“Smell of a man, smell of a musk. The noise of the train, from morning till dusk”.
The opening line of “Something’s Gotta Blow“, the last song on Joan Armatrading’s 2007 album “Into the Blues”. The song depicts a journey on a crowded subway system and the frustrations that was pushing commuters to their limits amongst delays, a broken down escalator, and people overheating.
In an interview, Armatrading, mentions that this was based on her personal experiences travelling on the London Underground, specifically the Northern Line, which had a reputation for frequently having delays, and for a period, it was even known as the “Misery Line” for that reason.
For many Londoners, the Northern Line is just another line on the Tube (as the system is commonly known), one that happens to be shaped like a mutated chromosome on the iconic tube map. This means that a passenger intending to go to Wimbledon could take the wrong branch and end up at Battersea Power Station Station (yes, Battersea Power Station Station) instead. Distinct from the North London Line and the Northern City Line, it is also the only line that serves the southernmost station on the network at Morden.
Like many of the Underground lines, the Northern Line has a long history. The first section opened in 1890 with six stations as the City and South London Railway, and was the first of the deep level “tube” lines on what is now the Underground
The C&SLR, however, was very claustrophobic by today’s standards. With a tunnel diameter of about three meters (ten feet), the trains were smaller than the tube trains that run today, and even smaller than the trains that run in the 11 foot diameter tunnels of the Glasgow Subway. The logic at the time was that since there was nothing to see in the dark tunnels, the trains would not need windows and the gateman (conductor) would announce each station, leading to the passenger cars being nicknamed “padded cells”.
Despite the potential for passengers to go insane by being treated like the insane, the new line was very popular – unlike the competing Metropolitan and District railways, who ran steam locomotives through shallow tunnels below the surface (with plenty of extra holes dug for ventilation), it was one of the first railways to use electric traction, drawing power from a third rail – initially the plan was to use cables like they do on the San Fransisco cable cars, but that plan fell through. Electric traction meant no smoke-filled stations, and no need for ventilation – the Metropolitan and District railways followed suit and electrified their own railways.
Over the years, the line continued to expand into the Northern Line we know today. The original tunnels were enlarged, stations were rebuilt, and the line was integrated into what became the London Underground. Even today, the Northern Line is being upgraded and extended. The current fleet of trains, the 1995 stock entered service in 1996, and underwent a refurbishment in 2015, and as of this writing, the newest section of the London Underground is the Battersea Power Station extension, which opened in 2021 with larger tunnels to comply with modern safety standards, and there are plans to extend it even further to Clapham Junction, one of the busiest interchange stations on the southern surface network. There also have been proposals to completely split the Northern Line to make the journey easier for those planning to see either a tennis game or flying pigs, though this would require extensive rebuilding of Camden Town station to do so.