London's underground

For the Modeller and Historian

by Henry F. Howson

First compiled by the late H. Howson in the early 1950s, London's Underground has been published regularly for more than 50 years. Widely regarded as the most comprehensive general history of the Underground, the book's 10th edition was published in 2003. At the time of the publication of the last edition the book concluded with the then recent opening of the Jubilee Line extension and the creation of the Private/Public Partnership that was designed to develop an Underground network suitable for the 21st century. On the positive side, in the five years since the publication of the last edition significant investment has gone into the Underground network, but the PPP has proved less than successful with the recent problems with the Metronet consortium. Also, since the publication of the last edition the threat of terrorism has increased and, along with it, the ever present issues of security and privacy, the massive growth in the Oyster card system and the award of the 2012 Olympics to London. This latest updated volume covers the many changes over the last seven years as well as looking at the history of the system and includes a whole new range of colour illustrations to accompany the completely refreshed and rewritten text.

Genres: Nonfiction, Railways, London, History

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

Reviews

[Obione_TdG]

My review is about the ~1999 edition. Not too bad, but often overly verbose and confusing. Would have been better to divide the text in subsections. Good pictures, but almost randomly placed.