The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-08

We are in the west end of London, and there is the Marble Arch station just | over the way. The ground on which It l is built is worth about $5 a square inch, but it Is only one story. You see the sign, Central London Railway" and fare 2d. to any station" on the front windows. We make our way through the buses and hansoms and enter the door. How clean everything Is. The walls are tiled and all Above is white. There are glass doors in the ticket windows and over them incandescent electric lights. We each shove in two pennies and are handed our tickets, which we drop into the chop boxes just as you do in the elevated road in New York when you pass through the gate.
 We are now on the level of the street and we must go down almost one hun dred feet to get into the mighty tube, which will take us to the Bank of Lon don. We might enter the elevator put in by Americans but we prefer to walk down the great spiral staircase. Down, down, down we go. We wind our way around and around an enormous well, walled with porcelain bricks fine as those in a millonalre's bathroom. The we'll is brilliantly lighted with electricity, and we can see ourselves in the white tiled mirror as we wind our way down it.
 We stop midway and listen to the tramp of the people above and below us. We can hear the hum of the city over head and the volcanic thunder of the cars far beneath. We wind around and around step by step to the bottom and enter one of the subterranean stations. We are in a great cave, rooted and walled with white tiles. with railroad running across it's floor and with round black holes at each end. The cave is as light day under the rays Of electricity, and it's brightness accentuates the dark ness of the entrances to the tunnel tube. These black holes are where the trains from the tube shoot into the station and out. and stations like these are at every half mile throughout busy London along the line of the tube.
 The American Invasion.
 While we wait for the train I notice that the walls are hung with framed ad- vertisements, and | look about for signs of the American invasion. It sticks out like a boil on your nose. There IS an American typewriter picture just opposite me. You can sec the big red seal which forms it's trademark. and above 1t is a card puffing q well known brand or American oats. and farther on is anoth- CT of those inferual Yankee little pill ads, which keep your liver turning over and over faster than ventilating fan run by electricity. You find them all over London. and you cant escape them even tn the bowels of the earth.
 But what is that noise? It is the ad- vance thunder of the invasion. That is the Tube Line tran Of American cars carried by AmeriCan-built electric loco motives through the Tupcnny Tube. Keep your eve on the black hole at the left. See that turtle back engine as it shoots out dragging the long train behind 1t. That Is the little Yankee baby that does the business. In size 1t is perhaps the 4 smallest engine of the world, but 1t has all the strength of NVD horses, and it can drag that train long at forty miles an hour, although the average speed down here is less than half that. The engine weighs forty-eight tons and 1t gets it's current from that third rail in the center py means of two contact shoes which are mounted on each side of the locomotive.
 The engineer stands in the center of the engine and operates the controller. There Is a circuit brakcr and an ammeter mounted on each side Of the cab, and also an air pump and motor or large ca pacity under the curved turtle back. No tice how beautifully it IS made. That en- zine was constructed by the General Electric Company of Schenectady, N. Y., and it is jewel in steel.
 Learning to Hustle.
 But look at the cars. See the people rushing in and out They surely cannot be Britishers. for = have move on them like tho hustl.--, Americans. The truth is that the average Londoner did not know what the word hustle meant until this road Was put in. On the ordi- nary train it is the custom to stop and take up the tickets before you enter the principal cities. That is what l did be- fore I got to London, and SO people waited with me ten minutes while they took up the tickets. In the tube line the tickets are dropped into the boxes before you get in and the conductor urges the passengers to step lively or they will get left.
 We have to rush 10 get our own seats. The gate closes as soon as we are on the platform and the car has started before we have taken our seats.