The Tube: An Underground History

EXCELLENT! Dylan is back!

I believe that it is on Friday at 9PM in Scotland

Missed seeing that in the TV guide - sorry!
Alistair

Just watched it-----it's pants . Totally disjointed, inaccurate, trivial,with glaring errors one in particular about the "Brunels using the Greathead shield." and obtrusive background music which is almost foreground music. If You are going to make a program why dont you do it properly. Complete waste of time and space and completely amateurish.

I was also very disappointed as it did seem to gloss over lots of facts but there is not much else you can do in 1hr. However it was grea tto see Mike Ashworth with his conducted tour of 55 Broadway. I spent many an evening assisting him with conducted tours of Aldwych,Down Street,Brompton Road and the old Euston Stn.He hasn't changed much still has a wicked sense of humour.

It's become common in regional tv news that the journalist is expected to operate the camera to save money. This may be how the production company met the budget for this.

The shaky camerawork did come up quite a bit on Twitter during the airing.

the word I used in my previous post was not "pants"

I agreee with the points made about the quality of this episode, now where as good as the previous series, I just hope the new series is a lot better than this episode

Interestingly, given the generally bad reception here, the view from people who are not as 'Underground Savvy' seems to be a lot more appreciative.

I haven't watched it yet but as an 'amateur' who is merely a big fan of the underground I hope I get something from it.

I always refer to underground drivers as 'drivers' and so does everyone I know. And the people who travel ont the trains are 'passengers' rather than 'customers'. (And mainline trains have 'guards', not, 'conductors'.)

I learned English at school and I'm not allowing some oik from a train company's PR department to spin things some other way for purposes of their own.

Besides, 'train operator' makes it sound as if the job is trivial - like a 'lift operator'.



That isn't how it came across to me. It sounded as if they were saying that electricity and the tubes came hand in hand.



Anyway, I enjoyed it. The worst thing, as already mentioned, was the absurdly inappropriate and over loud music at certain points.

And I was pleased to note that Harry Beck got a good mention.

They interviewed me on New Year's Eve and I'm glad none of the footage made it into the final cut. Dodged a bullet there.

Drivers were always motormen to me and probably still should be despite the fact that the grade has embraced women since the late 1970s. I see no reason why a female cannot be a motorman, after all these days females tend to be actors rather than actresses! I agree that passengers will always be passengers just as Nestle's chocolate will always be 'nessals' and never 'nesslay'.

I'm afraid that English is not very English at all, 49 years ago when I entered grammar school there were apparently only 10 'English' words in common circulation according to my English teacher, the rest of the language being derived from the languages of the many countries in Europe and the rest of the world over hundreds of years of invasion of the British Isles, the years of the British Empire and the trade that Britain did around the world from the industrial revolution when Britain really was Great and the world's manufacturer.

As for the programme, there was little new in it, the highlight being the steam hauled train as it was a departure from other similar programmes. I don't know why but in the last few years BBC sound has been variable in the extreme, the penchant for drowning out speech with loud music or doorbell like chimes in almost everything produced is more than frustrating to me nowadays.
From the first seconds as the Farringdon supervisor took the phone call my thoughts were typical mediocre output from a company that should do better but what can we expect from a company with four channels but not enough content to fill one properly although having said that there have been some truly wonderful repeats on BB2 and BBC4 recently. 'The electric points have failed' suggested that Farringdon had had some new points laid but they looked like the same old EP layouts to me and so I began to switch off mentally thereafter.

The Beeb used to make excellent documentaries and this one was not up to scratch, what on earth was all that amateur footage about, surely the company could either find better footage or use its technical department to turn it into something viewable.

Better to be a "has-been" than a "never-was"

In my last few years 'on the track' I found several station supervisors to be less than happy at clipping and scotching points, walking into tunnels etc but that would not have been the case in the past when it was a more common part of the job and the supervisors back then were more railwaymen than customer service managers!

Like all things there is nothing intimidating to the well trained competent and wary individual. Any railway worker who is not aware of any and all dangers on or about the railway really should not be in the job. Clipping and scotching points should not be intimidating to a station supervisor and if he was worried by the juice rails I would have to ask where his 'juice mat' was! Because he didn't have or use one I suspect he was not worried by the juice so his comment was pointless and unnecessary.