London’s first underground railway

The population of London greatly increased during the 19^th century and likewise the traffic on the capital’s streets. The City and Westminster in particular were clogged with horse-drawn vehicles of many sorts. Railways carried people into and out of London to other parts of the country via termini and it was in the interest of the railway companies to bring their lines into the centre of town. Yet the Royal Commission on Metropolis Railway Termini of 1846 decided on a circular boundary within which railways were not permitted to enter, so each new railway line that connected to the rest of the country ended on the edges of Central London. Anyone arriving from those termini had to use omnibuses, hansom cabs, or carriages, to complete their journey, adding to the slow-moving traffic. A solution would be an underground railway that took passengers off the roads.

An important figure in that respect was Charles Pearson, the solicitor of the City of London Corporation from 1839. He was a great campaigner on social and railway issues over many years and proposed an underground railway from King’s Cross to Farringdon. The City Terminus Company was created in 1852 for that purpose.

In the same year another group created the Bayswater, Paddington & Holborn Bridge Railway Company with a plan to construct an underground line from Paddington to meet the City Terminus Company line at King’s Cross. The company’s chairman, William Mallins, fully understood that London was so congested that it was becoming difficult for traffic to move around. That scheme received Parliamentary approval in 1853. In the meantime, the City Terminus scheme was rejected by Parliament but subsequently merged with the Paddington to King’s Cross plan. A new Parliamentary Bill was submitted, with the route extended from Paddington to the General Post Office at St. Paul’s via Farringdon. The company name then changed to the Metropolitan Railway.

This new Act was passed in August 1854. It then took a further four years to raise the necessary capital, which was not easy for an unproven concept during the time of the Crimean War. When they were on the point of giving up, the Corporation of the City of London provided £200,000 at Pearson’s insistence because, as he had long expounded, it would relieve traffic on their congested streets and allow workers to commute to and from their place of work. The City was London’s primary district for employment and to which people needed to commute. The Great Western Railway also made an investment so the line could bring people to and from its terminus at Paddington.

Before work commenced, the route was shortened to Farringdon to save costs and reduce opposition, never reaching the General Post Office. After King’s Cross, it followed Farringdon Road to Farringdon Street, close to the City at Smithfield, taking almost the same route as the first omnibuses three decades earlier. Although the eastern terminus would then be just to the north, the City was still easily accessible on foot or by omnibus. The Metropolitan would connect the railway termini at Paddington, Euston, and King’s Cross, and with intermediate stations at Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road (Great Portland Street), and Gower Street (Euston Road).

The chief engineer for the work was John Fowler, who had previously created railways in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Work commenced in the spring of 1860. It was built using the ‘cut and cover’ method whereby a channel was dug, the railway laid, and then covered over. The line passed just below the level of buildings and streets. The section eastwards from Bishop’s Road was dug under the New Road, today’s Marylebone and Euston Roads. The 700-yard eastern section, which passed along the Fleet Valley between King’s Cross and Farringdon, however, involved the demolition of perhaps 1,000 houses, displacing 12,000 people. Spoil from the tunnelling was taken to Stamford Bridge, the future site of the Chelsea Football Club stadium.

The image shows VIPs on a demonstration run on the Metropolitan Railway, perhaps prior to its opening. The carriages behind the locomotive are first-class while those at the back, in the foreground, are probably third-class.

Inevitably there were issues caused by creating a tunnel through a built-up area and only just below the surface. The submerged River Fleet crossed the route four times through sewers. On one occasion in June 1862 it burst out due to heavy rain, causing flooding that created a delay of a few months and increased the cost.

While construction was still in progress trial runs took place. It was important to allay fears amongst the public of travelling underground. In May 1862 it became possible to pass along the entire route with a train of distinguished guests including Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone.

The Metropolitan Railway was opened in January 1863 with a grand ceremony, attended by many VIPs. Trains ran every 15 minutes in each direction. It was a great novelty to travel under London by train and on the first day about 40,000 passengers took a journey on the line, which would have been more if there were additional trains to carry them. In April the frequency was increased to six trains an hour during busy periods.

Just seven weeks after the line’s opening, in February 1863, the first train crash took place. A pointsman sent a train leaving Farringdon down the wrong track and it collided with another arriving from Paddington. Twenty-five people were injured but the line was running again within 30 minutes.

The company provided rail links with the overground railways of the Great Western Railway at Paddington and the Great Northern Railway at King’s Cross, which then ran their trains onto the Metropolitan line, creating additional revenue in the form of tolls. Connections were gradually added to other railway networks, numbering seven by 1871, providing passengers with numerous destination possibilities. That continued into the early years of the 20^th century.

The line was initially worked by the Great Western Railway, supplying the locomotives and carriages, staff, and operating the booking offices. GWR trains ran on broad gauge lines and the Great Northern on the more standard Stephenson gauge, so the Metropolitan tracks initially had three rails to accommodate trains from the various companies.

In the early days the line was used for carrying freight as well as passengers, including carcasses to Smithfield meat market. Freight traffic continued until after the Second World War.

Locomotives were required to work in the tunnels without emitting steam or smoke. Daniel Gooch, the engineer for the Great Western, devised a system whereby the exhaust of locomotives was returned to cold water tanks by pipes from the cylinders. The engines burnt coke instead of coal, which gave off less sulphur. However, the atmosphere in the tunnels was said to be unpleasant. In 1867 three people died from ‘choke damp’ and in the 1870s the company had to make ventilation shafts in the tunnels to allow air to escape.

Just a few months after its opening, the GWR gave a month’s notice that it would cease to operate the line, which followed a dispute between the two parties regarding frequency of each of the company’s services. The Metropolitan had to very quickly acquire new trains and staff. The Great Northern and other railway companies quickly came to the rescue, fitting out some of their locomotives with the necessary condensing apparatus to run underground.

New wooden carriages, with eight wheels, were ordered by the Metropolitan, arriving in October 1863. Until 1885 they were painted green with brass and copper. Carriages were of varnished teak, and the top half of first-class carriages painted white. The latter were quite luxurious, with each containing six compartments. Even second class, with eight compartments, had leather padded seats. Carriages were gas-lit, the gas carried in rubber bags on the roofs.

A cross-sectional illustration of Baker Street station below ground.

When the line opened, a journey from one end to the other, from Paddington to Farringdon, could be made in 18 minutes. The Metropolitan was initially very successful. It normally ran 650 services per day, but with each locomotive pulling only four carriages with an average of 50 passengers on each train. In its first year around nine and a half million passengers travelled on the line, with a peak of 60,000 in one day, which is remarkable considering that the limited route was also served by cheaper omnibuses. A dividend of 6.25 percent was paid to shareholders in the first year.

Fares of between five pence and nine pence for a return journey were affordable for the middle classes but expensive for lower-paid labourers. In 1861 the company was granted powers to extend the line east to Moorgate Street and double the tracks between King’s Cross and Farringdon. A condition of the grant was that the Metropolitan should provide lower fares for working men. In 1864 the company started to run two trains in each direction before 6am at a return fare of three pence, immediately attracting large numbers of workers.

Despite the dispute between the Metropolitan and GWR, they soon cooperated on a new venture: the Hammersmith & City line, to serve the growing suburbs of Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, as well as Ladbroke Grove. As a sign of what was to come in the future, there were also intermediate stations at Latimer Road and Goldhawk Road, encouraging speculators to develop housing on the fields at those locations. The line opened in June 1864 and was initially worked by the GWR with broad-gauge trains. The following year a spur was opened to the West London line at Uxbridge Road, from where Latimer Road is now located. The Metropolitan took over the Hammersmith line in April 1865 and it then converted to standard gauge.

In December of that same year the line was extended in the east from Farringdon Street to Moorgate Street, with an intermediate station at Aldersgate (now named Barbican). In 1866 the London, Chatham & Dover Railway also brought its line north, over the Thames at Blackfriars, to join the Metropolitan at Farringdon.

It was at that time when the first fatal accident on the line took place. The new Smithfield Market was being built above the line between Farringdon and Aldersgate. In December 1866 a four-ton girder fell from the construction site. It crashed through the roof of a second-class carriage of a train passing underneath, instantly killing an elderly lady. Two other passengers and the guardsman were thrown onto the tracks beneath the girder and later died of their injuries

Baker Street station.

A major feature of the Metropolitan would later become its extension far out into the Buckinghamshire countryside. It began modestly with a short single-track branch line from Baker Street to Swiss Cottage, with intermediate stops at Marlborough Road and St. John’s Wood, the latter important for Lord’s cricket ground. At that time Swiss Cottage was still in the countryside and passengers alighting there could enjoy the scenery. It was initially owned by a separate company and named the Metropolitan & St. John’s Wood Railway, opened on Easter Monday 1868.

A committee of the House of Lords recommended in 1863 that the underground railway system should be extended south to the Thames and to create an ‘inner circle’. To achieve this the District Railway was formed, which would gradually create the southern part of the circle. For their part in creating the circle, the Metropolitan opened a new section in October 1868 from Edgware Road to Praed Street, serving the GWR’s Paddington station, and then through the sparsely-populated districts of Bayswater and Notting Hill Gate, and on to Kensington, and Brompton (Gloucester Road).

The Great Eastern Railway moved its London terminus from Bishopsgate at Shoreditch into the City at Liverpool Street, opening in stages between 1874 and 1875. That prompted the Metropolitan Railway to extend their line the short distance from Moorgate to Liverpool Street, where their station connected to the GER’s terminus. In 1876 the line was extended further to Aldgate after pressure from the City of London Corporation.

It became clear that the Metropolitan Railway had been paying too much in dividends in its first years and wasting resources, leaving it short of capital. They were also finding that tunnelling under expensive conurbation was not profitable and thereafter much of its future expansion was to be overground through countryside. The St. John’s Wood branch was extended in 1879 with a single line to West Hampstead and a temporary platform at Finchley Road. A fuller service followed later in 1879, with Kilburn & Brondesbury. Harrow on the Hill was reached in August 1880.

More than a decade following the parliamentary committee recommendation for the creation of an inner circle it had still not been completed. The Metropolitan and District companies were finally prompted to act when Parliament approved a rival plan from a group of businessmen. It spurred the existing companies to cooperate, at least to the extent of completing the circle. Together they persuaded the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Commissioners of Sewers to contribute to the cost. A Bill was passed in 1879 to extend the Metropolitan as far as Tower Hill, with a spur to Whitechapel where it connected to the East London Railway. In September 1882 an extension was completed to a station named Tower of London, which acted as a temporary terminus. It then took a further two years, and at great cost, for the Metropolitan to complete the final link to Mansion House. Trains began running around the full circle line in October 1884. The agreement between the two companies was that the Metropolitan ran trains clockwise and the District anticlockwise.

At the start of the 19^th century, before the introduction of affordable public transport, workers could only walk to their place of employment. From the 1830s omnibuses had allowed more rapid commuting over longer distances. Railways could move people even faster and further, providing greater choice in where they lived, perhaps somewhere cheaper or more pleasant. Overground railways could bring people to London but the Metropolitan provided the final link to bring them to their place of work in the City.

The Metropolitan Railway was the forerunner of what was to become a major underground rail network beneath London. Yet in its earliest decades it was connected to mainline overground services that provided through trains to numerous stations around the south-east of England.

Not only did the Metropolitan make it quicker and easier to travel around but it generated its own business by changing where people lived and worked in proximity to stations. That fuelled the creation of new suburbs and physical growth of London.

Even after the evident success of the Metropolitan Railway, it took a long time for any other city to attempt an underground railway. The Paris Metro was created after almost forty years and New York’s subway even later. The Metropolitan Railway remained independent until it was integrated into the London Underground network when the London Transport Passenger Board was founded in July 1933.