Read Underground, Overground for Free Online Page A

scheme, especially one that might bring the social benefits he had sought by his own proposal. In 1859, when it looked as though the Metropolitan Railway Company would be wound upwith no line built, he wrote a pamphlet:
A Twenty Minutes Letter to the Citizens of London in Favour of the Metropolitan Railway and City Station
. Gadfly he may have been, but by this ‘letter’ he persuaded the Corporation of London to invest £200,000 in the line, a most unusual example of a public body investing in a Victorian railway. The Corporation also sold land in the Fleet Valley cheaply to the Metropolitan. What was its motive? The answer lay in the above-mentioned property development scheme. The corporation had just opened its new cattle market in Islington, and it had plans for clearances in the Fleet Valley that would make way for the new Farringdon Road, and adjacent meat market. It was felt that the Metropolitan Railway would serve the meat market, since it would carry both passengers and freight, and that it would reduce road congestion in the City. In fact, it would do the former but not the latter. Transport begets transport, and the coming of the Met to the City would only attract more of those swarming buses.

C HAPTER TWO
THE METROPOLITAN RAILWAY
THE LINE IS BUILT – AND OPENED
    The construction of the first stretch of the Metropolitan Railway began in October 1859, and the line was opened to the public on 10 January 1863. It was built on the cut-and-cover principle. The railway was laid into a shallow grave. The road, mainly the New Road, was dug up, and the tracks were laid down in a brick cutting that was then roofed over, with the road replaced on the top of the roof. For this reason a cut-and-cover railway is in engineering terms technically a bridge (because of the roofing-over) rather than a tunnel. The crown of the tunnel arches are sometimes just inches under the road. The early Underground lines were all built on the cut-and-cover principle, because tunnelling technology was not sufficiently advanced to make deep-level Tubes. (The cut-and-cover lines are the Metropolitan, District, Hammersmith & City, and the Circle, which is not so much a line as a service that uses the tracks of those other lines.)
    The first stretch of the Met was built for most of its lengthbeneath the centre of New Road. It was advisable to avoid building an underground railway beneath private houses at the time, because the law would require you to buy those houses. The Met of 1863 was not
entirely
covered over. When it bends south between King’s Cross and Farringdon, it is in open cutting. Go to Swinton Street, WC1, five minutes’ walk south and east of King’s Cross. It’s a ghostly street of powdery-looking terraced houses. Where the terrace comes to an end on the south and east side, an 8-foot wall takes over. You know there must be something fascinating beyond that wall because someone’s tried to stop you seeing over, and there are shards of glass embedded in the top. However, there is a small step or foothold; find it, and look over the top. Then look down and you’ll see filthy pigeons on a brick ledge; look further down to discover the secret of Swinton Street: the tracks of the Metropolitan. Wait for a train, and you will observe that it traverses that crevice with satisfying violence, but not sufficient to disturb the pigeons, which are in league with the line. Go to Swinton Street in the evening, and you’re back in the King’s Cross of
The Ladykillers
: crepuscular, fumacious, railway-haunted.
    Or take an eastbound Met from King’s Cross outside the rush hour, when you ought to be able to find a window seat. Again, look up, to see the beautiful brick valley made by the Metropolitan: the towering arcaded walls with brick struts going over. It’s like being in the moat of Gormenghast Castle. This is hard-core London, and just before Farringdon station you will be able to glimpse