10 January 2009

This day in history:
In 1863 the London Underground was first opened, using steam trains running over four miles (six km) of track between Paddington and Farringdon Street. Nowadays there are eleven lines covering 254 miles (408 Km), with 270 stations. It was Charles Pearson who first proposed the notion of ‘trains in drains’ in 1845, when the railway was a relatively new invention. He helped raise the finance from private investors and the City of London, and excavation began in 1860, with a shallow trench dug beneath Euston Road and then covered over. read more