Metropolitan underground railway

Abstract

The world’s first underground passenger railway line, the Metropolitan was undertaken as a new means of connecting London’s busy northern and western railway stations to the central City of London. As the network of underground railway routes grew, it would also help to promote the creation of ever more distant London suburbs along its branches – sometimes even on land controlled by the railways themselves. The Metropolitan used smoky, coal-powered engines and was built largely by means of the cut-and-cover method: digging trenches from the surface, constructing the tunnel, and then topping it to rebuild a new surface. The ‘tube’ was becoming an ordinary part of London life, but even at the turn of the century, a complete circumnavigation of the District Railway’s ‘inner circle’ could be the stuff of romance – at least for the sake of an article in a magazine.