Two more facts for your Central line video! 1) Central line trains run on a slick of magma. 2) Between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, you might think you've seen the British Museum ghost station - but it's not! It's actually where Hell used to be situated, before Satan moved out because it was too hot.
Came down to suggest the same thing. Where I live the humidity is what makes it nasty in the summer. Also as I type this at 6:02 some does say the problem is the humidity.
Interesting video Geoff. I actually work on the Underground and some of the temps in rooms, track and areas behind-the-scenes are much hotter than this. You've inspired me to buy a thermometer and see the various temps I can record when I'm out and about.
Let us know what you find out. That 91F (33C) on the Bakerloo line is awful, even with the end windows down underway. I can't imagine what it must feel like if is just 9F (4C) hotter in the enclosed non-public spaces of the Underground.
The thing with air conditioning though... it heats up the tunnels and stations. Was in Barcelona last summer where the trains felt almost arctic inside, while the stations were unbearably hot.
Haha love the Aussie! She'd know about heat, here in Aus during the summer's we often reach low 40s and one or two days per summer we reach 45'C. But our trains (in Sydney anyway) are air conditioned.
At 8:08 we can here the fact that the London Underground should look into regenerative breaking for their trains. This means that the train dumps it's kinetic energy back into the third rail instead of dumping the energy into break pads or more often into resistor banks on the train itself. Another advantage of regenerative breaking is that it also reduces the power demand of the train network as a whole as the overall power efficiency has increased. Another thing one can do is drive heatpipes into the surrounding rock to provide a larger thermal mass for heat to sink into. And during winter one can use said thermal mass to keep the tube a bit warmer. (or even draw in extra cold air to preemptively cool the tunnel for summer season, people after all wear winter clothing so won't really mind if the tube is 5-10 C during winter.)
Yes, although I miss the A, C and D Stock, those S Stock trains really come into their own on hot days in the summer, with their powerful air-conditioning!! For a stark comparison, try changing from a District or H&C train to a Central Line one at Mile End on a hot day!
Robert Faber like the Aussie lady said in the video. It's the humidity that's the issue. I've been in Vegas in 48c and it's been more comfortable than 25c in the UK due to it being an incredibly dry heat.
Also, obviously no one lives outside air conditioned structures in 48 c. That would be a fatal fever if it was a body temperature (and humans need to lose heat to their surroundings to shed the heat we produce), as you were more or less slow cooked.
DanielsPolitics1 eh... I think you've got things confused with how warm blooded mammals regulate heat but regardless you don't spend 100% of your time in air-conditioned luxury either and people lived there long before Air conditioning was a thing. The wonders of evaporative cooling. High humidity means your sweat doesn't evaporate, so you don't cool down. Low humidity is fantastic, your body can maintain its core temperature much easier.
The problem is that you can't create cold - you can only move heat away. That is a very annoying and fundamental law of thermodynamics. If you're in the underground, far away from the surface, where are you gonna put the heat to? Giant, long valves all throughout the tunnels, that go all the way back to the surface? You could cool down water at the surface and pump it down and back up once it's warm... that ought to be cheap, especially the plumbing! London's underground is (basically) impossible to cool, because it's so far below the surface.
True. You could air-condition individual trains, but because of some other fundamental laws of physics, that would only increase the total amount of thermal energy in the system, even if the interior of the trains would be cooler, so you'd end up with pleasantly cool trains but absolutely sweltering platforms.
They have started pumping cool ground water around the stations to help cool them, and also on cross rail they have extractor fans under the platforms to try and take away hot air away from the ac system to above ground.
At the time of construction the Central Line was not that hot, unfortunately as it's in the densest built part of London, getting any kind of pipe/duct between the existing pipes/roads/buildings/power cables etc is near to impossible. There's hardly any space to run anything between tube and surface. Other lines were built later and/or there has been (limited) room to fit some kind of solution, even if it's only partial.
Robert Faber, that is exactly my experience of the main NYC subway lines running up through Manhattan - it's a relief to get onto a train even if it's packed, because you get out of the heat of the platform areas.
How ironic, when the British built us the MTR in Hong Kong, they have installed air-con in every trains and stations since day one. But the British themselves don't have air-con on their tubes until today😅😅
The Central was literally the first deep/tube railway in the world, so it is very, very narrow, and predates AC by, in common use, about 100 years. I think refrigeration at the time was literally based on towing ice from the arctic circle. No one though to include the facilities for it, and at first it was notably chilly, and marketed itself as such in summer. Then over 100-150 years the heat of brakes and traction motors literally heated the surrounding clay up.
I was in London during this time after a two week holiday across England. It barely rained! It was my first time in England and I got to experience it without any rain. I dreamed of visiting London and ride the Tube for so long, but because of the heatwave and my exhaustion from my walking-filled holiday, I didn't even want to use the Tube! I will maybe return to London sometime in the wintertime and take a few days off work to explore it myself.
In New York, we have air conditioned subway cars. But guess where all the heat goes from the cars. The platforms, where the temperature can easily hit over 100F/38C.
That is the issue, Our stations have had some cooling since the beginning through large scale convection including water cooling from water than needs to be pupped out anyway. However we didn't bother with AC for years. NY stations can indeed get very hot partly becuase of road heat many of them are just under the road. I remember in fact road falling in and the steel slabs an pin being used as a temporary solution (around 2001), which I though was a bit rough and ready. Most NY line are dig an cover, where as we have more tunnelling. We don't have the grid system, it was our FU to the Romans. Beside London clay is perfect for tunnels.
I used the Bakerloo Line recently and it was pretty hot between Elephant & Castle and Waterloo. Still Loved that the old 1973 Stock Tubes were still running.
Ha, you were incorrect on the internet 4 years ago. You see, the 1973 stock doesn't run on the Bakerloo line, it runs on the Piccadilly line. The Bakerloo has the slightly older 1972 stock.
I've been in London on two separate occasions within the past two weeks and it's been fairly cold outside, especially yesterday. But the tube was just so HUMID, it's hard to escape the heat. We literally felt this astonishing air current coming up from inside when coming out of 4 degree heat outside. Can't begin to imagine how it is to take in the summer.
Interesting video! Clay must have a really high specific heat capacity- heats up slowly, cools down slowly. A full air conditioned train may that's hotter than an empty one might be partly because of the constant opening and closing of doors. You'll get the same thing with a fridge that's being opened all the time such as in a busy hostel. It doesn't get a chance to cool down much. The train is effectively a fridge.
I just got back from a week in London,and must say that i ADMIRE you guys spending all that time in that heat on the tube. I found myself getting off the trains one station earlier just to get out in the open air...
lol @ 9:02 That's our normal daily morning temps. last sat it was 44 degs @11 am. kept going up!. too hot!. @ least we have air-con , lots of people use trains to cool down, head into shopping centers.
In Stockholm Metro [Underground] even if it is the hottest day in Stockholm it is kinda cold at the stations. Which is good
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My room in Helsinki is now at 20:40 nearly as hot as the Central Line. Our Metro tunnels are quite cool but the 100-series trainsets do not have AC and they are hot because they travel also partially overground.
We get heat like this quite regularly in Boston, so most of our subway lines are air conditioned. But as someone who lives in an old house (built about a century before the proliferation of AC), here's some advice. Cold showers. Shower with cold water rather than the normal temperature and then don't towel off. It works wonders for staying cool. And according to my weather app, it looks like there's rain forecast in London for Sunday. Hang in there Geoff!
it would be good to repeat this again with a humidity sensor - luckily I have only been on the tube in the middle of summer a few times, but always think of the air feeling quick thick
The last day it rained was May 2nd, Geoff. I know this because it was the day after I arrived in London for my 10 day trip, after which the first heat wave hit on May 3rd. Just so you know!
I was on the Toronto Subway in 2011. Official air temperature was 38 Celsius. Have to think it was about 45 C on the subway. Probably the hottest you’ll feel in Canada!
I took my thermal camera out today as I work in London, did not go on the tube as I like being alive. But in the shade the ambiant temp was 29*C -30*C 36*C - 37*C in the sun. Temperture serfaces in direct sunlight were 40*C -50*C. A black car was 58*C at its hottest point, other colour cars were around 45*C. These were all parked, bit hard to mesure the moving ones.
And there I was, hoping to get a slight cool-down next week when I'll visit London - and you're telling me it's both hot AND the tubes are hot, too. Thank you for the heads-up!
That the new Cross Betty Purple Rail Line carriages will have A/C will likely make matters worse. NYC subway trains have aircon and the stations become unbearable hotboxes in summer because of the heat thrown off the trains, then you have 4mins of cool in the carriage before you step back into the sauna.
I visited London for the very first time two months ago, and had the misguided impression that the Tube would be similar to the MTR in Hong Kong, with air conditioned, modern trains. I couldn't have been more wrong!
The heat on the tube was on the news in New Zealand a few days ago. Also, CrossLizabethPurpleRail (I called it Crossrail Elizabeth Line before Geoff did) was on the news in 2014. I thought it was going to be a tube line because I didn't know the Overground, DLR, Trams & TfL Rail existed until last year.
that is why they are not installing them now. Once they figure out how to drive the heat away from stations and tunnels, trains can be upgraded to having an a/c unit
Air condition the stations and send the heat up and out to the rest of London. Really, given the typical temperatures, would it make financial sense to add A/C all over?
jur4x - they can't install air con or air cooling on the existing trains, there simply isn't anywhere to put it as all space is already filled up. There's equipment under every seat, passengers just don't know its there.
ASLEF shrugged I know. What I meant is even if there was possibility to fit them in the train, it doesn't matter, since there are no means to get the air out of the tunnels and stations. Not yet, at least.
1 very memorable trip to London i have is 2 years ago in early Sept. Staying out in Essex as my partner was working and I spent the day wandering the tube in central London. My partner returned to our hotel to find me fully clothed in a bath of cold water eating a chinatown bakery bun and ill with heatstroke! i honestly never expected it to be that hot!
This is one thing I don’t miss about living in London. I worked in Oxford St for 8 years & during summer I always walked to Charing Cross, rather than get the Bakerloo line.
Humidity is an important aspect. It's 100FREEDOM (37 Commie) in Dallas, but the humidity is only 27% so it's easy to stay cool, as long as you have some air movement and stay out of the sun.
The cooling effect of the emptier trains is the same reason you should not tightly pack your fridge - the coolness comes from the circulation air (convection). A freezer however uses conduction more to transfer the heat so you should pack it tightly.
All of our subways here in Toronto have air conditioning systems on them. However we do have ventalation fans and ducts around the system plus there are a number of open areas too.
Cooler than the Kent coast where it's been up to 34 outdoors. We've been shutting the windows to keep indoors below 30. Fans don't even help - just blow hot air!
As a person who has all air-conditioned trains, getting out of the train at above-ground stations is very hot, and where I live it's currently around 33°C-35°C, I can't imagine how much hotter it would be to exit from an air-conditioned train to a hot underground station (The ones in my country has had platform edge doors since opening.)
I'm from New York City in the States and from July 2008 and October 2011 I lived and worked in the UK. With 2 of those years I lived in Harrow and took either the Bakerloo or Met Line into London. I had assumed, as with the NY City subway, the London Underground trains would have air conditioning. Boy was I wrong and it wasn't until near the end of my stay when the Metropolitan Line and the Overground got those newer cars did I feel relief.
In Singapore we have air conditioning but as for the above-ground stations the heat from the engines of the train is practically negligible and in the underground stations there are platform edge doors to help keep the heat in the tunnels and air conditioning in the stations
The subway in Toronto got soo hut one summer, the AC units on our 90s Bombardier T1 trains failed. And most of our stations are underground and they get really hot too. Our stations are fairly shallow though except the ones in the new TYSSE extension and on upper Younge street.
I went on the Piccadilly line, and travelled to South Kensington the other day on the way to the royal albert hall, and I measured 43 degrees between Green Park and South Kensington.
I went on the Bakerloo, Northern & District lines on Sunday (29-7-18). I can agree that Bakerloo was the worst but I was fortunate enough to stand next to a window. I only went one stop on District so I didn't have time to appreciate it. Anyway, great video Geoff
Our trains have AC and I freeze in summer but boil at the platform ... then again I am currently freezing on the platform and warm in the train but it’s winter and today will be a nice and sunny 18C after a very wet and windy 12-14 for this week. Hi from Melbourne.
I travelled on the Circle Line on the 9th July 2018 (My first time in 20 years) from Liverpool Street to Euston and was very surprised how cool it was and it was very hot outside on the surface
I live in Perth Australia. We don’t have an underground but air conned trains. 80%+ drive to work, as I do. In the summer the car is in the sun and reads in the mid to high-40s most days when I get in at the end of the day. Instant sweat. Literally instant. It’s weird when the train doors open in summer. It’s like someone is poking a massive hairdryer in the door! I remember the tube in summer. It’s awful.
Geoff, you need to do this again with a more accurate device. Your thermometer is designed to be kept in one place so the temperature will change very slowly. I expect on the A/C trains, the temperature will be closer to 21 or 22 degrees.
When Parisian engineers were helping plan Montreal’s Metro, the Frenchies assumed “it’s always cold in Canada” (🤪), so they actually planned *heating* in the trains! As Andy correctly states, that the heat from the brakes is MORE than enough to keep the Metro *very* warm! Even in February. The original 1966 cars didn’t even have ventilators. They were installed in the roof of the cars later... causing some clearance problems! But tunnel ventilation shafts were built. Montreal is almost all deep tube and not subsurface like Paris. It’s limestone not clay but still...
In the winter, the Victoria line remains hot even then. Central Line and Bakerloo Line don’t get as hot, especially the latter. Granted I have not traveled the full length of the lines but i still have a general idea.
Think you needed a better temperature detector. I have a Garmin Tempe an ANT+. Which works with my Garmin GPS and it also works with an app on my phone. So you can put the detection on the roof of the train where the heat rises and read the temperature on your phone.
The coolest place on the U-Bahn in Bielefeld is the Hauptbahnhof station platform at level -3 (their deepest platform and the one I use). But there aren't that many sweaty bodies on the trams at these places and the brakes are designed to recharge the system or at least that is the advertising the city council have on the trams.
They put the tram system underground in the city centre and to the west of the city of 350 000 inhabitants - about 27 years ago. The longest underground stretch is (I think) from the concert hall (Rudolf-Oetker-Halle) to City Hall (Rathaus) which is only 5 stops but it is labelled U-Bahn.
The easiest way to cool off in London is to take a train to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or Luton and catch a plane to Reykjavik, Iceland. One thing to consider with your temperature experiment is that your body is 37°C +/- 1°C, and holding the thermometer will transfer some of that heat into the thermometer causing a false high reading. Finally, one suggestion for a future video is to see how loud trains are. You should be able to download a free decibel meter onto your phone, which would tell you how loud the trains are.
Geoff ALWAYS travels to train stations that I frequently use and yet I never see him, whether be where I live or work or commute through, I feel I let myself down with my travel times
Difference is, down on the tube line you've got brake dust to inhale, other people's breath and up to 80% humidity. It's absolutely disgusting down there.
Daniel Eyre so what you are saying is that actually the conditions are pretty much the same but yet don’t know why we are complaining even though the lot of you are doing the exact same thing...
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Supersonic Ox Yeah Australian’s don’t complain about hot clammy conditions like Brits do. But... Instead Australians moan and overdress whenever the temperature gets below 15 degrees Celsius. The wrap themselves up like Michelin men.
If 50% of the heating underground is due to trains braking, then they should think about installing regenerative braking systems like the kind you get on Electric Cars, which shunt the energy into batteries to then be used to propel the trains forward. That energy is then stored and used instead of being radiated into the environment...
Given that most of the heat on the tube comes from the breaks (people only account for 2% of the heat production), what is needed is a mechanism to recover the kinetic energy when breaking, into a battery (similar to the Toyota Prius). This will reduce the overall energy footprint of the tube and significantly reduce the temperatures on the tube, without the need of installing much more expensive air conditioning on the older lines.
Weird that you didn't talk about the humidity, despite Aussie woman mentioning it at 6:00. Humidity is a major factor in how hot it feels, and I have a suspicion that those deep tunnels trap a lot of humidity from the passengers in the summer -- it would have made sense for you to measure that (a hygrometer can be picked up just as cheap as a digital thermometer these days).
How about measuring noise levels in the Tube? I'm certain they go over the permitted levels. Some bends on Victoria or Central lines are horrendously loud.
I recently watched this, and asked myself, why CAN'T it be air-conditioned? Naturally, the first concern is for asphyxiation. I think I've come up with a solution. Pump liquid air, or rather just the Oxygen and Nitrogen fractions, mixed together, down into the platforms. Pour them out into evaporator pans in discrete units, and catch the water vapor condensation that collects on the bottom side. N2 and O2 have different boiling points. You don't want to have just one boil off. N2 boils at −195.795 °C, while O2 boils off at a warmer −183.0 °C. By pouring a fixed quantity into a pan, and letting it completely boil off, you keep the ratio of O2, which we need, and N2, which would help keep fire risk low, consistent. If something happened, you have liquid air, VERY COLD liquid air, but still breathable gas. The O2 would boil off first, followed by the N2. But since you'd be running many, short cycles, the concentration of O2 would never get high enough that a spark becomes dangerous, and you wouldn't have N2 lulls where people start passing out. You could have several pans running in series, with one just filling up, one about a third down from evaporation (mostly O2 boiling off, leaving the N2), and one about two thirds down, (mostly N2 now, as the O2 has already boiled off.) By doing this, you would lower the temperature in the system, reduce humidity, (since the water vapor, a common byproduct of human respiration, and one I suspect further reduces comfort in the system, would condense on these trays and could be collected and directed to the drains), and displace CO2 out the exits. It would give you some of the benefits of a forced-air system, but with smaller diameter pipes for the same volume of air. You'd be able to stay away from CFC's or other refrigerants, which would present an asphyxiation hazard, by using air, breathable air, as the refrigerant, but in an open, rather than a closed, loop.
Two more facts for your Central line video!
1) Central line trains run on a slick of magma.
2) Between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, you might think you've seen the British Museum ghost station - but it's not! It's actually where Hell used to be situated, before Satan moved out because it was too hot.
Where did you get these information 🤔
I’m a LU expert aswell
@@hdy8792 Your Weird Bruh
@@ohok734 yea
@ModernHarry 🤣
To be fair to the tube, it's bloody hot everywhere else too
For next time: Could also measure humidity somehow, too, makes an enormous difference to how it feels
Came down to suggest the same thing. Where I live the humidity is what makes it nasty in the summer. Also as I type this at 6:02 some does say the problem is the humidity.
Here in egypt it is 37 c but it feels like 43 because of humduity
I always carry 2 small bottles of cold water...an ice pack in a 'cooler bag' helps throughout the day!
DDA compliance is with us! LOL big up Anton
Hello DoubleDeckerAnton
Didn't expect to see you here Anton. How's the new bus going ?
that bag would be of no use in Singapore since its 32-37 degrees c this few weeks
Anton, in summer, those tube trains are saunas inside.
Interesting video Geoff. I actually work on the Underground and some of the temps in rooms, track and areas behind-the-scenes are much hotter than this. You've inspired me to buy a thermometer and see the various temps I can record when I'm out and about.
Let us know what you find out. That 91F (33C) on the Bakerloo line is awful, even with the end windows down underway. I can't imagine what it must feel like if is just 9F (4C) hotter in the enclosed non-public spaces of the Underground.
So nice of you to give out free water!!
The thing with air conditioning though... it heats up the tunnels and stations. Was in Barcelona last summer where the trains felt almost arctic inside, while the stations were unbearably hot.
Same in NYC in summer
you spend way more time on the train in london than on the platform ill take that everyday of the week
Not if the stations themselves are air-conditioned as well.
Haha love the Aussie! She'd know about heat, here in Aus during the summer's we often reach low 40s and one or two days per summer we reach 45'C. But our trains (in Sydney anyway) are air conditioned.
Can we just appreciate how he's giving everyone water
At 8:08 we can here the fact that the London Underground should look into regenerative breaking for their trains.
This means that the train dumps it's kinetic energy back into the third rail instead of dumping the energy into break pads or more often into resistor banks on the train itself.
Another advantage of regenerative breaking is that it also reduces the power demand of the train network as a whole as the overall power efficiency has increased.
Another thing one can do is drive heatpipes into the surrounding rock to provide a larger thermal mass for heat to sink into. And during winter one can use said thermal mass to keep the tube a bit warmer. (or even draw in extra cold air to preemptively cool the tunnel for summer season, people after all wear winter clothing so won't really mind if the tube is 5-10 C during winter.)
I am looking forward to ‘how cold is the tube?’ In 6 months
I think he did that one already?
Why is there a 1½ year long time gap between the two videos? Should be ½ year, considering it could've been done on the summer of 2017
BenTheMiner / MTA Railfanner wasn't as hit last year we got rain
I've never been too cold on the central line
Thomas Whitcomb o
You should have gone to the overground parts of the not-air conditioned liens, where the sun directly heats up the air in the train.
What a nice human being the fact that he was giving out free water to people on a hot day inspires me MR MARSHALL RESPECT FOR YOU SIR !!!💗👌👍👏
Yes, although I miss the A, C and D Stock, those S Stock trains really come into their own on hot days in the summer, with their powerful air-conditioning!! For a stark comparison, try changing from a District or H&C train to a Central Line one at Mile End on a hot day!
He is like the London Underground version of Casey Neistat.
I wouldn't insult Geoff like that.
The music at the beginning had nothing to do with that, huh?
lol
Emporio Alniño Really? Well hello then!
Agreed
I'm positively surprised to be watching this before the "It's always 50°C where I live, what are you complaining about?" comments start rolling in...
Robert Faber like the Aussie lady said in the video. It's the humidity that's the issue. I've been in Vegas in 48c and it's been more comfortable than 25c in the UK due to it being an incredibly dry heat.
Also, obviously no one lives outside air conditioned structures in 48 c. That would be a fatal fever if it was a body temperature (and humans need to lose heat to their surroundings to shed the heat we produce), as you were more or less slow cooked.
DanielsPolitics1 eh... I think you've got things confused with how warm blooded mammals regulate heat but regardless you don't spend 100% of your time in air-conditioned luxury either and people lived there long before Air conditioning was a thing.
The wonders of evaporative cooling.
High humidity means your sweat doesn't evaporate, so you don't cool down.
Low humidity is fantastic, your body can maintain its core temperature much easier.
where do u live like 50 degrees?!?
The problem is that you can't create cold - you can only move heat away. That is a very annoying and fundamental law of thermodynamics.
If you're in the underground, far away from the surface, where are you gonna put the heat to? Giant, long valves all throughout the tunnels, that go all the way back to the surface?
You could cool down water at the surface and pump it down and back up once it's warm... that ought to be cheap, especially the plumbing!
London's underground is (basically) impossible to cool, because it's so far below the surface.
True. You could air-condition individual trains, but because of some other fundamental laws of physics, that would only increase the total amount of thermal energy in the system, even if the interior of the trains would be cooler, so you'd end up with pleasantly cool trains but absolutely sweltering platforms.
They have started pumping cool ground water around the stations to help cool them, and also on cross rail they have extractor fans under the platforms to try and take away hot air away from the ac system to above ground.
At the time of construction the Central Line was not that hot, unfortunately as it's in the densest built part of London, getting any kind of pipe/duct between the existing pipes/roads/buildings/power cables etc is near to impossible. There's hardly any space to run anything between tube and surface.
Other lines were built later and/or there has been (limited) room to fit some kind of solution, even if it's only partial.
Basically it's heat in the tunnel then
Robert Faber, that is exactly my experience of the main NYC subway lines running up through Manhattan - it's a relief to get onto a train even if it's packed, because you get out of the heat of the platform areas.
How ironic, when the British built us the MTR in Hong Kong, they have installed air-con in every trains and stations since day one. But the British themselves don't have air-con on their tubes until today😅😅
CommunistLenin cos London don’t go above 30 normally
Sidenote hk underground is lush ac is brilliant
There is air condition on the met, circle, district and H&C
You're welcome. And they say we treated our colonies badly.
The London train have heating though, I bet the Hong Kong ones don;t.
The Central was literally the first deep/tube railway in the world, so it is very, very narrow, and predates AC by, in common use, about 100 years. I think refrigeration at the time was literally based on towing ice from the arctic circle. No one though to include the facilities for it, and at first it was notably chilly, and marketed itself as such in summer. Then over 100-150 years the heat of brakes and traction motors literally heated the surrounding clay up.
Good to see Andy and Geoff reuniting for another video - you two make brilliant videos!
I was in London during this time after a two week holiday across England. It barely rained! It was my first time in England and I got to experience it without any rain. I dreamed of visiting London and ride the Tube for so long, but because of the heatwave and my exhaustion from my walking-filled holiday, I didn't even want to use the Tube! I will maybe return to London sometime in the wintertime and take a few days off work to explore it myself.
In New York, we have air conditioned subway cars. But guess where all the heat goes from the cars. The platforms, where the temperature can easily hit over 100F/38C.
Yeah, but New Yorkers are a tough bunch. They can handle it :)
That is the issue, Our stations have had some cooling since the beginning through large scale convection including water cooling from water than needs to be pupped out anyway. However we didn't bother with AC for years.
NY stations can indeed get very hot partly becuase of road heat many of them are just under the road. I remember in fact road falling in and the steel slabs an pin being used as a temporary solution (around 2001), which I though was a bit rough and ready.
Most NY line are dig an cover, where as we have more tunnelling. We don't have the grid system, it was our FU to the Romans. Beside London clay is perfect for tunnels.
I used the Bakerloo Line recently and it was pretty hot between Elephant & Castle and Waterloo. Still Loved that the old 1973 Stock Tubes were still running.
Ha, you were incorrect on the internet 4 years ago. You see, the 1973 stock doesn't run on the Bakerloo line, it runs on the Piccadilly line. The Bakerloo has the slightly older 1972 stock.
I don't miss the two times I've been in London during a proper heat wave. It was good seeing Andy again.
I've been in London on two separate occasions within the past two weeks and it's been fairly cold outside, especially yesterday. But the tube was just so HUMID, it's hard to escape the heat. We literally felt this astonishing air current coming up from inside when coming out of 4 degree heat outside. Can't begin to imagine how it is to take in the summer.
Interesting video!
Clay must have a really high specific heat capacity- heats up slowly, cools down slowly.
A full air conditioned train may that's hotter than an empty one might be partly because of the constant opening and closing of doors. You'll get the same thing with a fridge that's being opened all the time such as in a busy hostel. It doesn't get a chance to cool down much. The train is effectively a fridge.
I just got back from a week in London,and must say that i ADMIRE you guys spending all that time in that heat on the tube.
I found myself getting off the trains one station earlier just to get out in the open air...
Bring back Calling All Stations. Been gone too long.
Hi Geoff, can we have a video about the temperature on different types of buses, including where best to sit/stand. Loved this one though.
Very useful video - but have you also measured the noise? Some underground trains are very loud - even dangerously so.
which one
lol @ 9:02 That's our normal daily morning temps. last sat it was 44 degs @11 am. kept going up!. too hot!. @ least we have air-con , lots of people use trains to cool down, head into shopping centers.
I was on the Bakerloo Line when I was in London for the first time last month. It was autumn and it felt like it was 105F in the train.
In Stockholm Metro [Underground] even if it is the hottest day in Stockholm it is kinda cold at the stations. Which is good
My room in Helsinki is now at 20:40 nearly as hot as the Central Line. Our Metro tunnels are quite cool but the 100-series trainsets do not have AC and they are hot because they travel also partially overground.
We get heat like this quite regularly in Boston, so most of our subway lines are air conditioned. But as someone who lives in an old house (built about a century before the proliferation of AC), here's some advice. Cold showers. Shower with cold water rather than the normal temperature and then don't towel off. It works wonders for staying cool.
And according to my weather app, it looks like there's rain forecast in London for Sunday. Hang in there Geoff!
If you had filmed this at rush hour it would have been much hotter. The Northern line yesterday when packed was unbearable.
Lets Make a petition to the government and TFL to rename Cross rail/Elizabeth line to Cross Elizabeth Purple rail.
it would be good to repeat this again with a humidity sensor - luckily I have only been on the tube in the middle of summer a few times, but always think of the air feeling quick thick
The last day it rained was May 2nd, Geoff. I know this because it was the day after I arrived in London for my 10 day trip, after which the first heat wave hit on May 3rd. Just so you know!
I was on the Toronto Subway in 2011. Official air temperature was 38 Celsius. Have to think it was about 45 C on the subway. Probably the hottest you’ll feel in Canada!
I took my thermal camera out today as I work in London, did not go on the tube as I like being alive. But in the shade the ambiant temp was 29*C -30*C 36*C - 37*C in the sun.
Temperture serfaces in direct sunlight were 40*C -50*C. A black car was 58*C at its hottest point, other colour cars were around 45*C. These were all parked, bit hard to mesure the moving ones.
When I visited London the last time in 2019, there also was immense heat. Around 35-40 degrees. But it was a dry heat, so one could deal with it.
And there I was, hoping to get a slight cool-down next week when I'll visit London - and you're telling me it's both hot AND the tubes are hot, too. Thank you for the heads-up!
That the new Cross Betty Purple Rail Line carriages will have A/C will likely make matters worse. NYC subway trains have aircon and the stations become unbearable hotboxes in summer because of the heat thrown off the trains, then you have 4mins of cool in the carriage before you step back into the sauna.
But on crossrail the platforms are separated from the tunnel by platform screen doors so this should help stop that happening
Also on some crossrail stations they are going to have extractors under the platforms to take excess heat outside
I visited London for the very first time two months ago, and had the misguided impression that the Tube would be similar to the MTR in Hong Kong, with air conditioned, modern trains. I couldn't have been more wrong!
As you put the temperature thing in your hand it would make it show a higher number
The heat on the tube was on the news in New Zealand a few days ago. Also, CrossLizabethPurpleRail (I called it Crossrail Elizabeth Line before Geoff did) was on the news in 2014. I thought it was going to be a tube line because I didn't know the Overground, DLR, Trams & TfL Rail existed until last year.
Humidity readings would have been useful as Aircon typically reduces that and thus it can be comfortable but still quite hot.
Let’s not forget that air conditioning in the trains will make the stations hotter than they are now.
that is why they are not installing them now. Once they figure out how to drive the heat away from stations and tunnels, trains can be upgraded to having an a/c unit
Air condition the stations and send the heat up and out to the rest of London. Really, given the typical temperatures, would it make financial sense to add A/C all over?
Rob McCain - the new Deep Tube trains will have air cooling not air conditioning
jur4x - they can't install air con or air cooling on the existing trains, there simply isn't anywhere to put it as all space is already filled up. There's equipment under every seat, passengers just don't know its there.
ASLEF shrugged I know. What I meant is even if there was possibility to fit them in the train, it doesn't matter, since there are no means to get the air out of the tunnels and stations. Not yet, at least.
1 very memorable trip to London i have is 2 years ago in early Sept. Staying out in Essex as my partner was working and I spent the day wandering the tube in central London. My partner returned to our hotel to find me fully clothed in a bath of cold water eating a chinatown bakery bun and ill with heatstroke! i honestly never expected it to be that hot!
This is one thing I don’t miss about living in London. I worked in Oxford St for 8 years & during summer I always walked to Charing Cross, rather than get the Bakerloo line.
Humidity is an important aspect. It's 100FREEDOM (37 Commie) in Dallas, but the humidity is only 27% so it's easy to stay cool, as long as you have some air movement and stay out of the sun.
The Bakerloo at rush hour in the summer, always a pleasure.
Tfl, please officially name it Cross Elizabeth Purple Rail
I've almost passed out on the The Central Line last year in the Summer
I'm watching this in a week where the heat indices here in Chicago are hitting 44C.
The cooling effect of the emptier trains is the same reason you should not tightly pack your fridge - the coolness comes from the circulation air (convection).
A freezer however uses conduction more to transfer the heat so you should pack it tightly.
Had to go from Canons Park to Fulham Broadway this evening - all but 3 stops on air conditioned sub-surface - bliss!
All of our subways here in Toronto have air conditioning systems on them. However we do have ventalation fans and ducts around the system plus there are a number of open areas too.
This helps me take my mind off the fact I live in Scotland and it is (obviously) raining right now
Most important is the "feels like" temperature that takes into account humidity and wind chill. Hot tube trains are like steaming in a small pot.
Cooler than the Kent coast where it's been up to 34 outdoors. We've been shutting the windows to keep indoors below 30. Fans don't even help - just blow hot air!
3:50 you just broke the challenge 'to carry and not to drink' Geoff! Tut, tut:P
As a person who has all air-conditioned trains, getting out of the train at above-ground stations is very hot, and where I live it's currently around 33°C-35°C, I can't imagine how much hotter it would be to exit from an air-conditioned train to a hot underground station (The ones in my country has had platform edge doors since opening.)
Geoff - can you do the same on the top deck on the new buses that HAVE NO WINDOWS?!
I'm visiting london/Birmingham next week, from Toronto. This helps, thank you!
I'm from New York City in the States and from July 2008 and October 2011 I lived and worked in the UK. With 2 of those years I lived in Harrow and took either the Bakerloo or Met Line into London. I had assumed, as with the NY City subway, the London Underground trains would have air conditioning. Boy was I wrong and it wasn't until near the end of my stay when the Metropolitan Line and the Overground got those newer cars did I feel relief.
How does the Tyne & Wear Metro, Glasgow Subway and Merseyrail compare?
In Singapore we have air conditioning but as for the above-ground stations the heat from the engines of the train is practically negligible and in the underground stations there are platform edge doors to help keep the heat in the tunnels and air conditioning in the stations
The subway in Toronto got soo hut one summer, the AC units on our 90s Bombardier T1 trains failed. And most of our stations are underground and they get really hot too. Our stations are fairly shallow though except the ones in the new TYSSE extension and on upper Younge street.
I went on the Piccadilly line, and travelled to South Kensington the other day on the way to the royal albert hall, and I measured 43 degrees between Green Park and South Kensington.
I went on the Bakerloo, Northern & District lines on Sunday (29-7-18). I can agree that Bakerloo was the worst but I was fortunate enough to stand next to a window. I only went one stop on District so I didn't have time to appreciate it. Anyway, great video Geoff
Our trains have AC and I freeze in summer but boil at the platform ... then again I am currently freezing on the platform and warm in the train but it’s winter and today will be a nice and sunny 18C after a very wet and windy 12-14 for this week. Hi from Melbourne.
I travelled on the Circle Line on the 9th July 2018 (My first time in 20 years) from Liverpool Street to Euston and was very surprised how cool it was and it was very hot outside on the surface
9:17 who else pointed out that the Hammersmith & City Line is the wrong colour? It’s pink not blue.
I live in Perth Australia. We don’t have an underground but air conned trains. 80%+ drive to work, as I do. In the summer the car is in the sun and reads in the mid to high-40s most days when I get in at the end of the day. Instant sweat. Literally instant.
It’s weird when the train doors open in summer. It’s like someone is poking a massive hairdryer in the door!
I remember the tube in summer. It’s awful.
Geoff, you need to do this again with a more accurate device. Your thermometer is designed to be kept in one place so the temperature will change very slowly. I expect on the A/C trains, the temperature will be closer to 21 or 22 degrees.
7:12 sounds like the C830C
When Parisian engineers were helping plan Montreal’s Metro, the Frenchies assumed “it’s always cold in Canada” (🤪), so they actually planned *heating* in the trains! As Andy correctly states, that the heat from the brakes is MORE than enough to keep the Metro *very* warm! Even in February.
The original 1966 cars didn’t even have ventilators. They were installed in the roof of the cars later... causing some clearance problems! But tunnel ventilation shafts were built. Montreal is almost all deep tube and not subsurface like Paris. It’s limestone not clay but still...
You get a nice breeze with the droplight in the doors at the coach ends. But typically they chose a driving car.
In the winter, the Victoria line remains hot even then. Central Line and Bakerloo Line don’t get as hot, especially the latter.
Granted I have not traveled the full length of the lines but i still have a general idea.
it is currently 41* C outside in Adelaide. can't imagine how hot it would be if we had an underground system!
Think you needed a better temperature detector. I have a Garmin Tempe an ANT+. Which works with my Garmin GPS and it also works with an app on my phone. So you can put the detection on the roof of the train where the heat rises and read the temperature on your phone.
The coolest place on the U-Bahn in Bielefeld is the Hauptbahnhof station platform at level -3 (their deepest platform and the one I use). But there aren't that many sweaty bodies on the trams at these places and the brakes are designed to recharge the system or at least that is the advertising the city council have on the trams.
Bielefeld has a U-Bahn? I'm not joking, I thought it was a small town.
They put the tram system underground in the city centre and to the west of the city of 350 000 inhabitants - about 27 years ago. The longest underground stretch is (I think) from the concert hall (Rudolf-Oetker-Halle) to City Hall (Rathaus) which is only 5 stops but it is labelled U-Bahn.
should compare them with the buses too.
The easiest way to cool off in London is to take a train to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or Luton and catch a plane to Reykjavik, Iceland.
One thing to consider with your temperature experiment is that your body is 37°C +/- 1°C, and holding the thermometer will transfer some of that heat into the thermometer causing a false high reading.
Finally, one suggestion for a future video is to see how loud trains are. You should be able to download a free decibel meter onto your phone, which would tell you how loud the trains are.
Geoff ALWAYS travels to train stations that I frequently use and yet I never see him, whether be where I live or work or commute through, I feel I let myself down with my travel times
Jeez, its like that almost every summer day in Australia
Difference is, down on the tube line you've got brake dust to inhale, other people's breath and up to 80% humidity. It's absolutely disgusting down there.
We actually have air conditioned trains but there’s 48 s sets without they gonna be replaced by the shiny new b sets
Daniel Eyre so what you are saying is that actually the conditions are pretty much the same but yet don’t know why we are complaining even though the lot of you are doing the exact same thing...
Supersonic Ox Yeah Australian’s don’t complain about hot clammy conditions like Brits do.
But...
Instead Australians moan and overdress whenever the temperature gets below 15 degrees Celsius. The wrap themselves up like Michelin men.
Bman that’s nice but nobody actually cares
Watching this in Christchurch, New Zealand where it is minus 1. with Frost on the ground.
Minus 2 on my garden thermometer in Dallington, Chch, Malcolm.
I'm gonna call crossrail the "Cross Elizabeth Purple Rail" now.
I''m in rural South Norfolk, and it was 31C here...
If 50% of the heating underground is due to trains braking, then they should think about installing regenerative braking systems like the kind you get on Electric Cars, which shunt the energy into batteries to then be used to propel the trains forward. That energy is then stored and used instead of being radiated into the environment...
1:57 What about the circle,district,H&C,Metropolitan & overground
Given that most of the heat on the tube comes from the breaks (people only account for 2% of the heat production), what is needed is a mechanism to recover the kinetic energy when breaking, into a battery (similar to the Toyota Prius). This will reduce the overall energy footprint of the tube and significantly reduce the temperatures on the tube, without the need of installing much more expensive air conditioning on the older lines.
I visited London in that period. IT Was indeed bloody hot... We had the same weather here in Denmark.
I am so jealous that I am not experiencing the REALLY hot weather in the UK right now, I am on holiday!
Weird that you didn't talk about the humidity, despite Aussie woman mentioning it at 6:00. Humidity is a major factor in how hot it feels, and I have a suspicion that those deep tunnels trap a lot of humidity from the passengers in the summer -- it would have made sense for you to measure that (a hygrometer can be picked up just as cheap as a digital thermometer these days).
How about measuring noise levels in the Tube? I'm certain they go over the permitted levels. Some bends on Victoria or Central lines are horrendously loud.
I recently watched this, and asked myself, why CAN'T it be air-conditioned?
Naturally, the first concern is for asphyxiation.
I think I've come up with a solution.
Pump liquid air, or rather just the Oxygen and Nitrogen fractions, mixed together, down into the platforms. Pour them out into evaporator pans in discrete units, and catch the water vapor condensation that collects on the bottom side.
N2 and O2 have different boiling points. You don't want to have just one boil off. N2 boils at −195.795 °C, while O2 boils off at a warmer −183.0 °C.
By pouring a fixed quantity into a pan, and letting it completely boil off, you keep the ratio of O2, which we need, and N2, which would help keep fire risk low, consistent. If something happened, you have liquid air, VERY COLD liquid air, but still breathable gas. The O2 would boil off first, followed by the N2. But since you'd be running many, short cycles, the concentration of O2 would never get high enough that a spark becomes dangerous, and you wouldn't have N2 lulls where people start passing out.
You could have several pans running in series, with one just filling up, one about a third down from evaporation (mostly O2 boiling off, leaving the N2), and one about two thirds down, (mostly N2 now, as the O2 has already boiled off.)
By doing this, you would lower the temperature in the system, reduce humidity, (since the water vapor, a common byproduct of human respiration, and one I suspect further reduces comfort in the system, would condense on these trays and could be collected and directed to the drains), and displace CO2 out the exits. It would give you some of the benefits of a forced-air system, but with smaller diameter pipes for the same volume of air.
You'd be able to stay away from CFC's or other refrigerants, which would present an asphyxiation hazard, by using air, breathable air, as the refrigerant, but in an open, rather than a closed, loop.
Be interesting to do the same again this week with the new trains and stations
In Australia we get up to 40to45degrees Celsius or even higher