Underground Overground, Wandering (Almost) Free (London Transport Museum)

Member Name: EnglishPatient

Product:	London Transport Museum
Date:	21/06/01 (330 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Evocative potted history of London Transport, Beautifully restored vehicles and memorabilia, Interactive facilities mean kids can sit in the driving seat of many buses and trains

Disadvantages: Areas inaccessible to disabled/prams

Like anyone located in England's capital city, I grew up travelling on London's Transport service. Its history (especially that which spanned my own period of usage from the early 1970s to the late 1980s) is as much a part of me as any other aspect of my life experiences.

Long-term illness and a move to the countryside mean I no longer make journeys by public transport, but a keen sense of identification and fascination with the Underground train system in particular, remains.

The London Underground has always seemed like a world within a world, a remarkable legacy of industrial achievements and architectural flair dating back to the late 19th century.

Beneath a Victorian city, a labyrinth of interconnecting railroad tracks was burrowed in order to ease the congested streets above. Such a process, starting such a project from scratch with comparitively primtive tools and methods, was necessarily gradual and problematic.

In an age now where the current Government cannot even construct a firm pedestrain bridge without farce, the concept of creating an entire subterranean transport network - covering the entire city and later reaching out beyond Central London - in the course of 20-30 years would be extremely remote to say the least. Yet that is precisely what was achieved in the first quarter of the 1900s.

The story of London Transport is retold and brought to life at its Museum in Covent Garden. An interactive exhibition featuring stunningly restored original vehicles and paraphenalia captures the essence of bygone eras and technology, while simultaneously looking at the role public transport will have in London's future.

From a personal point of view, the most captivating and indelible part of the Underground has always been its design sensibilities. The classic Underground map (or "Journey Planner" as it is now dubbed) is just one of many enduring examples, with its infamous diagrammatic
layout and use of colour. This incarnation has survived for 65 years virtually intact, save for minor changes in 1960 which were then dropped after only a few years in favour of the original 1935 stylings.

Place names on the routes stir vivid memories and associations, journeys are remembered by the sequence of stations on a certain line. These things stay with me, etching a London in my mind that I understand and feel an affinity with far more than the London of shifting cultural and social climates in the late 1990s and nascent 21st Century.

Throughout its history, aesthetics have been important to the ethos of London Transport. Each period left its own unique mark on the designs which have graced the service down the years, yet all of them kept close to insignias and typefaces first unveiled in the First World War era. The "Roundel" has been the Underground's distinctive logo for all that time, spawning a range of spin-offs for the other London Transport services. They are universally recognized trademarks, synonymous with the Captial itself.

During the booming 1920s and 1930s, the finest architects and artists were hired, who put their talents to designing some of the most durable and iconic monuments gracing the city, as well as a catalogue of evocative images depicting events and lifestyles of their time.

The Museum has a huge array of maps from all decades, detailing the evolution of London Transport and, since the service exists to serve an ever-changing world, also the progressive trends of society in general. From expansion to cater for commuters from the emerging suburbs in the 1920s, to the addition of whole new routes for the Docklands and Millennium Dome area in the 1990s, the Underground has moved with the times, for the times.

Likewise, the technology and efficiency has improved, although it's hard not to feel nostalgic for the rickety old tube carriages and delapidated wooden escalat
ors....with their smell and sense of history so pungent that even in the slightly anodyne surroundings of the London Transport Museum they remain to flood the senses once again, in their strangely comforting way.

Development and change is inevitable - if not always welcomed - but for every person who has travelled in and around the Capital, something of the Underground (and London Transport) registers with them even on the most subliminal of levels. Having spent most of my formative years on the trains and buses running through the city, the connection I have with it goes deeper than some.

Distance (both time-wise and geographically) has made it feel even more of a world within a world. A world that perhaps no longer exists in quite the way I remember it, but a world that in my memory I can still vividly recall.

Visit the London Transport Museum at the Covent Garden Piazza 7 days a week, and check out their comprehensive website at http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk

Access is fairly good, with lifts operating in the multi-level complex, but - unfortunately - two corner areas on the upper floor are completely inaccessible for wheelchairs and prams - they are cut off by a series of staircases.

Also highly recommended is the video "Underground : The Story Of The Tube " on Carlton PAL video, and also the book "Underground Art : London Transport Posters 1908 to the Present" by Oliver Green. These, and a multitude of other delights, can be found in the (rather cramped) Souvenir shop on-site.

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