150 and Counting: The Development of a Co-ordinated Underground Network for London Transport for London Corporate Archives Online Exhibition TfL Corporate Archives The TfL Corporate Archives acts as the custodian of the corporate memory of TfL and its predecessors, responsible for collecting, conserving, maintaining and providing access to the historical archives of the organisation. These archives chart the development of the organisation and the decision making processes. The Archives provides advice and assistance to researchers from both within and outside of the business and seeks to promote the archive to as wide an audience as possible, while actively collecting both physical material and personal stories to add to the archive. The Archives are part of Information Governance, within General Counsel. Online Exhibition • “150 and Counting: The Development of a Co-ordinated Underground Network for London” is intended as an introduction to the wealth of material collected and managed by the Corporate Archives • The following pages highlight key documents from the collection celebrating 150 years of the Underground in London, arranged according to theme, as well as providing further brief information. These can be used as a starting point for further research if desired • This document is adapted from a guide that originally accompanied an internal exhibition Metropolitan Line • On Saturday 10th January 1863, the Metropolitan Railway Company opened a sub-surface railway between Bishop’s Road, Paddington to Farringdon Street, a distance of 3¾ miles. This was the world’s first passenger underground railway and it was the idea of Charles Pearson, the City of London’s Solicitor, who saw the possibilities of underground travel to relieve the pressure on streets choked with horse-drawn vehicles, and John Hargreave Stevens, who was to become Architect of the Metropolitan Railway. • On the first day the public flocked to the new railway for a novel ride beneath the streets and 30,000 passengers were carried, with £850 of fares passing into the railway’s hands on that first day. • According to The Times newspaper of the following Monday, “Throughout the morning every station became crowded with anxious travellers who were admitted in sections...The platform gained, the next great struggle was for a seat...classification was altogether ignored, the holder of a first-class ticket being compelled to go in number three or not at all, and vice-versa.” LT000016/014 Arms of the Metropolitan Railway Company Metropolitan Line • This pioneer underground railway was constructed by LT001917/001 a “cut and cover” system; Centenary Parade at Neasden the massive brick tunnels were built in huge trenches cut out of the ground and then roofed over. • The railway was eventually extended as far as Buckinghamshire and on 1st July 1933, it was absorbed into the newly created London Passenger Transport Board becoming its Metropolitan Line. • Locomotive No. 23 started hauling passenger trains on the Metropolitan Railway in 1866, three years after the line opened. Affectionately known to drivers as “The Old Girl”, it hauled all kinds of trains, and shunted at depots for 82 years. LT001917/001 Centenary Book of the Metropolitan Railway Company (Metropolitan) District Line • The early success of the Metropolitan Railway coincided with revived activity in the promotion of railway schemes for London, and in 1864 there were 259 different projects for making c. 300 miles of railway in and around London. • Formed in 1864, the Metropolitan District Railway was the Company charged with completing an ‘Inner Circle’ underground for London by the construction of a line from South Kensington to Tower Hill, together with spurs from South Kensington to West Brompton, and Kensington High Street to Addison Road. • The first sod was cut at Kensington on 29 June 1865 and nearly 3,000 men were employed, working for the last month day and night. LT000565/017 A copy of the Act authorising the Metropolitan and Metropolitan and District Railway Companies to make certain railways for completing the Inner Circle and connecting their railways with the East London Railway, as well as creating a new street and certain street improvements. 1879 (Metropolitan) District Line • The first section of the District, from South Kensington to Westminster Bridge, was opened on 24 December 1868. • Under an agreement of 1866, the Metropolitan worked and maintained the District lines as they were opened for traffic. LT001893/006 • The working arrangement became seen as unsatisfactory by the District and a year’s notice was given to terminate it on 1 July 1871. The District company bought its own rolling stock, and built repair shops and sheds at West Brompton, and on 3 July 1871 the District began to work on its own undertaking. • At the end of its working life as a company, the District worked over 58 miles 56 chains of railway, of which it owned 25 miles 5 chains outright, partly owned 1 mile 54 chains, leased or worked jointly a further 5 miles 43 chains, and exercised continuous running powers over 26 miles 34 chains of the lines of other companies, namely, the Metropolitan, Southern, and London Midland Scottish Railway. East London Line • The East London Line is the only Underground line that was planned and built as a mainline railway. • The story of the East London Line begins with the building of the Thames Tunnel. • The Thames Tunnel from Wapping to Rotherhithe was the first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world. It was designed by Marc Brunel using a revolutionary tunnel shield, comprising 36 cells in which a workman was engaged working independently of the others. • The operation was started in 1825 and was halted a number of times due to flooding. • The Thames Tunnel was eventually opened in 1843. It had a height of 7m/23ft, width of 11m/37ft, and a total length of 406m/1,506ft. • It was eventually sold to the railways, becoming part of the underground network in 1865. East London Line • In 1865, the East London Railway was formed and it purchased the Thames Tunnel to form part of an underground rail link between the Great Eastern Railway at Liverpool Street and the South Eastern Railway and the London Brighton South Coast Railway at New Cross. The first part of the line, through the tunnel to Wapping was opened in December 1869. LT001639/007 Plan showing property along the East London Railway to be included in the Railway's lease provisions East London Line • The East London Railway owned the infrastructure but it never owned or operated its own trains, always relying on others. In 1884, the line was leased to a consortium of the 5 companies using it – a pattern that was to be repeated over the next 49 years until the East London Line came under the control of the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933. LT000565/012 A copy of the East London Railway: Further Powers Act, increasing the powers of the railway company to compulsorily purchase land, raise more money and authorise agreements and authorise agreements between itself and other railway companies. 1870. East London Line • The identity of the East London Line changed considerably over time. On maps between 1933 and 1968 it was depicted in the same colour as the Metropolitan Line. In 1970 it was renamed the ‘Metropolitan Line-East London Section’, in the 1980s it was renamed as a line in its own right, and from 1990 the colour changed to orange. The line carried 10.7 million passengers per year before its closure in 2007. • The former underground line was extended northwards to Whitechapel with new stations added, reopening on 23 May 2010 as part of the London Overground network. A further extension to Highbury and Islington was opened on 28 February 2011, with a final southern section to Clapham Junction opening in 2012. (Inner) Circle • The early success of the Metropolitan Railway prompted a huge number of proposals for other railways. Parliamentary committees of 1863-1864 evaluated them and decided that the best thing would be an inner circuit connecting both ends of the Metropolitan route with mainline termini. • The Metropolitan obtained powers to extend itself to Tower Hill and to South Kensington, in both cases along the present route of the Circle Line. A separate company was started to complete the rest of the circle, the Metropolitan District. It was planned that the two companies would merge as soon as practical. (Inner) Circle • However, the Metropolitan District was a much less profitable company than the Metropolitan, and the Metropolitan’s shareholders blocked the merger. The completion of the Inner Circle was in doubt, and the financial disparity lead to the formation of the Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Company, who sold shares in the completed Inner Circle – whilst it was still a work in progress. LT000346/090/007 Metropolitan Inner Circle Completion Railway Company – Prospectus, October 1877 • This forced negotiation between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District. • The Metropolitan bought the Inner Circle Completion Company and, having demonstrated a willingness to work together, a new arrangement between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District received Parliament’s approval in 1879. The Circle was completed in 1884. Inner Circle • The line began to gain its “The proposal to break own identity in the late 1930s, with the name the Circle at Baker Circle Line appearing on a Street and at South 1936 poster. Kensington takes a • In 2009, the continuous serious turn nature of the Circle Line was officially ended, financially, for the replaced by an end to end cost amounts to service between something over Hammersmith and Edgware Road via a single £600,000...We must circuit of a new loop and ask ourselves what the existing route.