Another thing that I noticed about the London Underground carriages is the manual opening handles on the doors, and the fact that you manually and physically open the windows at the end of the carriage for ventilation.

In Australia, or at least in Sydney, that went out of fashion in the 1970s. Since then trains, starting with the Tangara sets (1988) have had conductor (guard) controlled doors, air conditioning (sometimes in theory rather than practice in summer) and no windows that can be opened.

Again this is an observation rather than a criticism; I can understand the merits of both approaches.