The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-30 00:00:00

THE-111ETI4OPOLITA.N SUBTERIZAAEAN

RAILWAY.

A quick and safe means of communication beneath
the overcrowded streets of London has always been

;lie great ideal of modern engineers.

The public,

however, have, perhaps not unnaturally, regarded

;he scheme as little less than Utopian, and one

which, even if it could be accomplished, would cer-

tainly never pay. A subterranean railway under
London was awfully suggestive :of dark, noisome
tunnels, buried many fathoms deep beyond the
reach of light and life; passages inhabited by rats,
soaked with sewer drippings, and poisoned by the
escape of gas mains. It seemed an insult to common
sense to suppose that people who could travel as
cheaply to the city on the outside of a Paddington
'bus would ever prefer, as a merely quicker medium,
to be driven amid palpable darkness through the
foul subsoil of London. The pertinacity, too, with

which the scheme at first hung fire strengthened
not a little the incredulity of these who from the

beginning had disbelieved it altogether. The Sub-
terranean Railway has been talked about for years,

and nothing done, till the whole idea has been gra-
dually associated with the plans for flying machines,
warfare by balloons, tunnels under the Channel,
and other bold but somewhat hazardous propositions
of the same kind, Yet many enterprising men have
always adhered to the Subterranean Railway, have
advocated its feasibility, and supported its use, till
they at last brought about a result even mare diffi •
cult to accomplish, if possible, than that of con-
structing the line itself—they got the capital for it.
With the money for the undertaking, and with Mr.

John Fowler as engineer, the rest has been compa-

ratively easy. Working quietly under ground, only
stopping up a thoroughfare now and then, or mak-
ing an awful crack here and there in the walls of

some houses under which it passed, the line has

been slowly but very surely progressing from west
to east, till the greater part of it is now far ad-
vanced towards completion, and the first length will

actually be opened for public traffic, from Victoria-
street Station to Paddington, before the Ist of next
May—the date by which it is, of course, sought
to complete all our improvements in the means of
metropolitan communication. When it is opened,
we venture to think the public will be agreeably

surprised to find that this underground railway is
for nearly half its length not underground at all,
and that where it does pass for various lengths
beneath the streets, the tunnels, instead of being
close, dark, damp, and ill-smelling passages, are
wide, spacious, clean, and excellently well lit, ro-
.

minding one in fact more of a well-kept street by
night than a subterranean passage through the very
heart of this dense metropolis. Whether the rail-
way is one which will or will not remunerate the
shareholders we venture no opinion, but both as one
of the most novel and important works of the kind
that have yet entered the city, and as ono which,
we think, mus t prove of the greatest convenience to
the public, it deserves full notice in our cplumns.
The present powers of the company only allow
them to carry their line from Paddington to Fins-
bury-circus, a distance of four and. a half miles, and
of this length, as we have said, more than three
miles, from Paddington to the Victoria-street sta-
tion, arc in many parts quite complete, and in
others nearly so, with perfect working junctions
with the;Great Western and Northern Railways.
It commences at the Paddington Station, and is
continued thence, in an almost direct line, towards
the New-road, passing beneath the Edgeware-road
at right angles, and intersecting in the same man-
ner Lisson-grove-road and Upper Baker-street,
skirting along, beneath, and just outside the south-
ern extremity of Regent's Park. Thence it passes
under the houses at the eastern extremity of Park-

crescent (some three or four houses in which have
been by no means improved by its passage) con-
tinues 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
cutting, except for a length of about 600 yards
beneath Bagnige-wells-road and Coppice-row, where
again, for the length we have said, a tunnel inter-
venes. From this to the Victoria-street Station it is
nearly all a fair open cutting, and up to this point
the line is nearly ready. From the Victoria-street
Station, to be erected on the dirty waste ground, be-
yond Holborn, which is now dignified with the
name of Victoria-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, effecting a
junction with the Chatham and Dover line, which
is to cross the Thames at Blaekfriars. 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, to
stop ; though there is not the least doubt but, as the
advantages which this quick mode of communica-
tion will afford, and the relief it must give to the
enormously overcrowded traffic of our streets become
more generally known and appreciated, the share-
holders themselves will find their own account in
extending their branches to all the chief suburban
districts of the metropolis. As it is, even completed
to the Victoria-street station, and communicating
with the Chatham and Dover-bridge when finished,
the facilities which it will offer to rapid travelling
will he immense. A person starting from Brighton
or Dover will be put,down almost at his own door
at Bayswater, instead of, as now, taking almost as
much time to travel from London-bridge to Bays-
water as to perform a long journey by rail. In like
manner, those coming from the North—from Edin-
burgh, Liverpool, or Manchester, will be able to
book direct through to Dover or Southampton
without the loss of a minute on their journey. It
is not too much to say that for passengers pressed
for time the two or three miles interval between
the northern and southern stations of the metro-
polis are equal in actual delay to 200 or 300 miles
distance on an unbroken journey. But though
most of our readers know the fact of the delay,
many of them may ask, why was it necessary to
take the line underground ? To this we can only
reply, in the words of the company, that it was not
necessary at all, but that as by so doing they
could effect a very great saving in the cost of the
undertaking, it was thought to be most desirable.
Sewers were not to bo interfered with, gas-pipes
were to be regarded as sacred, water-pipes not to
be touched, churches to be avoided, and houses to
be left secure. With these trifling drawbacks, Mr.
Fowler was at liberty to take his tunnel through a
labyrinth of sewers and gas and water mains if he
could. At every step vestries, gas and water com-
panies, and the Board of Works had to be consulted,
and but for the kind and liberal spirit in which the
company was met, and the fair efforts which were
everywhere made by the bodies to help them over
their great difficulties, the railway could never
have been made at all. Perhaps, however, a short
rough outline of the portion of the line now nearly
completed will give our readers the best idea of
what these difficulties were. To the Victoria-street
Station the line is nearly 31 miles long, having
stations at Paddington, Edgware-road, Baker-
street, Portland-road, Euston-square, King's-cross,
and Victoria-street. From west to east the average
slope downwards of the whole line is about 1 in
300 feet, though after entering the city it again
rises, but there is no steeper gradient throughout
than lin 100. Its greatest curve is of 200 yards
radius, and its greatest depth from the ground
above to the rails not less than 54 feet, and there are
not more than 1,200 yards of straight line through-
out. The span of the arch of the tunnel is 281 feet,
its form is elliptical, and its height 17 feet, except
in the parts where there is great superincumbent
pressure, when the form of the arch is altered to
give it greater strength and to take the crown to a
height of 19 feet. The foundations of the tunnel go
from four to five feet into the solid ground on each
side below the rails, except in some few places,
where the close vicinity of very heavy buildings
rendered extra strength necessary, and here the
tunnel has been driven like a shaft, and is a solid
ring of massive brickwork above and below ; in
fact, in all parts of the tunnel itself the most
zealous care has been taken to insure the structure
being everywhere greatly in excess a the strength