The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-09 00:00:00

METROPOLITAN SUBTERRANEAN

.RAIL 11141 Y.

The spring, when this line was to have been
finished, and the summer, too, have come and gone,
but the City is still in point of time just as far dis-
tant from the West as ever it was. All the little
delays and all the great annoyances of overcrowded
traffic which it was to mitigate, if not to do away
with, are still as rampant and glaring as ever, and
the public and the shareholders also seem to be get-
ting impatient in their desire to know the reason of
the long delay. The varying rumours and constant
speculations to which the postponement of the open-
ing has given rise have been numerous enough, one
would have thought, to enable some to come near
the truth as the real causes of the delay. The lat-
ter, however, have been so very simple that no one
has guessed them. The breaking in of Fleet Ditch,
though it in no way affected the line itself, caused
serious loss of time in completing the main City
terminus at Farringdon-street. From the time
when that obstacle was removed, now more than a
month past, the line could have been worked easily
at its minimum rate of traffic, which is to be no less
than 90 trains a day each way. The only reason
against such working in October last was the wise
determination of the directors---in which they have
been heartily supported by their able engineer, Mr.
Fowler—not to run a single passenger, train until
every minute detail in relation to their stations and
signals was finished, and arranged in the most per-
fect working order. The directors nem to be well
aware that in a line on such a novel plan, and
having so many peculiar features in its construc-
tion, it would be dangerous to open it to the public
while still imperfect, or till they had organised
all their various departments as to give confidence
by the customary appearances which on these
works denote a well-matured and deliberate sys-
tem. Thus, even in such trifling matters as
painting stations or papering and furnishing wait-
ing-rooms, nothing has been left incomplete, and
from Farringdon-street to Paddington the whole
line is now absolutely perfected and ready in
every branch, even down to the liveries of the
guards and porters. The usual ten days' notice
was given last Friday to the Board of Trade to in-
spect the mechanism of the signals, and when these
have been examined the line will open, and, as we
have said, with as much completeness of detail as
if it had been 12 months in working order.
The importance of this new route, both for the
relief it must afford our overcrowded streets and in
diminishing in point of time the space between the
various districts of this unwieldy city, makes it one
of the most remarkable of all our many railway
triumphs. It is, for a London line, the cheapest
that has ever been constructed, though the engineer-
ing difficulties it presented at every hundred yards
were the most formidable of their kind that have
ever been encountered. Sewers and gas and water
mains had to be respected, drains for the tunnel
itself to be made, heavy buildings in near proximity
to the excavations to be kept secure, and even the
thoroughfares under which the shaft was driven
like an entrance to a mine, left undisturbed, with all
the heavy traffic rolling incessantly overhead. How
great were the difficulties these almost irreconcil-
able conditions imPa ._and above all when it be-
came necessary to make underground junctions, as
at King's-cross, where a labyrinth of complicated
brickwork for the tunnel had in fact to be invented
for the purpose—only engineers can understand.
ca
The present powers of the company only allow
them to carry their line from Paddington to Fins-
bury-circus, a distance of about five miles, of
which the first great length, from Paddington to
Farringdon-street, is complete, with working junc-
tions to the Great Western and Great Northern
railways. The tunnel commences at the Paddington
terminus, and continues in an almost direct line
towards the New-road,
passing beneath the Edgware
road at right angles, and intersecting in the same
manner Lisson-grove-road and Upper Baker-street,
skirting along, beyeath, and just outside the south-
ern extremity of Regent's Park. Thence it passes
under the houses at the eastern extremity of Park-
crescent, beneath Tottenham-court-road, into the
New-road, and passing close by Euston-square, turns
at King's-cross to effect a junction with the up and
down lines of the Great Northern Railway. From
King's-cross a great part of the line is an open cut-
ting, except for a length of about 600 yards beneath
Bagnigge-wells-road and Coppice-row, where again
a short tunnel intervenes. From this to the Farring-
don-street station it is nearly ell a fair open cutting,
and up to this point the line is perfectly ready.
From Farringdon-street station, on the waste ground
beyond Holborn which is still dignified with the
name of a street, the line is soon to have two
branches, one intersecting Holborn-hill, or rather
Skinner-street, and continuing its course due south
under the site of the old Fleet Prison, to effect a
junction with the Chatham and Dover line, which
is to cross the Thames at Blackfriars ; the other and
more important branch--in fact, the main line—is
to be continued under the ground north of Smith-
field and south of Charterhouse-square, and will
pass beneath Barbican into Finsbury-circus. At
this terminus it is intended, for the present at least,
which this mode
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Known and appreciated, the shareholders, we be-
lieve, will find their account in extending their
branches to the chief suburban districts of the
metropolis.

From West to East the average slope downward
of the whole line is one in 100 feet till it enters the
Cit
en
City,
hgerandiitrt than this
isesslightly again, but there is no
steeperthroughout. The rails
vary from a depth of 26 feet to 54 feet below the
surface of the ground ; the sharpest curve is one of
200 yards' radius, and there is not more than 1,200
yards of perfectly straight line throughout. Such
bea
found passingi n
London, required certain adaptations
through all the kinds of subsoil to
in the form of the tunnel, according to the nature
of the difficulties it had to surmount. Thus, in
good and easy ground its general form is illiptical,
the span of the arch of the tunnel being 281
feet, and its height 17 feet. The lengths of this
description are built with no less than biz rings of
brickwork, though the Board of Trade do not re-
arches of
spire more than five rings in railway