The Tube Google Doodle – 150th Anniversary Of The Tube
The Tube Google Doodle
The Google homepage for the search engine’s British users was replaced by a The Tube Google Doodle celebrating the 150th anniversary of London’s underground train network on the January 9th back in 2013. The Tube Google Doodle featured a map of the Tube network featuring all of its iconic lines, including Bakerloo, Metropolitan, Central and Jubilee.
The Google logo in The Tube Google Doodle was represented in a change of colours from its iconic red, yellow, green and blue through a series of Tube lines. To demonstrate the sky blue Victoria line comprised the second “G” of the search engine’s logo and the “L” of the logo was represented by the orange of the London Overground line.
Despite being known as the Tube or the Undergound, 55% of the network’s rail is in fact above ground. The system is comprised of 277 individual stations and is made up of 402 kilometres of rail.
The idea of creating an underground rail network to link some of London’s railway stations was first proposed in 1830. However, it was not until 1854 that permission to construct such a line was granted. Following this, the world’s first underground rail line was opened during the January of 1863, carrying passengers between Farringdon and Paddington. Initially the trains which ran on the line were pulled by steam engines and interior lighting was provided through a series of gas lights. It was an instant success and on the opening day alone the line carried over 38,000 passengers.
Five years later the second line was opened, known as the Metropolitan District Railway and ran from South Kensington to Westminster. By 1907 a number of the underground lines were powered by electricity. The naming of the Bakerloo line in 1906 received wide disapproval, The Railway Magazine stated that the name was a “gutter title”. In the opening years of the twentieth century a joint marketing agreement was made by a large majority of the separate underground rail companies. As part of this agreement, through tickets for various lines were available for the first time and comprehensive network maps were provided. It was at this time that the now iconic “UNDERGROUND” signs began appearing outside Tube stations in central London.
In 1933 London’s bus, tramway and underground railway operators were merged, to become the London Passenger Transport Board, later renamed London Transport. At this time the now iconic, diagrammatic Tube map appeared for the first time, designed by Harry Beck. Throughout the Second World War many of the Tube stations were used as underground air raid shelters, providing the citizens of London with sanctuary from the Blitz.
With the nationalisation of Britain’s railways in 1948, maintenance of the underground network suffered, as priority was given to the reconstruction of main line railways. Due to this, a number of proposed expansion projects included in the New Works Program were abandoned.
Despite being over 150 years old, construction on the Tube is far from complete. There are plans to extend the Northern line to Battersea and to extend the Bakerloo line to Camberwell.
The Tube has become an iconic landmark within London, due to this it has featured in numerous films including Skyfall, Creep and An American Werewolf in London. The Tube also featured in both the graphic novel and the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. London’s native detective and brain child of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes has had adventures on the Tube in the story “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plan” and more recently in the televised series Sherlock. The Tube network has also inspired a number of songs including The Jam’s “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”.