page_title: Tower Subway
section_title: Cable railway
hierarchical_section_title: Tower Subway / History / Cable railway
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the Tower Subway carriage.
context_page_description: The Tower Subway is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in central London, between Tower Hill on the north bank of the river and Vine Lane on the south. In 1869 a 1,340-foot-long circular tunnel was dug through the London clay using a cast iron shield, an idea that had been patented in 1864 by Peter W. Barlow but never built.
  A 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge railway was laid in the tunnel and from August 1870 a cable-hauled wooden carriage conveyed passengers from one end to the other. This was uneconomic and the company went bankrupt by the end of the year. The tunnel was converted to pedestrian use and one million people a year crossed under the river, paying a toll of a ha'penny. The opening of the toll-free Tower Bridge nearby in 1894 caused a drop in income and the tunnel closed in 1898, after being sold to the London Hydraulic Power Company. Today the tunnel is used for water mains.
  The same shield method of construction was used in 1890 to dig the tunnels of the City and South London Railway, the first of London's electrified "Tube" railways and the first underground electrified railway in the world.
context_section_description: The entrance shafts were fitted with steam-powered lifts for passengers. The tunnel was laid with 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge railway track and a single car, carrying a maximum of 12 passengers, cable-hauled by two 4-horsepower (3.0 kW) stationary steam engines, one on each side of the river. The underground railway opened on 2 August 1870 charging 2d for first class and 1d for second class, first class ticket holders merely having priority when boarding. However, the system was unreliable and uneconomic, and closed that December after the company went bankrupt. The City and South London Railway (C&SL) was originally designed for cable haulage, like the Tower Subway, but the unexpected dissolution of the cable contractor (the Patent Cable Tramway Corporation) precipitated a change to electricity. Its generating power station was built at Stockwell, and the system employed third-rail electrification. So that the C&SL became, in addition, the first major railway in the world to use electric traction.
caption: Interior of the Tower Subway cable car, 1870
exif: {}