Lotos Club, January 21, 1892.
LONDON ON WHEELS.
ABOVE GROUND, ON THE GROUND, AND UNDER GROUND.
THE UNDER-GROUND LINES.
How the five millions of people in London “get about” to their daily avocations and homes is a mystery to those who have not made the subject a study. So I have gathered some information which will throw a little light on it.
Let me start out with the statement that besides the ten large terminal stations, like the Euston Square and the Midland, both in Euston Road, there are four hundred and thirty railway stations within the metropolis, and the under-ground lines alone carry annually one hundred and twenty-five millions of passengers. The underground roads have been in existence for more than a quarter of a century, and are found to answer the purpose admirably of relieving the over-ground traffic. They are convenient, cheap and comparatively quick; but decidedly unpleasant, if not positively unhealthy.
They now form a network of rails under the surface, and they have been a success from the first. They are a great engineering triumph, and may be said to have marked a new epoch in the history of London. The act permitting the tunneling was passed in 1853. Mr. John Fowler conducted the herculean labor, and underneath the streets of the busiest of cities, down where the soil was honeycombed with other works—gas pipes, water mains, drains and sewers—a railway line, costing upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds per mile, was constructed almost without the knowledge of those above. For three years—from the spring of 1860 to the beginning of 1863—two thousand men, two hundred horses and fifty-eight engines were employed. When completed another difficulty presented itself, but was overcome by Mr. Fowler, who invented a locomotive which could be worked in the open air like an ordinary engine, but which, while in the tunnel, emits neither steam nor smoke, being so constructed as to be able to condense the one and consume the other.
And yet, after a long ride in the under-ground, you always emerge with a headache.