This is just one of two escalators and not counting the various staircases. And I don’t believe this was the deepest one I traveled through.
I went to the Transport Museum in Convent Garden (very nice by the way) but found no answer and no one seemed to know. 😊

by Independent-Ant-01

36 comments

  1. Because the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep…

  3. They have to go under everything already there – building foundations, other tube tunnels, sewers and water mains…

    They’re only deep when necessary, mostly the central parts of the Piccadilly, Victoria & Jubilee lines. Outside z1 they’re often overground.

  4. Because they have to fit under all the other stuff that’s underground. The newer the line the deeper they get!

  5. Basically there’s two ways to build a railway underground: dig a trench and then cover it up, or bore a deep tunnel. London uses both, each option has different pros and cons. The deep tunnels avoid all of the pipes, foundations, and other crap that’s buried beneath London. There’s also geologic considerations in terms of how far below the surface the better materials for tunneling are, as well as hills on the surface (trains work best on relatively flat gradients)

  7. So we have a safe space when the Nazis drop bombs on us

  8. Google this: “Piccadilly Circus Underground Station London cutaway diagram in 1989 by Gavin Dunn.” It’ll come up with Reddit posts but I couldn’t get a link.

  9. They aren’t as deep as Soviet era tube stations. The ones in Russia, can take a minute and a half to go down on them. Not fun to walk up, when the station is about to close and they turn the power off. Hopefully, they don’t do that anymore it wasn’t fun.

  11. There’s a pretty interesting documentary on Tubi (if you’re into that sorts thing) called Secrets of the London Underground. I became fascinated with the tube after visiting London for the first time a few months ago and found that show to answer all of my questions and then some. Worth the watch if you ask me.

  12. I didn’t see anyone else mention this:

    Yes Londons ‘rats nest’ nature gets in the way of subsurface construction, but the city also has a significant geological feature.

    A big fuck-off river.

    Specifically, the Thames runs over clay under its sediment, which is as resistant to water as I am to the 13th mince pie at 4pm on Christmas before Christmas dinner (aka not fucking very).

    So unless you want every bakerloo commuter wetter than your mum when she sees me change a tire, it’s best to dig extra deep to avoid as much water as possible if you have to cross the river.

    On second thought, maybe submerging the entire train on the Thames might be the only way to clean a bakerloo train, it can hardly make them dirtier…

  13. A bigger question I have is, why do you all drive on the left, but on escalators you go on the right?

  15. Because life isn’t about the destination it’s about the journey.

  16. People think London is built on clay, but it’s mostly built on London.

  17. Total guess, but given the Elizabeth Line is less deep than the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road, is engineering ability a factor?

    That is, the Tube is pretty old and it was safest to go deep at that point, unless you were doing the dig-and a cover style.

  18. Go to Moscow, then you will experience truly deep underground tube lines. Have never experienced such long stairs going down. Then you finally arrive to these beautiful stations, incredibly decorated.

  20. Here to remind everyone that Pyongyang, North Korea has the deepest metro system in the world. Around twice as deep as the deepest part of the Northern Line

  21. To keep it level when it goes under hills and the foundations of buildings

  22. If you think it’s deep then visit Kiev. I’ve been there once and one station was so deep I felt like going into a coal mine shaft.

  24. Interesting thread. Didn’t expect to learn so much!

  26. Did you try using the Covent Garden Tube emergency steps? You’ll see how deep it is then 🤣😉

  27. Not strictly under London but the River Westbourne flows through Sloane Square Station above the platforms in a conduit that survived a direct hit on the station by the Luftwaffe. The engineering under London is astonishing. The [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_London) is a good primer with excellent links

  29. Had to be threaded below and around existing infrastructure, under building foundations, older tube lines, and multiple underground rivers as well as the Thames.

    Amsterdam’s recently finished North-South line is also quite deep because it had to be a safe distance below the 400+ year old city foundations, canals and the Ij which is around 3x deeper than the Thames in central London.

  30. Well they have to get under all the buildings / foundations / drainage and other tube tunnels for a start.

    Then things like hills, Angel is uphill quite a long way from kings cross so the tube is a lot deeper there to save the train going all the way up.

  31. We like to think of them as more mysterious and complicated. But I can see how you might think that they are deep.

  32. The Circle Line is not, that’s open to the sky in places.

    Only about 45% of the London Underground is actually underground; the majority of the system is above ground, especially in the outer areas of London. The network consists of two types of lines: sub-surface lines that run just below the surface and deep-level “tube” lines that are mostly underground.

    The deepest London Underground station is Hampstead, at 58.5 meters below ground due to its location on a hill. However, if considering depth below sea level, the deepest station is Waterloo, with its Jubilee line platforms being 26 meters below sea level.

    The London Underground pumps millions of litres of water daily using electric pumps to drain tunnels and prevent flooding from groundwater, rainfall, and bursts pipes.

  33. 1. London is a 2000 year old city. There is a lot in the ground to avoid.
    2. Geology. They could only dig through certain strata safely and easily, which is one of the prime reasons there is no real tube south of the river. The geology is more challenging (hence south londoners being rock hard).
    3. Trains can’t go up and down much of an incline, so once they need to go deep somewhere they have to stay deep for a long time. That’s also why underground becomes overground or even elevated in parts. You can’t just point he tracks up or down as you want to.

  34. Because there is a big ole river under London and several hidden rivers too.

    The tunnels a have to be deep to get under obstacles like that.

  35. We were trying to get to Australia but gave up and went to Canning Town instead

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