Safety on the London Underground The earliest attack on the London Underground was in 1885, when a bomb exploded on a Metropolitan line train at Euston Square station. The Provisional IRA (and its predecessors) carried out over ten separate attacks between 1939 and 1993. As a response to growing 'Mumbai-Style' terrorist attack threats, the British Transport Police has its own detachment of armed officers who will regularly patrol both the Underground’s stations and its trains. Various regulations aim to improve safety on the Tube. Smoking was allowed in certain carriages in trains until 9 July 1984. In the middle of 1987 smoking was banned for
London Underground and the mechanisms are regularly degreased to lower the potential for fires. The only wooden escalator not to be replaced was at Greenford station, which remained until October 2015 when TfL replaced it with the first incline lift on the UK transport network. There are 426 escalators on the London Underground system and the longest, at , is at Angel. The shortest, at Stratford, gives a vertical rise of . There are 184 lifts, and numbers have increased in recent years because of investment making tube stations accessible. Over 28 stations will have lifts installed over the next 10 years,