Original route for the vic

The idea of a line generally the same as the Vic was first put forward by LT in 1937. Between then and actual completion, there were dozens of changes of plan.

The route orginally authorised by the 1961 Act had the Walthamstow terminus in the open at Wood Street, with cross-platform interchange with BR's Chingford services. The electrification of the Chingford line would have made this project very complex, so the line was cut back to Hoe Street.

Another late change was the station at Warren Street.

For full details, read MAC Horne's "The Victoria Line": it's only a few quid.

Thought the last change was the addition of Pimlico, the only non-interchange sation.

There was also some controversy about the fact that the tunnels didn't take the direct route between Green Park and Victoria, thus avoiding Buck Palace. Claimed to be due to 'geological conditons'.

There was discssion around 1958-60 about whether the Bakerloo should be extended to Camberwell and/or the Vic to Fulham, Wimbledon, or Croydon. In the end it was decided that none of these would offer value for money.

One of the first planned route for the Victoria Line was a Green Park, Bond Street, Great Portland Street, Camden Town line with two branches in the north, one to Walthamstow and the other one to Enfield Town.
In the south he line would have reached Croydon and Coulsdon.
See more here: www.davros.org/rail/culg/

Let's hope that one day the line will be extended further south.

One of the original options was ro take over the Picc line from Finsbury Park and build a new Picc branch to Walthamstow. The idea was to would have saved on building Northumberland Park Depot.

Just one slight problem! It can't handle any more passenegers, thus ruling out any major extensions until Crossrail Line 2 is built.

and to think that when it first opened they were worried that the line might not attract sufficient traffic!

It is quite amazing that there was so much umming and eerring before the line was finally built. I would hate to think of how busy the SSLs must have been at Victoria before the Victoria Line was built.

The Victoria Line was generally quite well designed for the number of passengers that it was expected to carry e.g ATO, shallow curves and high speeds, high reversing capacity, and spacious stations (compared to older stations in London).

Unfortunately it is now much busier than originally expected, and the line capacity (restricted by signalling and dwell times), reversing capacity, and station passageways are now at their capacity limits. The VLU isn't going to realistically improve capacity more than 10-15%, in which time passenger numbers could increase by a higher percentage anyway.

The JLE extension learnt from the Victoria Line, by super-sizing stations to allow for future capacity increases, although improved safety regulations were also a bigfactor in the JLE station design. However these super-sized stations came at a very very big cost!