My research examines how the London Underground – the first subway in the world - provided new public spaces and forms of mobility that redefined how Londoners interacted in, moved through, and imaged the city. Perhaps nothing embodies the Underground’s iconic status in London quite as completely as the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” This phrase, which originally referred to the gap between the train and the platform at Embankment station on the Northern line, has since become an enduringly popular symbol of London in the minds of travelers and visitors. The fact that a behavioral command about how to move through Underground space has become synonymous with visiting London suggests the deep connections between spatial behaviors and identity in the modern city. People had to be taught how to “Mind the Gap” – and railway officials were never completely able to control the ways in which people used, traveled through, and imagined these spaces. Illuminating these tensions between railway technicians and ordinary passengers demonstrates how the Underground provided a new type of space in which men and women from different classes and backgrounds could assert claims to freedom of movement within the city. Aside from the gap between station platforms and Underground trains, this cultural history of the Underground also reveals how Londoners negotiated and bridged other important gaps - between rich and poor, men and women, and concepts of what constituted being modern or backwards, progressive or dangerous - as they embraced this public space as a part of their everyday lives. My dissertation interweaves works of art and fiction, literary scholarship, and elements of geography and sociology into a cultural history of London’s transport. Though it was owned and operated by a series of private companies throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the Underground offered a relatively affordable means of traversing the capitol for Londoners of all classes and backgrounds, and therefore the spaces of the Underground network (stations, platforms, and train cars) acted as public spaces where new ideas about democratic order in society were challenged and negotiated. My dissertation will bring a new perspective to studies of urban history by using interactions within the Tube to demonstrate how modernity was experienced and given meaning through particular spatial practices. I argue that the Underground helped challenge and redefine urban identities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly for women.

The aim of this thesis has been to study and analyse in detail the process by which timber floating in tributaries was phased out. The region covered is that of the Ume and Vindel rivers and the period studied is 1945-70. The years I945-60 have been the most central to the analysis. The approach taken was to study timber floating itself rather than the new transport alternative (lorries) which developed during the post-war period. This brought the increasing costs of timber floating in tributaries into the forefront of the investigation, along with the efforts made to restrain these by means of investment in and partial closure of the floatway network. The consequences in terms of changed labour demand are also discussed. An important part of the analysis has been to examine the inherent weaknesses of timber floating in tributaries and the internal driving forces underlying its phasing-out. The term "internal driving forces" connotes those forces which affected timber floating as a means of transport by causing its costs to rise. In other words it has not been a matter of looking at the direct competition from lorry transport and the advantages of the new transport technique but rather of identifying the drawbacks of floating, when, where and how they arose, and how they helped to make it relatively dearer, thus motivating the changeover to lorry transport. The internal driving forces were forest structure and labour costs. When labour costs incurred in timber floating in tributaries were rising rapidly and the dimensions of the logs became smaller in size, floating became a dearer transport solution than before. As regards changes in forest structure, the dimensions of logs were diminishing throughout the floating epoch. This meant that the risk of sinking during floating increased. The effect of this was that the need to bark the timber was increasing all the time, which in turn entailed an indirect transport cost for floating. In addition to this, smaller log dimensions affected the labour time and cost of floating. The changed labour conditions along with the changed forest structure showed the importance of studying structural change in the Norrland forest region. For during the later 1940s and early 1950s a shortage of labour presented itself, and the cause was to be found in the new job opportunities which were emerging, some in the rural areas, for example in the construction of hydro-electric powerplants, and some in the larger populated localities, and these factors taken together made recruitment for jobs in forestry and timber floating more difficult. One of the chief characteristics of the way events were moving was that recruitment shifted away from having mainly targeted the agrarian lower class of smallholders, crofters and leaseholders so that it now focused increasingly on freehold farmers while at the same time the recruitment base, having previously consisted of younger workers, was now composed mainly of older people. Also in this study, various factors have been examined which could conceivably explain the changes in productivity of timber floating in tributaries. The results show, for example, that during the 1950s a partial phasing-out had very small direct effects on productivity in the area studied. Thus the combination of investment and changes in the quantity of timber is the factor which best explains the differences between different tributaries in the trend of productivity. A tributary´s greater capacity to float timber did not necessarily signify a bigger labour requirement since to a certain extent the watercourse itself “did the job”. As regards investment, clearance operations using caterpillar tractors were probably very important. It is true that the genuine dependence of log driving in tributaries on nature influenced conditions varied strongly from year to year, but since the link between investment costs and the trend of productivity is significant, it still seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that investment lent impetus to the rise in productivity during the 1950s. / digitalisering@umu

This study deals with the relationship between communications networks and economic structure in medium-sized Swedish towns 1850-1970. Medium-sized towns have been defined as those which were ranked 4th-20th in terms of population at two points in time: in the year 1900, when industry had established a foothold and the most important railways had been built, and in the year 1970, at the end of the period studied. This means that the group studied comprises 22 towns. The communications networks which are examined are shipping, railways and roads. The economic structure is studied at various levels from economic sectors to sub-branches.Two measures have been constructed for the purpose of establishing the positions of the towns in the communications networks: accessibility and nodality. The former is calculated on the basis of distance from other towns and their populations. The latter is computed via quantification of the towns' access to the links of the respective networks and an assessment of the quality of these.Statistical relation analyses of correlation and regression type have been the principal method of analysis, which has been supplemented, however, by information culled from urban monographs and other studies.The study shows that there is a relationship between communications networks, primarily the railways, and the transformation of the towns' economic structures during the first half of the period studied. The predominant alignment of this relationship appears to be that the structural transformation precedes the expansion of the railways. Among the various economic sectors, the relationship between industry and the railways is the clearest. The relationship changes direction with the passage of time and can be divided into four phases:1.1850s - 1870s. The towns with strongest population and industrial growth attract railways to themselves and are themselves most active in expanding the railways. A weak correlation between accessibility of towns in the shipping network and industry dwindles away when the railways begin to expand.2.1870s - 1900. The relationship between industry and railways is two-way.3. 1900-1950.The building of the most important railways is completed. Industry continues to adapt to accessibility within the railway network.4.After 1950. The medium-sized towns begin to be deindustrialised as the service sector undergoes vigorous growth. The correlation between industry and railways weakens.On the other hand a supplementary study of conditions at regional level shows that railway expansion preceded structural change. In the rural parts of Sweden the railways were an important driving force behind urbanisation and industrialisation, and they created a special type of new population centre -"station villages", as they were called - which came to function as industrial focal points in the countryside. Many of these station villages rose to the status of towns later on.At lower levels of the economic structure the relationships between economic activities and communications networks are not statistically guaranteed as a rule. This is interpreted to mean that at first it was only large aggregates such as population density and total industry that were capable of influencing railway expansion. In similar fashion the railways later became a factor exercising influence primarily at the macro level, while at the micro level they formed only a base on which a number of other location factors were collected and evaluated before the individual firms reached their decisions. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis explores some aspects of the cultural history of the railway during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. It argues that the railway was of central importance in creating and shaping Victorian attitudes to the machine and to mechanized civilization in a world increasingly dominated by large scale-technologies. In particular, it explores the significance of negative responses to the railway - fear, anxiety, nervousness, alarm, revulsion - in influencing a range of social, cultural and medical responses to the perceived degenerative threat of technological civilization. The four chapters of the thesis are organized so as to provide a progressive tightening of focus on particular aspects of the railway's significance in this context. The first, most wide-ranging, chapter explores the ways in which the Victorian railway was perceived as both an icon of progress and civilization and as a disruptive, threatening, destructive force. In particular, it seeks to establish the deep-rooted, enduring and influential nature of the fear and anxiety which the railway provoked. The second chapter is concerned with the railway journey as an experience, relating the ambivalence with which the railway was viewed to the journey as a sensory, physical and mental experience. The third chapter focuses on the accident as the most dramatic instance of the dangers of the railway, and relates its significance in contemporary culture to the wider context of the fears provoked by increasingly powerful and potentially destructive technologies. The fourth and final chapter explores the phenomenon of 'railway spine', the obscure nervous condition supposedly suffered by railway accident victims who had seemingly received no actual organic injury, but nonetheless displayed nervous, mental and physical symptoms of serious bodily disorder.

Ce mémoire constitue une tentative de structurer l’histoire de l’industrie du tramway au Canada. L’objet y est étudié dans son ensemble en vue de dégager et d’analyser sa périodisation. La dernière tentative importante a été effectuée en 1966, lorsque Due a terminé ses recherches en se concentrant uniquement sur l'industrie canadienne des tramways interurbains (Due 1966), excluant ainsi les tramways hippomobiles et les tramways urbains. Depuis, nous avons assisté à l’émergence du système léger sur rail (SLR). Ces derniers sont en cours de déploiement ou de redéploiement dans de nombreuses villes canadiennes. C’est pourquoi il nous apparaissait pertinent de jeter un nouvel éclairage sur le sujet. Notre objectif est d'aller au-delà des anecdotes, des études de cas et des histoires thématiques en utilisant des données opérationnelles et financières compilées pour chacun des réseaux et ce, pour l’ensemble du Canada. Nous analysons l'évolution de l'industrie du tramway au pays, suivant le concept des longs cycles de Kondratiev, depuis les tramways tirés par des chevaux jusqu’au SLR. À cette approche, nous avons superposé celle de la destruction créatrice développée par Schumpeter pour démontrer les legs des technologies antérieures, et le recours à ceux-ci pour les nouveaux cycles. Comme nous l'avons montré, les tramways électriques ont apporté un changement de paradigme important qui a modifié le visage du transport en commun urbain et interurbain, entraînant le déploiement de vastes réseaux et la disparition des systèmes de tramways à traction animale. Cependant, comme le prévoit la théorie des longs cycles de Kondratiev et la tendance à la baisse du taux de profit, l'industrie a rencontré des obstacles qui se sont avérés trop difficiles à surmonter. Cela a entraîné une chute du tramway électrique qui a ouvert la voie à de nouvelles technologies, plus adaptées aux besoins actuels. Lorsque l’industrie des tramways opérée par le privé n'était plus viable, l'État est intervenu. / This dissertation is an attempt to structure the history of the streetcar industry in Canada. The object is studied as a whole in order to identify and analyze its periodization. The last major attempt was made in 1966, when Due completed its research by focusing solely on the Canadian intercity streetcar industry (Due 1966); thus excluding horse-drawn and city streetcars. Since then, we have seen the emergence of the light rail system (LRT). These are currently being deployed or redeployed in many Canadian cities. This is why we felt it was appropriate to shed new light on the subject. Our goal is to go beyond anecdotes, case studies and thematic stories by using operational and financial data compiled for each of the networks across Canada. We analyzed the evolution of the tramway industry in Canada, following the Kondratiev long cycle concept, from horse-drawn streetcars to LRT. We have superimposed Schumpeter's Creative Destruction approach to demonstrate the legacies of earlier technologies, and the use of these technologies for new cycles. As we have shown, electric streetcars have brought about a significant paradigm shift that has changed the face of urban and interurban transit, leading to the deployment of vast networks and the demise of animal-drawn streetcar systems. However, as predicted by Kondratiev's theory of long cycles and the downward trend in the profit rate, the industry encountered obstacles that proved too difficult to overcome. This led to the collapse of the electric tramway, which paved the way for new technologies, better adapted to today's needs. When the privately operated light rail industry was no longer viable, the state intervened.