Central Line: Stratford - Bond Street

There's a motif that runs right through almost every photo from this leg of the journey...

...people. Dozens of them. All oblivious to me and my camera, thankfully. But still. People, eh? Whatever happened to those carefully-staged shots of beautifully-deserted stations in remote, romantically-abandoned locations?

That's Mile End above. It was too busy for me to stand right outside the station entrance, so I had to perch on a traffic island.

Wikipedia claims it's possible to travel between any two stations on the London Underground making only two changes if one of them is at Mile End. This is because, I imagine, it's an interchange with two of the most inter-connected lines, the District and the Hammersmith & City. It also presumes that you'd need to change at Mile End in the first place, which I'd suggest rules out around 80% of the network. Whatever, it's a threateningly busy station, through which trains have passed since 1902.

Its neighbour, Bethnal Green, opened much later, in 1946. Three years before, however, it was witness to one of the worst tragedies in the history of public transport. The half-finished station complex and connecting tunnels were used as a shelter during the Second World War. On 3rd March 1943 137 people were crushed to death attempting to enter the building during an air raid. Inexplicably, it was not until 50 years afterwards that a tiny commemorative plaque was erected at the site. There's nothing to see of the station above ground; it exists entirely below road level. It's not a nice place to linger.

The Central Line arrived at Liverpool Street in 1912, the first extension eastwards to what was called, at the time, the Central London Railway. Up till then the line had its terminus at Bank, where electric locomotives hauled by a train of trailer cars would run from Shepherd's Bush.

When it opened in 1900, the Central London Railway must have been a marvel. It ran directly through - as the name implied - the heart of the capital, calling at many of the city's major locations and tourist spots, at a depth once-thought impossible, charging just tuppence to travel any distance, bequeathing the line its nickname of the 'Twopenny Tube'.

Moreover, the terminus at Bank had to be built entirely underground thanks to the presence of the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England and Mansion House, plus the exhorbitant price of property in the City. Then, to avoid compensating the owners of all these lofty establishments for vibrations during construction and operation, tunnels had to be aligned to run under streets rather than buildings. This is why, when you're at Bank station, the platform curves in such a peculiar fashion, meaning you can't see one end from the other.

Bank is undergoing a mammoth refurbishment at the moment. It must be a nightmare of logistics to do anything to this station, what with the connections to the Northern and Waterloo & City Lines, the Docklands Light Railway, plus the escalator link to the Circle and District Lines at Monument.

St Paul's, by contrast, has just the Central Line as its tenant.

It was originally called, with a simplicity that's rather endearing, Post Office, thanks to it being near the headquarters of the GPO.

Again, because the tracks have to follow the route of the street, the eastbound and westbound tunnels here sit on top of each other. It's somewhat disconcerting to think of this out of context; you always imagine tunnels to be built adjacent to one another. Yet more refurbishment work is going on here at the moment. I only hope the new mayor of London displays the same concern and passion for upgrading the Underground as his predecessor.

Here's a topical announcement outside Chancery Lane:

An unexploded bomb had been found the day before near Bromley. Someone had done something - kicked it probably - and it had started ticking. While I was doing this stage of the journey a great hubbub was unfolding, and a bit later I heard it announced that much of the Underground in east London was to be closed later that evening and overnight. I'm guessing the bomb was ultimately defused safely. I certainly didn't hear anything more about it.

Chancery Lane is another station entirely underground, and like its neighbour has its two tunnels on top of each other. Those taking notes might like to know it is home to the shortest escalator on the entire network, and still has a deep-level air-raid shelter underneath it.

The next four stations I have visited before.

The Central Line didn't stop at Holborn until 1933, despite its tracks running directly under the station. This was because of another Central Line stop just one hundred yards away, British Museum, now one of those mythological disused stations of the Underground. British Museum was thought too far away from Holborn (on the Piccadilly line) to be connected by, say, a foot tunnel, so the two stations co-existed side by side on different lines.

You can see now why the originally Central London Railway, with stops such as Post Office and British Museum, plus the likes of St Paul's and Marble Arch and so on, was very much conceived around London's man-made landmarks and important edifices.

Anyway, British Museum was closed in 1933 when a new interchange was opened at Holborn. The station was kept in use up until the 1960s as an emergency command post in case of nuclear war.

Central Line stations opened at Tottenham Court Road, Oxford Circus and Bond Street before any other lines passed that way. Little now remains of their original guises, though there's that lovely architecture at Oxford Circus which nobody ever notices:

At one point Harry Selfridge wanted to build a subway from Bond Street directly into his new store. He was opposed at the time; nowadays no doubt his idea would've been proposed *before* the station itself.

Central Line: Woodford - Stratford

There's no subtle change in the atmosphere of the Central Line as you get nearer to central London. It happens very abruptly. Suddenly you're on a busy line with loads of passengers piling on and off the carriages. The contrast with the sleepy branch line-feel of the stations you've just left behind is jarring.

South of Woodford lies, unsurprisingly, South Woodford. It celebrated its 150th birthday a couple of years ago, along with a near-complete renovation that somehow managed to miss the giant signs on the platforms that still use the station's original name of South Woodford (George Lane). There's nothing at all to distinguish its surroundings. You're now in proper urban sprawl.

At least Snaresbrook has retained a bit of character, thanks to its Victorian exterior remaining largely un-meddled with (the fact you have to walk up a steep incline to reach the station adds to its feeling of grandeur) and some great features on the platform, including wood canopies and rather ornate, well, ornaments.

Leytonstone doesn't appear very distinguished from a distance...

...but up close you discover its walls are lined with brilliant murals and mosaics in honour of local boy Alfred Hitchcock, which were originally commissioned to mark the centenary of his birth in 1999:

It's here that the line dives underground for the first time (that's if you've avoided the Woodford-Wanstead loop-that-isn't-a-loop, which rejoined its parent line just north of Leytonstone).

I read somewhere that Leyton is apparently the most used stop on the entire Underground, but I find that extremely hard to believe. More used than Leicester Square? King's Cross St Pancras? Victoria?

Sure, it's busy, but not in the way that a mainline interchange is busy. Perhaps it just has ideas above its, erm, station. It used to be called Low Leyton. Maybe it's suffered poor self-esteem ever since. Another bit of folklore - to be taken with another huge pinch of salt - claims that to begin with trains weren't allowed to stop here on Sundays as the local vicar had successfully convinced the line managers the railway was "the devil's work".

If it's truly busy stations you're after, take Stratford. Here the Central Line emerges above ground briefly, as if to take a few gasps of air before plunging back into darkness. It's hardly the most tranquil of locations to pause for breath; Stratford is a warren of inter-connecting, overlapping lines that is only going to get bigger and more baffling as time goes on and the Olympics get nearer. Still, it's capped by a marvellous station building that hails from the 1990s when it was decided to route the Jubilee Line this way (along which I have already travelled).

There's only been a Central Line service running through here since 1946, when tunnels were completed linking Stratford (and hence the whole of east London and beyond) with Liverpool Street. Central London is calling. Again. *shudder*

Jubilee Line: London Bridge - Stratford

Just as with previous legs, this last section of the Jubilee Line boasts its unique class of passengers.

There are two discernable groups: the suits, who once upon a time would have been called yuppies, who work either at London Bridge or on the Isle of Dogs; and the locals who live around West Ham and Stratford. There are no tourists on this part of the Jubilee. You don't venture this far down the line if you're sightseeing, for there are no sights to see. Indeed, the only ostensible tourist attraction closed to regular visitors at the end of 2000: the Millennium Dome, for which North Greenwich station was exclusively built.

So you're faced with a sequence of stations serving people coming to and from work and then, beyond Canary Wharf, to and from home. Nobody hangs around this part of the Jubilee Line. Its stations are the newest on the whole network, but the least dwelt in. You use this stretch of the line to get somewhere else; the stations themselves sit in desolate areas of land largely devoid of anything whatsoever bar roads leading to other places far away.

Conversely, you also get some of the most extravagantly-designed buildings of the whole Underground, and in the shape of Canary Wharf the most specatular of them all. It seems this was always the intention, to bedeck the Jubilee Line extension with the finest efforts of Britain's finest contemporary architects. Pity nobody gets to see them other than those in a hurry to get somewhere else.

After the sprawling interchange of London Bridge you come to the compact and, it has to be said, rather pointless Bermondsey. Built seemingly for the sake of it to break the journey between London Bridge and Canada Water, it was apparently meant to have a multi-storey office block on top, but looks perfectly fine without.

Opened on 17th September 1999 it shares an endearing trait with most of its Extension brothers in letting natural light spiral right down almost to the platform. There are also traces of Westminster-esque futuristic caverns and big blocks of concrete sitting around to represent, well, big blocks of concrete sitting around.

Canada Water is a far more swaggering affair. Opened the same day as Bermondsey, it's basically a giant glass cylinder stuck in the ground, around which trail staircases and elevators spiralling you down and down to the trains below. At the bottom the space allotted to the platforms is so big it could fit one of the Canary Wharf skyscrapes on its side.

This endless size and splendour is all very well, but I have to admit it does make the actual business of getting to the precise place where you can board a train really really convoluted. No chance of anyone dashing for a last minute connection here; it must take at least five minutes to go from entrance to platform. There's an interchange here with the East London Line, due to close by Christmas.

Memo: must do East London Line before the end of the year.

The cathedral-like Canary Wharf was opened by by Ken Livingstone setting an escalator in motion on 17th September 1999. Norman Foster is the man responsible for what is unarguably the mightiest Underground station of them all. I think it's the size of at least one football pitch.

Squatting right between the tallest tower blocks in the land, the descent to the station floor is breathtaking in itself: a majestic escalator ride that opens up the entire edifice before your eyes.

Once again it takes ages to actually get to the platform. But again, such is the trade off between design brilliance and passenger convenience. Its biggest defect is its claim to be an interchange. In fact it takes ages to schlep all the way to the "connecting" Docklands Light Railway - ironic given Canary Wharf was the sole reason the Jubilee Line extension ended up unfurling the way it did. At one point investors demanded the entire Underground Map be changed to put Canary Wharf at the centre. Yup, you read that right.

North Greenwich, as already mentioned, was built solely for the Dome. When the Dome closed, the station had no point. Nowadays it has a bit of traffic but only when something is happening at the re-named O2 Arena. The evening I was there The Rolling Stones were playing and the place was thronging with middle age men looking discomfited in denim jackets and ill-fitting T-shirts. It's yet another massive construction, obviously conceived when it was thought millions would be streaming to and from the Dome, but yet again gets away with it by virtue of an imaginative design, decked out in blue tiles and loads of columns.

By now you've lost all traces of business travellers and local residents take over. There's been some kind of station on the site of Canning Town since 1846, but the Jubilee Line arrived on 14th May 1999, forming an intersection with the Docklands Light Railway and the overground North London Line. It's a brutal construction slap bang in the middle of a messy interchange of roads and bus routes. There's no reason whatsoever to linger here, and precious little compulsion either.

West Ham station, meanwhile, was completely done up as part of the Jubilee Line extension; it's a somehow a much more welcoming interchange than its predecessor, maybe because it's actually close to something of obvious relevance (a residential house or two) and doesn't involve walking miles to reach a platform.

But for all its capacity, West Ham is still utterly dwarfed by Stratford, the end of the Jubilee Line and a titanic meeting of all sorts of different services and connections. I'll talk more about its origins and its glittering future when I'm travelling the Central Line.

For the time being, Stratford's elephantine (I'm running out of different adjectives to describe "big") building gobbles up bits of platform and brickwork dating back to 1839, and is a fittingly bombastic conclusion to a voyage along one of the most ostentatious portions of Underground to be found.