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Location: London, England
Completion Date: 1863 (first line)
Length: 6 kilometers
Engineer: Sir John Fowler
The whole history of the underground transport began on an early Saturday morning under the streets of London.
At January the tenth in 1863 the first subway in the world began it rides.
Almost 40.000 people took a ride in the metro, on its first day of operation.
And thousands of other people, who didn't had the chance to actually experience the subway,
came to look at the Metropolitan railway line.
They had been waiting for this, for nearly two years,
and finally they had the opportunity to actually make use of it.
Before all these people could enjoy the luxuries of public transport,
a whole time of discussing, proposals and again negotiations, went by.
The demand for some sort of transportation began in the 19th century.
This was a time of immense growth in England, the industrial revolution was at its peak,
and many factories were built. Therefore lots of people,
then, moved from the country-side to central London.
With these new citizens traveling all over London,
the central district became really congested.
This was the main reason for the growing demand of some sort of public transport.
Therefore in February 1836 the first passenger-carrying railway was opened; The London and Greenwich Line.
This wasn't an underground railway system; it just rode above the ground. However it worked,
and in the years that followed the line expanded, covering not only central London, but also the remoter districts.
Only thing was that the stations were all located outside the inner city,
since building in densely populated areas was very expensive.
To reach places in the heart of London, one had to take a cab or just walk.
This didn't relieve the streets in central London that much,
in contrary the congestion was just getting higher and higher.
An answer to this was to connect the different stations through an underground railway system.
This idea was mentioned for the first time in 1830, but despite its advantages;
the growth of businesses and the decrease of the overcrowded streets, the proposal was refused.
Lack of funding was the main reason for this failure.
In 1852 a similar idea was formed, and again the lack of support was the basis of the rejection.
A year later the Metropolitan Railway Company made a new offer, this time it did made it through.
Basically because it would cost less then half of the original idea.
Seven years followed and finally the actual construction of the Metropolitan line began in 1860.
Constructing this subway caused a huge chaos in the city, mostly because the cut-and-cover principle was used.
This method involved excavating a wide trench of 10 meters deep, laying the rails,
lining up the walls with bricks and covering it all with arch roofs.
Then the dirt was placed back and the roads were restored.
The subway-line followed largely the main streets and almost never passed a building.
The line connected the two stations of Paddington and Farringdon via Baker Street and King's Cross.
Since the subway initially was served by steam locomotives,
there were many places required were the steam could be vented safely.
After 1905 this line and the meanwhile constructed other subway-lines were gradually electrified.
Over the years this line was expanded many times,
only thing different with the construction of the expanded subway-lines is that were build using a tunneling shield.
This shield has originally been invented by Marc Isambard Brunel, and perfected later by James Henry Greathead.
This round iron shield advanced hydraulic, hundreds of feet under the ground, supporting the soft soil above.
In the shield, construction workers placed cast-iron segments end to end, eventually forming a stiff waterproof tube.
This technique has many advantages in comparison with the cut-and-cover method.
Not only is this technique much less expensive and way faster, but it also doesn't completely destroys the surface above.
Through the expansions made over the years, the Metropolitan line now covers more than 67 kilometers.
But in fact only 9.7 kilometer of this subway is actually beneath the surface.
The whole underground system of London today exists of more than 400 kilometers.
And London isn't the only city with a subway system; after the succes of London major cities like New York,
Paris and Boston began constructing their own subways.
Today alomst every major city in the world has a underground railway system.
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