Homelesness, Ursula Bahler, and the Vertical Rush

Peter B. Lloyd

Underground Training for Vertical Rush

To prepare myself for taking part in Vertical Rush, a vertical charity run for Shelter, I decided to run up the emergency stairwells of 'deep tube' London Underground stations. This was partly because I am a big fan of the underground railways. (In fact, last year I collaborated with author Mark Ovenden on the first ever history of the Paris Metro map, published in October 2008. And Mark and I are now working on the first history of the New York Subway Map. Why not London? Because there are already half a dozen books on the London Underground map.) But also partly because I spend a large part of my day in and around trains, commuting three hours each way between my present temporary home in Hackney and the office where I must work my current contract at Arqiva in Warwick.

Hampstead Tube Station

Hampstead Station is the deepest in the London Underground, at 181 feet (with 320 steps in the emergency stairway). It is not, by a long chalk, the deepest the world. The first rank goes to Park Pobedy station on the Moscow Metro, which has a depth of 318 feet; and the second deepest is Washington Park station on the Washington metro (now called MAX Light Rail) with a depth of 260 feet. The picture on the left is the view looking down onto the central pillar of the stair well.

I really thought I might get chucked out for dashing up the Emergency Stairs when there is no emergency. Urban life is now so tightly controlled that I was at first constantly afraid that jobsworth would pop out and tell me I was banned from the station for mis-use of the Emergency Stairs. But in fact, almost all the staff ignored me, probably thinking I'm just another harmless eccentric with nothing better to do than run up and down stairs. But one kindly lady who worked at the station invited me into the office for a post-run glass of water, and commented that she herself had never climbed the stairs.

Officially there are 320 steps, although each time I count them I get a slightly different number, usually around 318.

Covent Garden Tube Station

Covent Garden Tube Station has to be included in my training itinerary because it is the stop closest to the London Transport Museum. It was opened on 11th April 1907, on the Piccadilly line, It has about 192 steps. (The Wikipedia entry variously 192 steps and 195 steps. Nobody really knows how many steps there are in any given station. The photograph above shows my wife Deborah posing alongside the platform-level tiled sign to the Emergency Stairs, in colours very congruent with the tiles.

With only 193 steps, Covent Garden is a midget compared to Hampstead, and its Emergency Stairs can be sprinted up easily in two minutes.

Caledonian Road Tube Station

Why Caledonian Road? Isn't this a bit off the beaten track? Well, I had to go to Caledonian Road station (which originally opened on 15th December 1906) one night as the Victoria line was closed for engineering words (or "track improvements"), and I had to walk from Caledonian Road to Highbury & Islington and take the Overground. to Homerton

And where would you find tiles like these adorning a gym? Yet they were used extensively in the stations designed by Leslie Green.

But, for all its beauty, the stairwell is really quite shallow compared with other deep-tube stations, a mere 134 steps.