Transport for LondonHistory
Today, London Underground is a major business with three million passenger journeys made every day, serving 275 stations over 408 km (253 miles) of railway.
Past and future
London has changed a lot since the first first stretch of line opened on 10 January 1863. The inaugural stretch measured six kilometres (nearly four miles) and ran between Paddington (Bishop's Road) and Farringdon Street, creating quick steam train connections from main line overground stations to the City.
Streets along the route were dug up, tracks laid in a trench, covered with a brick-lined tunnel and the road surface replaced. Known as the 'cut and cover' method, this was quick and effective but created as many problems as it was designed to solve - causing congestion during construction - and was abandoned towards the end of the 19th century. By then, however, the Metropolitan was stretching ever further outwards: across Middlesex, through Hertfordshire and into Buckinghamshire.
Following the success of the 'Met' other companies were keen to board the 'gravy train' and by Christmas 1868, the Metropolitan District had opened a line between Westminster and South Kensington.
This linked with a branch line from the original 'Met', built at Edgware Road and eastward extensions by both railway companies completed the Circle Line of today by 1884.
Once the system had started there was no stopping it and the search was on for further avenues of expansion. The obvious route was again to the east, where the oldest section of today's Underground was ready and waiting. Twenty years before the 'Met' steamed into history, Sir Marc Brunel and his famous son Isambard, had built the Thames Tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping.
The first such structure under water anywhere in the world. The method they adopted was similar to coal mining, sinking vertical shafts and then excavating the tunnels from within a metal shield. It is a tribute to the Brunels that major refurbishment to the tunnel was only needed during the 1990s.
Originally designed for horse-drawn traffic, it opened in 1843 for pedestrians, became a railway tunnel in 1869 and now carries the East London Line. The Brunel Engine House Museum, behind Rotherhithe tube station, tells the story of this unusual tunnel: one time banquet hall, shopping centre, and fairground. In 1870, another sub-Thames railway opened, with a cable-hauled line between the Tower of London and Bermondsey.
In a reverse of the Thames Tunnel's fortunes, this failed as an Underground line, was converted for pedestrian use after just a few months and closed altogether when Tower Bridge station opened in 1894.
