After London and Budapest the Glasgow Subway is the third oldest underground rail in the world. It is Great Britain’s only heavy rail underground metro system outside of London and carries some 13 millions passengers per year through Scottish underground. Its route is 10.4 kilometres long and leads in a circular way along 15 stations. Trains run clockwise (outer circle) as well as anti-clockwise (inner circle). After general maintenance in 2014/15 the colour code of outer circle trains changed from brown to orange, while the colour code of inner circle trains changed from orange to a dark blueish grey. The subway’s track running gauge is unusual 4 feet (=1219 mm) while tunnel diameter is 3.35 metres.

Being made of three small coaches only, current trains are kind of cute and in operation since the 1970s. Soon they will be replaced by driverless vehicles, something that will change the charme of the Glasgow Subway significantly. Same applies to station changes as most of them lose their narrow island platform to get two separate side platforms. Hence, if shooting Glasgow subway photos then time is now!

All images of this photo series got shot with Sigma’s new prime lens 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art, a lens I can truly recommend as it outperforms its Canon competitor by sharpness and chromatic aberrations (CA).

By the way: The Glasgow Subway is part of the project since I wanted the 3^rd oldest underground in the world to be part of it, and not because I am seeing Scotland as a sovereign European country with Glasgow as capital ;-)

SPT – Company running the Glasgow Subway
Website about subway modernisation