It’s a relatively little-known fact that London isn’t the only city in the UK to have its own underground railway system. Glasgow does too. The Subway consists of two lines, fifteen stops, and one of the simplest public transit maps in existence. You can complete a circuit in about half an hour, and it’s often noted that some of the journeys between stations can be completed more quickly on foot than they can by means of the Subway.

For a Londoner, acclimated to the particular shapes, sounds, colours, and textures of the Tube, riding the Subway can be a disorientating experience. It is similar and yet different: smaller, quieter, cleaner. Almost quaint. The nickname of the system reflects this, while also quietly invoking the violence of Anthony Burgess’s most famous novel. The Clockwork Orange is a small, almost toy-like train network, that serves a loop around the most central parts of Glasgow city.

Throughout its long history (it is the third-oldest underground railway in the world) the Glasgow Subway hasn’t spread in the same chaotic way as the Tube. Indeed the track has not been expanded in over a hundred years. The trains are significantly smaller than most Tube cars, and the stations are almost universally smaller and more narrow than any to be found in London.

While it hasn’t spread, however, it has modernised. The Subway started life in 1896 as a cable-powered system of wooden train carriages, hauled along tracks by stationary steam engines. It was the first of its kind in the world, and extremely popular.

The rails were electrified in the 1920s, and the whole system underwent a significant overhaul in the late 1970s. Since 1980 trains and stations have been decked out in a combination of bright orange and grey. Stations are now spotlessly clean, and equipped with self-service ticket machines and gates that open smoothly with a neutral, bright chiming sound.

Modernisation is set to continue. Trains are currently piloted by human drivers, who poke their heads from the windows of their cabins to check that doors are clear before each departure. Sooner or later the trains will be unattended, monitored by a diligent network of cameras and sensors. No steam engines. No cables. No wooden carriages. Not anymore.

All fifteen stations were originally designed to be islands – narrow platforms with trains arriving on both sides. While several have since been widened or expanded into two separate platforms, the narrowness of the platform in most stations remains unnerving to anyone accustomed to the wide, crowded platforms of the London Underground.

Equally, however, the Subway is usually quiet. The crowds swell at rush hour, but never compete with the urgent crush of the Tube. At most times of day you will find a seat without particular difficulty. Getting lost, also, is a significantly less likely prospect. Whichever train you get on, it’ll pass your destination station sooner or later

Your destination might be Govan Cross. It might be Cessnock, Ibrox, or Hillhead. It might be Partick Cross. The routine process of scanning a ticket, waiting on the platform, of swaying on your feet in a bumping, grumbling train carriage – it’s achingly familiar. You could be in London or Paris, Budapest or Prague. It’s only the detail that makes it different: the long and treasured history, the textures, the particular sounds and scents and temperament of one of the oldest underground railways in the world.