125th anniversary: The story of the Subway stop by stop. But where will it go next?

There is no sign of it now of course, 125 years on, but it was close to West Street, in a steam-powered plant, that the energy was provided for the cable that originally ran the underground system. The cable effectively pulled the carriages round the six-mile circuit and it was operated from the plant by drivers known as gripmen. It was a highly skilled job applying the brakes so the carriages stopped at the platforms but it was helped by building all the stations the same way. On the approach, there was a slight incline to aid the braking and on leaving there was a downwards slope to help the carriages get going again

The cable-hauled system used in Glasgow was the first of its type in the world and John Messner, curator of transport and technology with a remit covering the Subway, explains how hard it was to operate. “It sounds like you needed brute force,” he says, “but you had to be very skilled, the gripman had to know exactly when the station was coming and know exactly when to release the grip and engage the break. You could miss the station, you could stop short if you turned the wheel too quickly the judder forwards and the passengers would get a jolt, It was a pretty skilled job.”

Right, on with the trip. The next station is Bridge Street and it’s here that you start to see just how much the city that the Subway serves has changed since the underground opened. When it started operation on Monday, December 14th 1896, the area around Bridge Street station, including the Gorbals, was densely populated and when the trains started running, it was workmen from the tenements who were among its most frequent pasengers.

The Glasgow Herald reported on it the day after the grand opening. “The Glasgow District Subway was opened for public traffic yesterday,” it said. “The early cars were largely taken advantage of by workmen, and from eight to ten o’clock there was a great rush of all classes, the various outlying stations being fairly besieged.” The Herald reported that, on the whole, the first day went well at first, although though there was a breakdown in the Outer circle, obliging some passengers to leave the trains and walk along the line to the nearest station.

And then disaster struck and it’s near the next station on the line, St Enoch, that it happened. Just south of the stop, at 11pm on the first day of the Subway’s operation, two of the trains collided. The Herald reported that one of the passengers, a young boy of 14, “was removed to the Royal Infirmary in an ambulance waggon” and that in all 18 people were injured. The subway was then closed for a few days “to enable further arrangements to be made in connection with the working”.

It was not a good start, but let’s head on to Buchanan Street station to get an idea of what the underground would have looked like in the early days. Buchanan Street in particular is very different to the way it would have been in the 1890s. In those days, all the stations had platforms in the middle and the trains had doors on one side only. The carriages were also painted in a crimson and cream livery, the colours of its owners the Glasgow District Subway Company. Smoking was also permitted in the trains, but in the rear carriages only.

But we’ve reached Cowcaddens station now, then St George’s Cross and Kelvinbridge where some of the biggest changes happened to the Subway. Although it was a big success initially, by the 1970s the use of the underground had declined dramatically. Partly, it was because of the changes that were happening in Glasgow - many of the shipyards and dockyards were shutting down and great swathes of tenements along the route of the Subway on the south side were being demolished. Even though the entire system had been electrified in the 1930s, the infrastructure had also become somewhat dilapidated. The situation had become so dire that the Greater Glasgow Transport Executive, which had taken over the running of the Subway and was the forerunner to SPT, had considered shutting the system down entirely.

The change eventually came in the 1970s in a massive refurbishment that cost £43million at the time. It involved relaying the six miles of track, repairing the tunnels and replacing the signalling system and it took two and a half years to complete. Many of the stations, including Kelvinbridge, were also redesigned - the old entrance via a tenement block on South Woodside Road was replaced and an escalator built up to Great Western Road.

Back on the train, we’re heading to Hillhead station on Byres Road in the heart of student land. It is from Hillhead that groups of young people, and people who should know better, often depart on the famous Subway pub crawl, sometimes known as a “subcrawl”. The aim is to get out at every station and have a drink at the nearest pub. That’s 15 stations. And 15 drinks. And if you’re really sticking to the rules, you have to stand up in the train and not hold on to anything. We cannot be held responsible for the consequences for anyone who does this.

So on we go through Kelvinhall to Partick, a station that was the scene of one of the biggest events in the Subway’s history. Unlike the London Underground, the Glasgow Subway wasn’t used for shelter during the Second World War, but in September 1940 a German bomb landed on the bowling green in Beith Street, just south of the old Merkland Street station, which was closed as part of the 70s modernisation and replaced by Partick. The bomb exploded just above the train line and the Subway was forced to close for 131 days so repairs could be made.

“This was one of the most dramatic events in the Subway’s history,” says John Messner, “because other than the refurbishment in the 1970s, that was the longest spell when the Subway wasn’t running. It was very dramatic and thankfully nobody was killed.”

One of the aims of the modernisation at Partick was to link it directly with the national rail network and it is still the only station on the Subway that does it. There was a time when passengers on the Subway could alight at the grand gothic-style St Enoch Subway station to catch the London train from St Enoch train station. They could also get out at Buchanan Street train station but both stations were closed and demolished as part of the restructuring of the railways in the 1960s. A moving walkway was installed between Buchanan Street Subway station and Queen Street train station as part of the 1970s upgrades.

So now we’re crossing the Clyde, or heading under it, to Ibrox and Govan stations where we start to see what the future of the Subway will look like. Near Govan is the Subway’s Broomloan depot where, on a stretch of track, new trains are being tested out, the twist being that they will be part of a system called Unattended Train Operations - in other words, there won’t be a driver.

The £200million contract to build the trains was awarded to the train builder Stadler in 2016 and will eventually mean 17 new trains. The tunnels of Subway are comparatively small - only 11ft in diameter and with the unusually small track gauge of four feet from rail-to-rail, so the new trains have to be designed to fit. However, in other respects, passengers will notice big changes: there will be four carriages instead of three for example, you’ll be able to walk the entire length of the train and passengers at the front will be able to enjoy an open view into the tunnels.

Exactly when the new trains will be online is still unclear - modernisation works, including upgrades to the stations, have been going on for a decade and the new trains will represent the completion of the project. But it will mean the biggest change and look to the Subway since the 1980s.

The modernised 1970s Subway was officially inaugurated by the Queen in November 1979 but building work had not actually finished and the line did not re-open to the public until April 1980 - five months late and at the heart of a major financial scandal. The work was originally estimated to cost £11 million but the final bill soared to almost £60m, prompting calls for the then Scottish Secretary to set up an independent public inquiry into the massive cost overrun.

The Scottish Office, which had promised a 75% grant, rejected £17m of the final bill. leaving Strathclyde's ratepayers to find almost half the total cost of the modernisation.

A few months later, in March 1981, the Underground welcomed its 10 millionth passenger ¬- Mrs Valerie Thomson, of Maryhill, who, with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, was presented with a food hamper by councillor Malcolm Waugh, vice-chairman of Strathclyde region’s highways and transport committee. Mrs Thomson said she used the system several times a week. “It is better, quicker and cheaper than the buses”, she said.

Mr Waugh also praised the modernisation programme and said the Subway was now running smoothly and could start to pay its own way. The system had really caught on over the past five months, she said, despite a recent a fare increase of 5p. Research indicated that the initial hope of attracting 15 million travellers annually would be surpassed in the year ahead.

So now, back in 2021, we’re heading for the final stretch, through Cessnock, Kinning Park and Shields Road. Here again there is evidence of the great social upheavals that changed Glasgow and the Subway. Kinning Park and Shields Road used to be part of a large community of tenements but in the 1960s many of them were demolished to make way for the M8. It has left some of the stations, including West Street, effectively in the wrong place for many of the people who are commuting into Glasgow every day.

There has been talk, of course, of extending the system. It would be a hard and expensive job - tunnelling beneath the city is difficult due to solid rock and abandoned mine shafts. But in 2005, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport employed consultants to look at extending the system.

They reported that extending the network to provide a new East End Circle with stations at St Mungo's Onslow, Duke Street, Celtic Park, Dalmarnock, Newhall and Gorbals would cost £2.3 billion.

The current SNP city council has also said it would like to investigate possible extensions to the east and north. SNP councillor Kenny McLean has said his party is keen on the idea. "The Subway is more than 120 years old,” he’s said. “It is high time that we look to connect communities in the north and east of Glasgow.” Glaswegians may think that they’ve heard that kind of thing before.

Which brings us back to the beginning: the station where we started, West Street, and it’s time to get off and head back up to the surface. If the passengers of 1896 could see this place now, they would undoubtedly notice some great changes. Most of the buildings are gone, although just along the road the fine school designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh is still there. The subway itself also looks completely different in many ways - would they approve of the bright orange?

In other ways though, there is a lot that the passengers from the 1890s would recognise. The Glasgow underground was only the third of its kind in the world to completed after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro but, unlike those other systems, the route in Glasgow has not been extended or changed. Some would say that’s its biggest problem, along with limited opening hours particularly on a Sunday, but there is still a great affection for it. The Subway. The Underground. Or The Clockwork Orange (does anyone actually call it that?). Whatever the name you use, it is 125 years old and we can celebrate by going round and round in circles, like they did in the old days and like they will in the future.