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High Speed 1, officially known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, is a 108-kilometre (67-mile) high-speed railway line running from London through Kent to the British end of the Channel Tunnel.

When the Channel Tunnel was opened, Eurostar trains ran on standard commuter tracks through Kent and south London to Waterloo International, running at speeds much below their maximum due to speed limits and competing rail traffic. High Speed 1 was constructed to provide a dedicated fast route between the tunnel and London and was constructed and opened in two sections.

The first section of the line was opened in September 2003 and ran from the tunnel to North Kent where trains transferred from the high speed tracks to the Kent and South London commuter network to run to Waterloo International. The second section of the line, travelling under the River Thames and into London St Pancras, opened on 14 November 2007. Built at a cost of £5.2bn, the link allows trains to travel at speeds of 300 kilometres per hour (186 mph), cutting pre-2003 Eurostar journey times by 40 minutes and increasing service frequency. It is now possible to travel from London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord in 2 hours 15 minutes, and to Brussels South in 1 hour 51 minutes. Domestic high speed commuter services from Kent to St Pancras started in December 2009 running at speeds of up to 225 kilometres per hour (140 mph). (Full article...)

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Mornington Crescent is a game featured as a round in the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. The game satirises complicated strategy games, particularly the obscure jargon involved in such games as contract bridge or chess. A game consists of each player in turn announcing a landmark, most often a tube station on the London Underground system; the winner is the first player to announce "Mornington Crescent," a station on the Northern line. The humour of the game is that though the rules are invoked and argued, they are never fully explained.

The origin of the game is not clear. One account is that the game was invented to vex the series producer, who was unpopular with the panellists. Another is that it was invented at a Soho actors' club to infuriate boorish customers. In introducing the game, the chairman will generally elaborate on the obscure and unknown rules by advising the players that specific rule variations will be used for that round, such as "Trumpington's Variations," or "Tudor Court Rules". Listeners unaware of the satirical nature of the game who have asked for the rules are told that "N F Stovold’s Mornington Crescent: Rules and Origins" is out of print. (Full article...)

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The London Ringways were a series of four ring roads planned in the 1960s to circle London at various distances from the city centre. They were part of a comprehensive scheme developed by the Greater London Council to alleviate traffic congestion on the city's road system by providing high speed motorway-standard roads within the capital linking a series of radial roads taking traffic into and out of the city.

The plan was hugely ambitious and met, almost immediately, with opposition from a number of directions including residents associations, London Borough councils, the Treasury and the Department of Transport. Despite this opposition the GLC continued to develop its plans and began the construction of some of the earlier parts of the scheme. In 1972, in an attempt to placate the plan's vociferous opponents, the GLC dropped parts of the two innermost ringways, but the scheme was cancelled in 1973 at which point only three sections had been constructed – the East Cross Route, part of the West Cross Route and the Westway.

Significant sections of the report's proposals have also been built over the subsequent years including improvements to the North Circular Road and, most importantly, the M25 and M26 motorways which were formed from an amalgamation of parts of the two outermost rings. (Full article...)

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The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR), also known as the Bakerloo tube, was a railway company established in 1893 that constructed a deep-level underground "tube" railway in London. Although construction began in 1898, the company was then hit by the financial collapse in 1900 of its parent company, the London & Globe Finance Corporation, through the fraud of its main shareholder, Whitaker Wright. In 1902, the BS&WR became a subsidiary of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL). The UERL quickly raised the funds, mainly from foreign investors.

When opened in 1906, the BS&WR's line ran completely underground in a pair of tunnels for 5.81 kilometres (3.61 mi) between its Baker Street and Elephant and Castle. By 1913 extensions had taken the northern end of the line to Paddington. Between 1915 and 1917, it was further extended to Queen's Park and then to Watford; a total distance of 33.34 kilometres (20.72 mi).

Within the first year of opening it became apparent to the management and investors that the estimated passenger numbers for the BS&WR and the other UERL lines were over-optimistic. Despite improved integration and cooperation with the other tube railways and the later extensions, the BS&WR struggled financially. In 1933, the BS&WR was taken into public ownership along with the UERL and became part of London Transport. (Full article...)

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The Brill Tramway was a six-mile (10 km) rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England. It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to serve his estate around Wotton House and connect to the national rail network. In 1872 it was extended to Brill and converted to passenger use in early 1872. Two locomotives were bought but the line had been built for horses and trains travelled at average 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).

The line was upgraded in 1894 and rebuilt in 1910 by the Metropolitan Railway which introduced more advanced locomotives, allowing trains to run faster. The population of the area remained low, and the primary income remained goods to and from farms. Between 1899 and 1910 other lines were built in the area, providing more direct services to London and the north of England. The Brill Tramway went into financial decline.

In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway became part of London Transport. The Brill Tramway became part of the London Underground, despite being 40 miles (65 km) from London and not being underground. Seeing little possibility that the line could become a viable passenger route, London Transport closed the Brill Tramway in 1935. Little trace remains other than the former junction station at Quainton Road, now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre. (Full article...)

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Aldwych is a closed London Underground station in the City of Westminster, originally opened as Strand in 1907. The station was the terminus of a short Piccadilly line branch from Holborn. The disused station building is situated close to the junction of Strand and Surrey Street. During its life time, the branch was the subject of a number of unrealised extension proposals that would have seen the tunnels through the station extended southwards, usually to Waterloo. Early plans for the second phase of the Jubilee line included an interchange at Aldwych and in 2005 a review of possible extensions of the Docklands Light Railway to Charing Cross also considered reuse of the station.

Originally built with two platforms and a capacity for up to six lifts, the station was never fully completed. Suffering from low passenger numbers, one platform was taken out of use before the First World War and the station and branch were considered for closure several times, but survived as a weekday peak hours only service until closed in 1994, when the cost of replacing the lifts at Aldwych was considered too high compared to the income generated. The station has long been popular as a filming location and has appeared as itself and as other London Underground stations in a variety of films. (Full article...)

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London Heathrow Airport or Heathrow, located in the London Borough of Hillingdon, is the largest and busiest airport in the United Kingdom. It is the world's second busiest airport in terms of total passenger traffic and it handles more international passengers than any other airport in the world. The airport is owned and operated by BAA.

Located 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) west of Central London, flying at Heathrow began in World War I when a military airfield was laid out to the south-east of the hamlet that gives the airport its name. In the years preceding World War II, the airfield was used for manufacturing and testing by the Fairey Aviation Company. It was requisitioned by the government in 1943 for expansion as a RAF base although it saw little use as such. After the war it became a civilian airport with the first flight on 1 January 1946.

In its early days Heathrow had as many as six short runways arranged as a star, but now has two parallel main runways spanning east-to-west and five operational terminals. In January 2009 a controversial third runway was approved by the UK government, but this was cancelled in May 2010 following a change of government. (Full article...)

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The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL) was established in 1902 as the holding company for the three deep-level "tube" underground railway lines opened in London during 1906 and 1907 and the District Railway. The UERL is the main precursor of today's London Underground; its lines form the central sections of today's Bakerloo, District, Piccadilly and Northern lines.

The UERL struggled financially in its first years and narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1908. A policy of expansion by acquisition was followed before World War I, so that the company came to operate the majority of the underground railway lines in and around London. It also controlled large bus and tram fleets, the profits from which subsidised the financially weaker railways. After the war, railway extensions took the UERL's services out into suburban areas to stimulate additional passenger numbers, so that, by the early 1930s, the company's lines stretched beyond the County of London encouraging the rapid expansion of the city.

In the 1920s, competition from unregulated bus operators reduced the profitability of the road transport operations, leading the UERL's directors to seek government regulation. This led to the establishment of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, which absorbed the UERL and all of the independent and municipally operated railway, bus and tram services in the London area. (Full article...)

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The London Necropolis Railway was a railway line opened in November 1854 by the London Necropolis Company (LNC), to carry cadavers and mourners between London and the LNC's newly opened Brookwood Cemetery in Brookwood, Surrey. At the time the largest cemetery in the world, Brookwood Cemetery was designed to be large enough to accommodate all the deaths in London for centuries to come, and the LNC hoped to gain a monopoly on London's burial industry. The railway mostly ran along the existing tracks of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), but had its own stations at both London and Brookwood. Trains carried coffins and passengers from a dedicated station in Waterloo, London, onto the LSWR tracks.

The company failed to gain a monopoly of the burial industry, and the scheme was not as successful as its promoters had hoped. While they had planned to carry between 10,000 and 50,000 bodies per year, in 1941 after 87 years of operation only slightly over 200,000 burials had been conducted in Brookwood Cemetery. On the night of 16–17 April 1941 the London terminus was badly damaged in an air raid and was rendered unusable. The London Necropolis Railway was never used again and soon after the end of the Second World War the surviving parts of the London station were sold as office space, and the rail tracks and stations in the cemetery were removed. (Full article...)

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The 1910 London to Manchester air race took place between two aviators, each of whom attempted to win a heavier-than-air powered flight challenge between London and Manchester first proposed by the Daily Mail newspaper in 1906. The £10,000 prize was won in April 1910 by Frenchman Louis Paulhan.

The first to make the attempt was Claude Grahame-White, an Englishman from Hampshire. He took off from London on 23 April 1910, and made his first planned stop at Rugby. His biplane subsequently suffered engine problems, forcing him to land again, near Lichfield. High winds made it impossible for Grahame-White to continue his journey, and his aeroplane suffered further damage on the ground when it was blown over.

While Grahame-White's aeroplane was being repaired in London, late on 27 April Paulhan took off, heading for Lichfield. A few hours later Grahame-White was made aware of Paulhan's departure, and immediately set off in pursuit. The next morning, after an unprecedented night-time take-off, he almost caught up with Paulhan, but his aeroplane was overweight and he was forced to concede defeat. Paulhan reached Manchester early on 28 April, winning the challenge. Both aviators celebrated his victory at a special luncheon held at the Savoy Hotel in London.

The event marked the first long-distance aeroplane race in England, the first take-off of a heavier-than-air machine at night, and the first powered flight into Manchester from outside the city. Paulhan repeated the journey in April 1950, the fortieth anniversary of the original flight, this time as a passenger aboard a British jet fighter. (Full article...)

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The Metropolitan Railway was a railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its mainline heading north from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex suburbs. Its first line connected the mainline railway termini at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross to the City. This was built beneath the New Road using the "cut-and-cover" method between Paddington and King's Cross and in tunnel and cuttings beside Farringdon Road from King's Cross to Smithfield, near the City. When, on 10 January 1863, this line opened with gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives, it was the world's first underground railway.

The railway was soon extended from both ends and northwards via a branch from Baker Street. It reached Hammersmith in 1864, Richmond in 1877 and completed the Inner Circle in 1884, but the most important route became the line north into the Middlesex countryside, where it stimulated the development of new suburbs. Harrow was reached in 1880, and the line eventually extended as far as Verney Junction in Buckinghamshire, more than 50 miles (80 kilometres) from Baker Street and the centre of London.

Electric traction was introduced in 1905 and by 1907 electric multiple units operated most of the services, though electrification of outlying sections did not occur until decades later. Unlike other railway companies in the London area, the Met developed land for housing and after World War I promoted housing estates near the railway with the "Metro-land" brand. On 1 July 1933, the Metropolitan Railway was amalgamated with the underground railways of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and the capital's tramway and bus operators to form the London Passenger Transport Board.

Today, former Metropolitan Railway tracks and stations are used by the London Underground's Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Piccadilly and Jubilee lines, and by Chiltern Railways. (Full article...)

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The Blackwall Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels underneath the River Thames in east London, linking the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is part of the A102 road.

The tunnel was originally opened as a single bore in 1897 by the then Prince of Wales, as a major transport project to improve commerce and trade in London's East End. By the 1930s, capacity was becoming inadequate, and a second bore opened in 1967, handling southbound traffic while the earlier 19th century tunnel handled northbound.

The tunnel is a key link for both local and longer-distance traffic between the north and south sides of the river. It is the easternmost free fixed road crossing of the Thames, and regularly suffers congestion, to the extent that tidal flow schemes were in place from 1978 until controversially removed in 2007. Proposals to solve the traffic problems have included building a third bore, constructing alternative crossings of the Thames such as the now cancelled Thames Gateway Bridge or the Silvertown Tunnel, and providing better traffic management, particularly for heavy goods vehicles. (Full article...)

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Crossrail is a 118-kilometre (73-mile) railway line under development in England, running through London to the home counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Essex. The central core and a large section of the line, between Paddington in central London and Abbey Wood in the south-east, are due to open in December 2018, when it will be officially named the Elizabeth line, in honour of Queen Elizabeth II.

Part of the eastern section, between Liverpool Street and Shenfield in Essex, was transferred to a precursor service called TfL Rail in 2015; this section will be connected to the core through central London to Paddington from May 2019. The western section, from Paddington to Heathrow Airport and Reading in Berkshire, is due to open in December 2019, completing the new east–west route across London and providing a new high-frequency commuter and suburban passenger service.

The project was approved in 2007 and construction began in 2009 on the central section and connections to existing lines that will become part of the route. With a budget of £14.8 billion, it is Europe's largest infrastructure construction project. Its main feature is 21 km (13 mi) of new twin tunnels below central London running from Paddington to Stratford and Canary Wharf in the east. An almost entirely new line will branch from the main line at Whitechapel to Canary Wharf, crossing under the River Thames, with a new station at Woolwich and connecting with the North Kent Line at the Abbey Wood terminus.

Trains will run at frequencies in the central section of up to 24 trains per hour in each direction. It is expected to relieve pressure on existing east-west London Underground lines such as the Central and District lines, as well as the Jubilee line extension and the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly line. The need for extra capacity along this corridor is such that the former head of TfL, Sir Peter Hendy, predicted that the Crossrail lines will be "immediately full" as soon as they open. Crossrail will be operated by MTR Corporation (Crossrail) Ltd as a London Rail concession of Transport for London, in a similar manner to London Overground. (Full article...)

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The London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), was the principal bus operator in London between 1855 and 1933. It was founded to amalgamate hundreds of independent horse-drawn omnibus companies operating in the capital and was originally an Anglo-French enterprise also known as Compagnie Generale des Omnibus de Londres. Within a year, the LGOC controlled 600 of London's 810 omnibuses. In 1902, the LGOC began operating motor buses and by 1908 had gained a virtual monopoly in London. The last horse-drawn bus ran in 1911.

In 1912, the LGOC was bought by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) which operated much of the London Underground to broaden its control of transport in the city. In 1933, the UERL and the LGOC became part of the new London Passenger Transport Board when transport services in the capital were merged. The name London General fell into disuse, and London Transport instead became synonymous with the red London bus.

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Santander Cycles (formerly Barclays Cycle Hire) is a public bicycle hire scheme in London. The scheme's bicycles are popularly known as Boris Bikes, after Boris Johnson, who was the Mayor of London when the scheme was launched in July 2010. The scheme was first proposed by previous mayor Ken Livingstone in 2008. The operation of the scheme is contracted by Transport for London to Serco Group and was sponsored by Barclays Bank from its introduction until March 2015. It is currently sponsored by Santander. The scheme began with 5,000 bicycles and 315 docking stations distributed across the City of London and parts of eight London boroughs with the area covered expanding and the number of bicycles increasing in the following years.

Bicycles are available to hire from docking stations located around the city with the first 30 minutes of use free of charge. The bicycles are manufactured by Cycles Devinci in Canada and are designed to be robust and vandal resistant with puncture resistant tyres, chain guards and LED lighting and cabling built into the frames.

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The Moorgate tube crash occurred on 28 February 1975 London Underground's Northern City Line; 43 people died and 74 were injured after a train failed to stop at the line's southern terminus, Moorgate station, and crashed into its end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground. No fault was found with the train, and the inquiry by Department of the Environment concluded that the accident was caused by the actions of Leslie Newson, the 56-year-old driver.

The crash forced the first carriage into the roof of the tunnel at the front and back, but the middle remained on the trackbed; the 16-metre-long (52 ft) coach was crushed to 6.1 metres (20 ft). The second carriage was concertinaed at the front as it collided with the first, and the third rode over the rear of the second. The brakes were not applied and the dead man's handle was still depressed when the train crashed. It took 13 hours for emergency services to remove the injured from the wreckage, many of whom had to be cut free. Poor ventilation caused temperatures in the tunnel to rise to over 49 °C (120 °F). It took a further four days to extract the last body, that of Newson; his cab, normally 91 centimetres (3 ft) deep, had been crushed to 15 centimetres (6 in).

The post-mortem on Newson showed no medical reason to explain the crash. A cause has never been established, and theories include suicide, that he may have been distracted, or that he was affected by conditions such as transient global amnesia or akinesis with mutism. Tests showed that Newson had a blood alcohol level of 80 mg/100 ml—the level at which one can be prosecuted for drink driving, though the alcohol may have been produced by the natural decomposition process over four days at a high temperature.

Following the crash, London Underground introduced a safety system that automatically stops a train when travelling too fast. This became known informally as Moorgate protection.

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The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a 117-mile (188 km) motorway that encircles almost all of Greater London, England (with the exception of North Ockendon), in the United Kingdom. An ambitious concept to build four concentric ring roads around London was first mooted in the 1960s. A few sections of the outer two rings were constructed in the early 1970s, but the plan was abandoned and the sections were later integrated to form a single ring which became the M25, completed in 1986.

It is one of the busiest of the British motorway network: 196,000 vehicles were recorded on a busy day near Heathrow Airport in 2003 and the western half experienced an average daily flow of 147,000 vehicles in 2007. To alleviate congestion, sections of the motorway have been widened from the original three-lane carriageways to four-, five- or six-lane carriageways. Other sections use Smart motorway operation with hard shoulders replaced with standard lanes.

The M25, plus the short non-motorway A282 which joins the two ends of the M25 across the River Thames using the Dartford Crossing, is Europe's second longest orbital road after the Berliner Ring, which is 122 miles (196 km).

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The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was the organisation responsible for local public transport in London and its environs from 1933 to 1948. In common with all London transport authorities from 1933 to 2000, the public name and brand was London Transport.

The LPTB was set up by the London Passenger Transport Act 1933 enacted on 13 April 1933. The bill had been introduced by Herbert Morrison, who was Transport Minister in the Labour Government until 1931, but was passed during the subsequent coalition government. On 1 July 1933, the LPTB came into being to manage the "London Passenger Transport Area” within which it had almost complete authority over the operation of local transport services.

Led by Lord Ashfield and Frank Pick, who had previously run the Underground Group, the LPTB took over the operations of ninety-two bus, tram, trolley bus and train companies. The LPTB embarked on a £35 million capital investment programme that extended services and reconstructed many existing assets, mostly under the umbrella of the 1935–1940 "New Works Programme which delivered extensions to the Central, Bakerloo, Northern and Metropolitan lines; new trains and maintenance depots; extensive rebuilding of many central area stations and the replacement of trams with trolley buses.

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SS Princess Alice, formerly PS Bute, was a passenger paddle steamer that sank on 3 September 1878 after a collision with the collier Bywell Castle on the River Thames. Between 600 and 700 people died, all from Princess Alice, the greatest loss of life of any British inland waterway shipping accident. No passenger list or headcount was made, so the exact figure of those who died has never been known.

Built in Greenock, Scotland, in 1865, Princess Alice was employed for two years in Scotland before being purchased by the Waterman's Steam Packet Co to carry passengers on the Thames. By 1878 she was owned by the London Steamboat Co and was captained by William R. H. Grinstead; the ship carried passengers on a stopping service from Swan Pier, near London Bridge, downstream to Sheerness, Kent, and back. On her homeward journey, at an hour after sunset on 3 September 1878, she passed Tripcock Point and entered Gallions Reach, she took the wrong sailing line and was hit by Bywell Castle; the point of the collision was the area of the Thames where 75 million imperial gallons (340,000 m³) of London's raw sewage had just been released. Princess Alice broke into three parts and sank quickly; her passengers drowned in the heavily polluted waters.

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The Marchioness disaster was a collision between two vessels on the River Thames in London in the early hours of 20 August 1989, and resulted in the deaths of 51 people. The pleasure steamer Marchioness sank after being hit twice by the dredger Bowbelle at about 1:46 am, between Cannon Street railway bridge and Southwark Bridge.

Marchioness had been hired for the evening for a birthday party and had about 130 people on board, four of whom were crew and bar staff. Both vessels were heading downstream, against the tide, Bowbelle travelling faster than the smaller vessel. Although the exact paths taken by the ships, and the precise series of events and their locations, are unknown, the subsequent inquiry considered it likely that Bowbelle struck Marchioness from the rear, causing the latter to turn to port, where she was hit again, then pushed along, turning over and being pushed under Bowbelle's bow. It took thirty seconds for Marchioness to sink; 24 bodies were found within the ship when it was raised.

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The Blackwall Rock was a reef in the River Thames near Blackwall in East London at short distance upstream from Blackwall Stairs and between the entrances of the West and East India Docks. The rock provided a useful shelter for moored vessels, but also proved a hazardous obstruction to river navigation as it was sometimes less than 3 feet (1 m) below the surface at low tide.

The entrance to the West India Docks, just to the south-west of the rock, was substantially obstructed by the reef upon the docks' opening in 1802. In 1803, Robert Edington surveyed the rock estimated its dimensions as 600 by 150 feet (183 m × 46 m). An 1846 report by the Tidal Harbours Commission described it as an outcrop of plum-pudding stone.

Early attempts to break the rock with explosives were largely unsuccessful. William Jessop was engaged by Trinity House to undertake the rock's removal which he did using a chisel, operated from a barge much as with pile driving. This method successfully reduced the height of the rock by 15 feet (4.6 m), after which a cylindrical coffer dam was employed to allow workers' access to remove rubble.