London Underground - Notable People

Notable People

• Frank Pick, Managing Director of the Underground Group from 1928 and Chief Executive of the London Passenger Transport Board from its creation in 1933 until 1940.
• Lord Ashfield, chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) from 1910 to 1933 and chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) from 1933 to 1947.
• Edward Watkin, responsible for the building of the Manchester Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway's "London Extension" during the 1890s, which was the last main line to be constructed into London.
• Edgar Speyer, chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL, forerunner of the London Underground) from 1906 to 1915, a period during which the company opened three underground railway lines, electrified a fourth and took over two more.
• James Henry Greathead, who helped with the Tower Subway, and became resident engineer on the Hammersmith extension railway and the Richmond extension of the Metropolitan District Railway, a post which he held for four years.
• Charles Pearson, who published a pamphlet in 1845 calling for the construction of an underground railway through the Fleet valley to Farringdon. The proposed railway would have been an atmospheric railway with trains pushed through tunnels by compressed air. Although the proposal was ridiculed and came to nothing (and would almost certainly have failed if it had been built, due to the shortcomings of the technology proposed), Pearson continued to lobby for a variety of railway schemes throughout the 1840s and 1850s. In 1846, Pearson proposed with the support of the City Corporation a central railway station for London located in Farringdon that was estimated to cost £1 million (approximately £71.7 million today).
• Daniel Gooch, who designed and built 22 outside-cylinder 2-4-0 locomotives for the line in 1863.
• Charles Yerkes, an American tycoon with experience of operating electric tramways in Chicago. He was also an expert in arranging the complex financial structures necessary to raise the capital the railway companies needed. In 1900, he bought the powers of the CCE&HR company. The following year he secured effective control of the District with a view to its electrification.
• Harry Beck, a London Underground employee who, in 1931, devised the famous diagrammatic map, which is the template for most rapid transit system maps across the world.