Underground Electric Railways Company of London
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 and served destinations in Middlesex, Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey.
[1] By 1901, the DR was struggling to compete with emerging motor bus and electric tram companies and the CLR, which were eroding its passenger traffic.
[3] It also had parliamentary approval for a congestion-relieving deep-level line that was to run beneath its existing route between Gloucester Road and Mansion House.
[4] By 1898, American financier Charles Tyson Yerkes had made a large fortune developing the electric tramway and elevated railway systems in Chicago, but his questionable business methods, which included bribery and blackmail, had finally drawn the disapproving attention of the public.
Yerkes had unsuccessfully attempted to bribe the city council and Illinois state legislature into granting him a 100-year franchise for the tramway system.
At South Kensington, it was to connect to the deep-level line planned by the DR. On 12 September 1901, the DR-controlled board of the B&PCR sold the company to the MDETC.
Substantial progress had been made before it was stopped following the collapse of the BS&WR's parent company, the London & Globe Finance Corporation, due to the fraud of its managing director Whitaker Wright in 1900.
A section of track between Earl's Court and High Street Kensington was electrified with a four-rail system and a jointly owned test train operated a shuttle service between February and November 1900.
Having proven the practicality of electric traction, the two companies set up a joint committee to select a supplier of equipment for the electrification of their networks.
The system delivered current by overhead conductor wires and was cheaper than alternatives using power rails and required fewer electrical sub-stations.
[11] After some acrimonious debate between the two companies, some of which was carried out in public through the letters pages of The Times newspaper, the dispute went to arbitration at the Board of Trade.
[17] Victorious, the MDETC quickly began the electrification of the DR's tracks, starting with an extension from Ealing Common to South Harrow that opened with its first electric service in June 1903.
[24] Stations on all three lines were provided with surface buildings designed by the UERL's architect Leslie Green in a standardised style modified for each site.
[25] These consisted of two-storey steel-framed buildings faced with red glazed terracotta blocks with wide semi-circular windows on the upper floor.
[note 4] At platform level, the wall tiling featured the station name and an individual geometric pattern and colour scheme designed by Green.
[29] Apart from the electrification of the DR, Yerkes did not live to see the completion of the fast-paced construction works that he set in motion; he died in New York on 29 December 1905 and was replaced as UERL chairman by Edgar Speyer.
Because of greatly over-optimistic pre-opening predictions of passenger numbers, the lines failed to generate the income expected and needed to fund the interest payments on the UERL's substantial borrowings.
Speyer unsuccessfully tried to persuade the London County Council (LCC) to inject £5 million into the UERL and used some of his own bank's money to pay-off disgruntled shareholders threatening bankruptcy proceedings.
[41] This bill received royal assent and was enacted on 26 July 1910 as the London Electric Railway Amalgamation Act 1910 (10 Edw.
[52] Later, during 1932 and 1933, the Piccadilly Tube was extended at both ends: in the north from Finsbury Park to Cockfosters, and in the west from Hammersmith to Hounslow and Uxbridge using the DR's tracks.
[1] In addition, a programme of modernising many of the Underground's busiest central London stations was started; providing them with escalators to replace lifts.
[53] New and refurbished rolling stock was gradually introduced on a number of lines with automatic sliding doors along the length of the carriages instead of manual end gates, reducing boarding times.
[54] By the middle of the 1920s, the organisation had expanded to such an extent that a large, new headquarters building designed by Charles Holden was constructed at 55 Broadway over St James's Park station.
Stanley aimed for regulation that would give the UERL group protection from competition and allow it to take substantive control of the LCC's tram system; Morrison preferred full public ownership.
[58] As Stanley had done with shareholders in 1910 over the consolidation of the three UERL controlled tube lines, he used his persuasiveness to obtain their agreements to the government buy-out of their stock.
[59] The Board was a compromise – public ownership but not full nationalisation – and came into existence on 1 July 1933, with Stanley as chairman and Pick as Chief Executive.
