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Londoners are used to being rattled about on the tube. The world’s oldest and most iconic underground railway is a sprawling labyrinth of tunnels, stations (both swankily brand new and eerily long-disused) and atmosphere – a kind of alternative version of the huge diverse city above its head in negative. Also, it’s really old now. So it should come as no surprise that it has some properly ancient trains still running on its lines.
In fact, the venerable Bakerloo line (the brown one) has some rolling stock on it that was introduced in 1972. That right, these carriages are 50 years old in 2022, and some of the oldest continuously-in-use trains running in the UK.
If you’re into the history of London public transport, there is a fascinatingly nerdy breakdown of the history of these trains on the brilliant Ian Visits site. If you think that the Underground can feel a bit hit-and-miss in the twenty-first century, it was clearly a lot more Wild West in the 1970s, with trains swapped between lines, proposed extensions and new lines being proposed and then cancelled, all under the pall of awareness that the network and its trains were getting old and worn out and that there would probably never be enough money to sort it all out and keep apace of demand from London’s ever-growing hordes of commuters.
So, next time you’re being jostled about as your Bakerloo tube screams round a bend somewhere between Elephant & Castle and Lambeth North, just remember that it’s travelled literally millions of miles in its life, probably been smoked all over, been thrown up in, had endless cans swept out of it and been hosed out innumerable times. Its saggy seats are now in their sixth decade of supporting dozing office workers who assured their other half that they were going out after work ‘just for one’.
So whatever the shiny Elizabeth line has to offer in the way of air-con and big womblike stations, let’s just see how it’s doing in 2072, shall we?
There’s a flat on the market overlooking Charing Cross station (not the tube one).
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