Projects
A great deal of the early work of the LTE was spent repairing and replacing stock and stations damaged during the war. LTE also oversaw the completion of the delayed Central Line expansion, which had been part of the 1935-40 New Works Programme begun by the LPTB. By 1949, the westbound extension to West Ruislip and the eastbound extension to Ongar was finished.
The main priority of the BTC was to modernise its main-line railways and many of the uncompleted projects which were part of the New Works programme were postponed or shelved. These included plans to extend the Bakerloo line to Camberwell, and to extend the Northern line to Bushey Heath, linking up the separate branches terminating at Edgware and Mill Hill East in the process.
The LTE completed of the electrification of the outer sections of the Central line and the Metropolitan line.
On the Central line steam locomotives were still operating between Greenford and West Ruislip in the west and between Leytonstone and Ongar in the east. Electrification to West Ruislip was completed in 1948, leading to the start of passenger trains which did not require locomotive changes on 21 November of that year. On the same day electrification round the "Fairlop loop" in the east was completed. And from 25 September 1949 electric tube trains were in operation between Loughton and Epping. This left a steam shuttle service operating between Epping and Ongar which was not electrified until 18 November 1957. New trains were introduced on the line in 1959.
The modernisation of the Metropolitan Line, the final part of the New Works programme which had not been completed or scrapped, was finally given the go-ahead by the BTC in 1956. This consisted of electrification between Rickmansworth and Amersham and Chesham, some station reconstruction and the replacement of the rolling stock. Steam locomotives were fully withdrawn from the Underground network on 9 September 1961. By the end of 1962 new A stock trains had replaced all the pre-war stock on the Metropolitan Line.
The London Transport Executive started direct recruitment in Ireland and the Caribbean in the 1950s.
The LTE oversaw the elimination of London's trams in 1952 and trolleybuses in 1962. In terms of bus transport the iconic Routemaster bus was first introduced in 1956.
Read more about this topic: London Transport Executive
Famous quotes containing the word projects:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)