Construction
In 1863 the Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) opened the world's first underground railway. From Paddington the line was built using the "cut-and-cover" method beneath the New Road, connecting the main line railway termini at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross, then followed Farringdon Road in tunnel and cutting to a station at Farringdon Street near Smithfield, near the capital's financial heart in the City. The service was initially provided by gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives.
With connections to the Great Western Railway (GWR) and Great Northern Railway (GNR) under construction and connections to the Midland Railway and the LC&DR planned, the Met obtained permission in 1861 and 1864 for a four-track eastward extension to a new terminus at Moorgate and two additional tracks from King's Cross to Farringdon Street. The Met used two tracks for its own services, the other two tracks being used mainly by other railway companies, and becoming known as the City Widened Lines. A pair of single track tunnels at King's Cross connecting the GNR to the Met came into passenger use on 1 October 1863 when the GNR began running trains, those towards Farringdon Street calling at a single-platform station at King's Cross York Road, in the reverse direction at King's Cross Suburban station. A west curve towards Baker Street was built but not used for regular traffic and the track removed in 1865. Having withdrawn from running Metropolitan services on 10 August, the GWR returned on 1 October 1863 with through trains from such places as Windsor.
The extension to Aldersgate Street and Moorgate Street (now Barbican and Moorgate) opened on 23 December 1865, and all four lines were open on 1 March 1866. The parallel tracks from King's Cross to Farringdon, first used by GNR freight train on 27 January 1868, entered a second Clerkenwell tunnel before dropping at a gradient of 1 in 100, passing under the Ray Street Gridiron carrying the original Met track before ascending a 1 in 40 slope to Farringdon.
Read more about this topic: City Widened Lines
Famous quotes containing the word construction:
“There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face:
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)