伦敦地铁150岁了

伦敦地铁150岁了

伦敦地铁150岁了！像红色电话亭和红色公交车一样，伦敦地铁也是这座国际化大都市不可或缺的文化标志。其实，地铁就是一本现代化城市的故事书，记载着最细微的人文关怀和最广阔的文化图景。伦敦算是一位现代化进程中的长者，中国的城市正在经历的城市化过程中的很多或喜或忧的元素都是伦敦昨日的再现。所以，这趟伦敦地铁之旅对于同样挤地铁上班的你一定是别有一番感受吧。   By Kate Quill It's a grey, chilly English winter morning and I'm making my way through the busy concourse of Paddington Railway Station. I'm about to begin one of the most eye-opening travel tours of my life. I'm not about to hop on a train out of London; instead, I'm about to hop on one travelling underneath it. On January 9 th, the London Underground turned 150. This is an important birthday, because the Tube was the first subterranean train system in the world. It was a miraculous feat of Victorian engineering when the first section of the "Metropolitan Railway" opened in Paddington in 1863 - using, incredibly, steam locomotives to travel the tunnels. It was an instant hit, carrying around 26,000 passengers a day. Like most Londoners, I take the Underground for granted when it works smoothly, whizzing me miles across the city in a matter of minutes, and moan about it when it's overcrowded and delayed. So, in honour of its birthday, I decided it was time to pay homage to this labyrinthine arterial system that lies beneath my feet. Michelle Buckley, from Insider London, a walking tours company, is my guide. We stand for a few minutes on the concourse, as Buckley explains how the first underground railway journey in history began here, 150 years ago. "Congestion on London's road is not a modern phenomenon," she says, holding up a copy of a 19th-century engraving by Gustave Dore. This depicts an apocalyptic scene of a London street swarming with horse-drawn carts, omnibuses, pedestrians, traders and flocks of sheep being driven to market. In the 19th century, London's population was booming, growing from one million in 1800 to almost seven million by 1900. Something needed to be done to get the city moving, and the man who came up with this "outrageous idea" of an underground transport system, Buckley tells me, was the solicitor Charles Pearson. Reactions to his proposals were mixed, with newspapers such as The Times deriding it as an absurd fantasy. Buckley and I descend into the Tube and travel two stops on the District Line to Notting Hill Gate, an early Tube station that opened in 1868. Buckley points to its beautiful Victorian brick archways, enormous glazed roof and round glass-and-iron pendant lights above us. "They're the original 1868 lights," she says. Baker Street Tube, too, still has these beautiful curved globes hanging over the platforms. Buckley's talk is a roll call of great entrepreneurial names who made the system happen, but it's the men who cared about the aesthetic experience of travelling on the Tube whom I find most inspiring. There are two characters who stand out in this story: Leslie Green and Frank Pick. We take the Central line to Oxford Circus, where we emerge on the pavement by Argyll Street. There are two station buildings here, but they are dramatically different in style. One you would scarcely notice. The other, designed by Leslie Green in 1906, is quite different: a distinctive, arched construction covered in rich, oxblood-coloured terracotta tiling. Beautiful Arts and Crafts lettering proudly announces the station's name on the facade, as if it were a West End theatre or grand hotel. There are 27 of Green's stations dotted all over London that share this bold design and exotic, deep red colour. His work began to unify the look of the Tube, making the stations elegant, recognisable landmarks on busy city streets. These were ideas that would be enthusiastically carried forward by the Underground's visionary managing director, Frank Pick, in the 1920s and 1930s. "Pick cared deeply about the design and look of the Tube; he believed that stations should be places to visit and admire, not just use," explains Buckley. To see a fine example of station design under Pick's guidance, we travel south to Piccadilly Circus and emerge onto its magnificent circular ticket hallway. This space is pure Hollywood—a glamorous Art Deco design that is as elegant as it is functional and redolent of the Jazz Age, with soft lighting and smooth, pale stone surfaces. It was designed by Charles Holden in 1928, who built several notable Art Deco stations in London's suburbs.

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