50 Fun Facts About London Underground

Which insect got its Underground name by biting Londoners sheltering in Tube stations in the Blitz?

The London Underground mosquito, a form of Culex pipiens, bit shelterers during the Blitz and became a textbook example of rapid evolution. Its Tube origin is now thought to be a myth, since the same form turns up worldwide.

Whose 'Mind the gap' recording returned to Embankment in 2013 so his widow could hear his voice?

Oswald Laurence's announcement had been phased out until his widow, Margaret McCollum, asked to hear it again and TfL reinstated it on Embankment's curved northbound platform. The warning itself was coined around 1968.

What was cut from the Tube map in 2009, then put back three months later after a public outcry?

The River Thames vanished from the September 2009 map, its first absence since a 1926 pocket map, and Mayor Boris Johnson joined the chorus of disapproval. The December 2009 edition quietly put the river back.

Which Chelsea station has the River Westbourne flowing over its platforms in a large iron pipe?

Sloane Square was built where the Westbourne, one of London's lost rivers, crossed the line, so engineers slung the river above the tracks in an iron conduit that is still in place today. Passengers can spot it from the platforms.

Which station beside Lord's cricket ground is the only one sharing no letters with the word 'mackerel'?

St John's Wood contains none of the letters A, C, E, K, L, M or R, which makes it a long-running pub-quiz favourite. Every other stop on the map fails the test somewhere in its name.

Where did 1938-built Tube trains keep running as Britain's oldest passenger stock until January 2021?

The Isle of Wight's Island Line ran refurbished 1938 Tube stock, renumbered Class 483, from 1989 until 3 January 2021. By then they were the oldest passenger trains in regular service in Great Britain.

Which computing pioneer lent her name to a Crossrail tunnel borer, twinned with one called Phyllis?

Ada Lovelace and Phyllis Pearsall, who created the London A-Z, named the pair that bored from Royal Oak to Farringdon. All eight Crossrail machines carried women's names, including athletes Jessica Ennis and Ellie Simmonds.

Which station, Gillespie Road until 1932, is the only Tube stop named directly after a football club?

Arsenal got its name on 31 October 1932 after the club moved from Woolwich to Highbury and campaigned for the change; it was first styled Arsenal (Highbury Hill). West Ham and Wimbledon merely share a name with their local clubs.

What name was given to London's 2003 travel smartcard to suggest a pearl kept safe in a hard shell?

Oyster was picked by brand consultant Andrew McCrum for 'the metaphorical implications of security and value in the hard bivalve shell and the concealed pearl'. The card was first issued to the public on 30 June 2003.

Which Mayfair station, shut in 1932, became a wartime bunker that Churchill nicknamed 'The Barn'?

Down Street housed the Railway Executive Committee during the Second World War, and Winston Churchill and his war cabinet sheltered there until the Cabinet War Rooms were ready. It had closed to passengers on 21 May 1932.

Which line's name is a portmanteau of the two stations in the name of the railway that opened it in 1906?

Bakerloo was coined as a portmanteau of the original company's name, fusing its two termini into a single word that stuck. The line opened on 10 March 1906 and today serves 25 stations, 15 of them underground.

Which north London hilltop station has the network's deepest platforms, 58.5 metres below ground?

Hampstead's platforms are 58.5 metres (192 ft) below ground because the station sits high on a hill, and its 55-metre lift shaft is the deepest on the Underground as well, making the lifts a long, slow ride.

Which Islington station has the Underground's longest escalators, a 61-metre climb rising 27 metres?

Angel's escalators, 200 ft long with a 90 ft vertical rise, are the longest on the Underground and in the United Kingdom. They arrived with a rebuild that replaced the station's lifts and its notoriously narrow island platform.

Which station is only 260 metres from Leicester Square, the shortest gap between Tube neighbours?

Covent Garden is a 260-metre Piccadilly line ride from Leicester Square, so short that walking is often quicker than queueing for the lifts. The station is also said to be haunted by actor William Terriss, murdered nearby in 1897.

Which station has more Underground platforms than any other on the network, ten in all?

Baker Street's ten platforms are the most of any station on the network, and its 1980s refurbishment replaced the old tiling with silhouettes of Sherlock Holmes, who lived at 221B. Five lines call there.

Which disused station hid the Elgin Marbles in wartime and later doubled as a film set for Atonement?

Aldwych closed on 30 September 1994 when new lifts could not be justified for so few passengers, and it has since appeared in V for Vendetta, Atonement and Fast & Furious 6. Its tunnels sheltered British Museum treasures during the war.

Which East End station's 1943 stairway crush killed 173, wartime Britain's largest single civilian loss?

Bethnal Green's unfinished station was in use as a shelter on 3 March 1943 when a crowd surged down the stairs and 173 people, 62 of them children, died in the crush. A memorial there calls it the war's worst civilian disaster.

A 1987 fire that killed 31 people and doomed the Tube's wooden escalators broke out at which station?

King's Cross St Pancras's fire began under a wooden escalator on 18 November 1987 and erupted into the ticket hall in a flashover, killing 31. Wooden escalators were phased out afterwards, the last going at Greenford in 2014.

Which service opened from Paddington to Abbey Wood in 2022, yet is not officially part of the Underground?

The Elizabeth line began carrying passengers through its new central tunnels on 24 May 2022, under a name that honours Queen Elizabeth II. TfL treats it as a distinct service with its own purple roundel.

Which Berkshire town marks the western end of the Crossrail route that tunnelled through central London?

Reading, alongside Heathrow Airport, is the western terminus, with trains running along the Great Western Main Line before diving into the new tunnels west of Paddington. At the eastern end the route splits for Shenfield and Abbey Wood.

Counting its two-stop shuttle but not the Overground or DLR, how many lines does the Underground run?

The Underground has 11 lines over 250 miles (400 km) of track; the Overground, the DLR and the purple line that opened in 2022 are run by TfL as separate services with their own roundels.

Which woven pile fabric with a wool face and cotton backing has upholstered Tube seats for a century?

Moquette, a French-named weave of cut or looped pile, has covered the seats of Tube trains for a century, its busy patterns disguising wear. Modern versions use a wool-nylon face on a cotton backing.

Which band's 1978 single 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight' describes a late-night mugging by a gang?

The Jam's single, released in October 1978, reached No. 15 in the UK with its story of a lone traveller set upon by a gang while waiting for the last train home.

Which Camden station lends its name to a Radio 4 panel-show game whose rules are never explained?

Mornington Crescent, the game on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, first aired on 22 August 1978 and consists of panellists naming stations while solemnly inventing rules and strategies, every one of them fictional.

What opened in 1900 with a flat 2d fare that earned it the nickname 'Twopenny Tube'?

The Central line's uniform 2d fare earned it the 'Twopenny Tube' nickname when it opened in 1900. Printed red on the map, it now serves 49 stations over 46 miles, making it the network's longest line.

Which of the Tube's lines, opened in stages from 1968, was the world's first full-scale automatic railway?

The Victoria line ran under automatic train operation from the outset, a system that lasted until 2012 and made it the world's first full-scale automatic railway. It is printed light blue and is one of only two lines entirely underground.

Which two-station shuttle, nicknamed 'the Drain', was sold to London Underground for £1 in 1994?

The Waterloo & City line, opened on 8 August 1898, runs between Waterloo and Bank with no stops in between and belonged to the main-line railway until British Rail handed it over for a nominal £1 on 1 April 1994. It is printed turquoise.

Which London company's name, shortened in French, gave Paris and then the world the word 'métro'?

The Metropolitan Railway was already being shortened to 'métropolitain' in French by the 1860s, and the Paris Métro, opened in July 1900, took its name directly from it. The magenta line still carries the name today.

Which calligrapher designed the Underground's sans-serif typeface from 1913 and then redrew its roundel?

Edward Johnston's typeface, first used in 1916, gave the Underground a single lettering style across every sign and poster, and it is still in use more than a century later. His redrawn roundel is the one still seen today.

Which architect designed 55 Broadway, the 1929 headquarters straddling St James's Park station?

Charles Holden's 55 Broadway, built between 1927 and 1929 for the Underground Electric Railways Company, was London's tallest steel-framed office block when finished. He later designed the 1930s modernist stations.

Who ran the Underground's design programme so well that Pevsner called him 'the ideal patron of our age'?

Frank Pick, who ran the London Passenger Transport Board from 1933 to 1940, commissioned the Tube's typeface, roundel, posters and modernist stations; Pevsner in 1968 judged him England's greatest patron of the arts that century.

Where did the Tube's first escalators open in 1911, ridden by a one-legged engineer to calm nerves?

Earl's Court's escalators opened on 4 October 1911 to supplement the lifts, and 'Bumper' Harris, an engineer with a wooden leg, rode them up and down on the first day to show they were safe. Every deep station eventually followed.

Which deep-level shelter beneath a Tube station housed 200 newly arrived Empire Windrush passengers in 1948?

Clapham South's shelter, one of eight dug beneath Tube stations between 1940 and 1942, put up 200 of the Windrush's West Indian passengers for four weeks while they found lodgings. The shelters were finished only after the Blitz had ended.

Which poet laureate narrated 'Metro-land', the 1973 BBC film about suburbs built along a Tube railway?

John Betjeman's film celebrated the suburbs north-west of London that grew up around the railway, marketed from about 1915 under the slogan 'Live in Metro-land'. He was poet laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984.

Which 1996 BBC serial by Neil Gaiman follows Door and the Marquis de Carabas through 'London Below'?

Neverwhere, devised by Gaiman and Lenny Henry, imagines a magical 'London Below' beneath the familiar city, where station names have become people and places. Gaiman turned the six-part BBC2 serial into a novel the same year.

Which artist's mid-1980s mosaics cover Tottenham Court Road station, a nod to its electronics shops?

Eduardo Paolozzi was commissioned in the mid-1980s to fill the station with hand-cut smalti mosaics whose motifs reflect the hi-fi and electronics shops of Tottenham Court Road. The panels became the station's most recognisable feature.

Whose 2008 hit 'Warwick Avenue' takes its title from a Tube station in Little Venice?

Duffy's 'Warwick Avenue', from her debut album Rockferry, peaked at number three in the UK on strong download and physical sales. The station it names sits on the brown line in Little Venice.

Which station's closed Jubilee line platforms, idle since 1999, doubled for the Tube chase in Skyfall?

Charing Cross lost its Jubilee line service when the 1999 extension bypassed it, but TfL keeps the platforms in working order, so film crews wanting a modern station use them for Skyfall, The Bourne Ultimatum, 28 Weeks Later and Paddington.

What river-based name did the Jubilee line carry in planning before the 1977 Silver Jubilee renamed it?

The Fleet line name, chosen partly because the route ran along Fleet Street, was dropped in favour of a pledge to mark the Queen's 1977 Silver Jubilee. Its original battleship grey was later lightened to silver.

Which unfinished station, doomed when Henrietta Barnett blocked housing nearby, would have been the deepest, at 67 m?

North End, nicknamed Bull and Bush after the pub above it, got platforms 67 m down but no lifts or surface building before work was abandoned; trains still pass through it. Barnett bought the land for the Heath Extension instead.

Which firm made aircraft parts in unfinished tube tunnels between Leytonstone and Newbury Park from 1942?

Plessey's underground factory opened in March 1942 with 2,000 staff making aircraft components in tunnels that would not see passenger trains until after the war. The stretch finally opened to the public in 1947.

Which Ilford station, opened in 1947, has a grand underground concourse modelled on the Moscow Metro?

Gants Hill's design followed a 1935 report by Underground engineers who had advised on the Moscow Metro, and it was decided to build one London station in the same grand style. Delayed by the war, it opened on 14 December 1947.

Which Chicago transit tycoon, jailed for larceny in Philadelphia, bankrolled three Tube lines around 1900?

Charles Yerkes, who had served time in Eastern State Penitentiary, set up the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to control the District and three half-built tube railways. He died in 1905, before any of them opened.

Whose 1994 statue outside Bank station stands on a plinth that hides a ventilation shaft for the Tube?

James Greathead's tunnelling shield bored the deep tubes, and his 1994 statue beside the Royal Exchange doubles as a disguise for a vent shaft. A section of his shield, painted red, turned up during Bank's refurbishment.

Which 1933 Piccadilly line station is a circular drum, now Grade II* listed, with a Tesla-coil-style finial?

Southgate's circular station, opened on 13 March 1933, has a flat projecting concrete roof and an illuminated finial designed to look like it came from Frankenstein's laboratory. It was upgraded to Grade II* in 2009.

Which Chelsea power station fed the Tube's electricity from 1905 until it was switched off in 2002?

Lots Road became operational on 1 February 1905 to power the new electric tubes and ran for 97 years until Transport Minister John Spellar switched off the turbines on 21 October 2002, after which the Tube drew power from the National Grid.

Which Essex town's Tube branch from Epping, down to 100 passengers a day, closed in 1994?

Ongar's branch was carrying only 100 passengers a day and losing money when it shut in 1994, and the line is now operated as the heritage Epping Ongar Railway. Its trains had been the Underground's only service that far into rural Essex.

Whose 'Labyrinth' gave all 270 stations a unique enamel maze for the Tube's 150th anniversary?

Mark Wallinger's 270 vitreous-enamel plaques, each a different single-path labyrinth in black on white with a red cross, were commissioned by Art on the Underground and installed through 2013, one for every station then open.

At which City of London station did a train hit a dead-end wall in 1975, killing 43 people?

Moorgate's crash at 8:46 am on 28 February 1975 killed 43 people and injured 74 when a train failed to stop at the terminus and ran into the end wall. It is considered the worst peacetime accident on the London Underground.

Which architect designed Canary Wharf station, the cavernous 1999 stop on the Jubilee line extension?

Norman Foster's practice won the design contract in 1990, and the station opened on 17 September 1999 as part of the Jubilee Line Extension.