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country.
    But the Commission rejected Pearson’s plan, and any other that sought to infringe the rights of central London landlords. The Commission recommended against new stations in the West End or the City, and the boundary line to the north would be the New Road. The presumption against railways in central London would remain effective until 1858 (Victoria Station),with one exception, which we will consider shortly. The inadvertent effect of this ruling was the creation of the lines and stations of the London Underground, because these would avoid the ban.
    Now to Pearson’s Plan B …
    In 1851 the Great Northern Railway had reached London and begun operating into a terminus at Maiden Lane, just north of the New Road. In 1854 they moved up to the New Road itself, with the opening of King’s Cross station, east of Euston. The railways were alighting on the New Road like birds perching on a branch (the Midland Railway would open St Pancras, between Euston and King’s Cross, in 1868), and Pearson took note. Whereas his first scheme had ignored the New Road stations, and simply sought to upstage them with a bigger and better – and madder – station of his own, his second plan tried to co-opt them.
    It involved a railway going beneath the New Road and connecting some or all of the main-line termini gathered there and then bending south towards the City (so far, so sensible), where it would conclude (and here his fancifulness broke out again) in another vast half-underground City terminus: a complex involving two stations, one for long-distance and one for local traffic, both with numerous platforms 300 yards long, with a 13-acre goods yard and engine stabling facilities. This time it was proposed the terminus would connect to some more tangible workmen’s estates – the north London suburbs being built along the route of the Great Northern Railway.
    The Corporation was interested in the idea, because it thought it might lead to the main-line railway companies funding municipal improvements in Farringdon, and in 1852 Pearson deposited his City Terminus Bill in Parliament. It was always doomed. The main-line railway companies might welcome an underground connection that would enable them to run through to the City,but why would they underwrite a vast terminus that would take away their business? Yes, an argument for the great City Terminus would be the amount of road traffic it might spare the city streets. But a stronger argument against was the amount of road traffic it might
create
. Plus, it contravened the ban of 1846.
    What was required now was the intervention of some men who were not gadflies.
PEARSON MEETS THE BUSINESSMEN
    The logic of Pearson’s arguments was accepted, up to a point, by a consortium of businessmen. In August 1854, after Pearson’s own scheme had failed in Parliament, the consortium obtained royal assent for what had initially been called the Bayswater, Paddington & Holborn Bridge Railway, and which gradually became the ‘North Metropolitan’ and finally the Metropolitan Railway.
    It would run beneath the New Road from Paddington to King’s Cross, there drooping south towards the City, just as Pearson’s scheme had done. But there would be no sprawling terminus – instead, a more modest station at Farringdon. The line would connect to the Great Western main line at Paddington, in return for which that company would invest in the Metropolitan. There would also be a connection at King’s Cross to the Great Northern main line, in return for which that company would
not
invest in the Metropolitan. (But it would have to pay to use the tracks that would carry its trains through to the City.)
    The consortium set about a faltering campaign to raise the million pounds required, a job made harder by the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. It should by now be apparent that Charles Pearson was not the sort of man to resent the success of a rival