Underground Electric Railways Company of London
The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL) was established in 1902. It was the holding company for the three deep-level \”tube\” underground railway lines opened in London during 1906 and 1907. The UERL struggled financially in the first years after the opening of its lines and narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1908 by restructuring its debt. By the early 1930s, the company’s lines stretched beyond the County of London and served destinations in Middlesex, Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey.
About Underground Electric Railways Company of London in brief
The Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL) was established in 1902. It was the holding company for the three deep-level \”tube\” underground railway lines opened in London during 1906 and 1907. The UERL struggled financially in the first years after the opening of its lines and narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1908 by restructuring its debt. By the early 1930s, the company’s lines stretched beyond the County of London and served destinations in Middlesex, Essex, Hertfordshire and Surrey. In the 1920s, competition from small unregulated bus operators reduced the profitability of the road transport operations. This led to the establishment of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, which absorbed all independent and municipally operated railway, bus and tram services in the London area. It is a precursor to today’s London Underground; its three tube lines form the central sections of today’s Bakerloo, Northern and Piccadilly lines. The company was also the parent company from 1902 of the District Railway, which it electrified between 1903 and 1905. By 1898, American financier Charles Tyson Yerkes had made a large fortune developing the electric tramway and elevated railway systems in Chicago, but his questionable business methods, which included bribery and blackmail, had finally drawn the disapproving attention of the public. By 1901, the DR was struggling to compete with emerging motor bus and electric tram companies and the CLR which were eroding its passenger traffic.
By March 1901, a syndicate had acquired a controlling interest in the DR and a proposal for its electrification was made for the Metropolitan District Electric Company on 15 July 1901. In September 1901, Robert Perks, a solicitor for a number of railway companies and Member of Parliament for Louth, had suggested the CCE&HR to Yerke and the American’s consortium bought the company for £100,000 on 28 September 1900. It had parliamentary permission to construct a line from Kensington to Southington, but not raised the capital to do so. At Southington it was purchased by the DR in 1898, but it was not allowed to connect to the Southington to Kensington line, so it was later sold to the Brompton Railway. The Brompton was a tube railway company which had been purchased in 1898 and had been a subsidiary of the DR, but had not been electrified by the time of its purchase. It also had parliamentary approval for a congestion-relieving deep- level line that was to run beneath its existing route between Gloucester Road and Mansion House. The DR was contemplating a programme of electrification, but was not financially strong enough to raise capital to carry out the work on its own. By April 1901, it had raised £1.1million for the electrification works, including the construction of the generating station and supplying the new rolling stock for the Great Northern, PicCadilly and Brompton railway. The District Railway was a sub-surface underground railway which had opened in 1868.
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