LONDON “INNER CIRCLE"

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 November 1934, Page 2

LONDON “INNER CIRCLE"

FIRST UNDERGROUND IN WORLD LONDON, October 9. London’s Inner Circle was opened 50 years’ ago to-morrow, and was then one of the wonders of the world. It began as an underground street railway, the first ever designed for the local services of large cities dn this or any other country. 4 Fifty years ago a journey on the Inner Circle was an adventure from which the awed and grateful traveller, was delivered, half deafened and half suffocated by clouds of smoke and steam, and with his face .blackened and his mouth full of cinders. He called the line the “Vulcan Way.” As .the conditions of underground travel have changed, so the scale of engineering undertakings has changed. Modern engineers would smile at the job of building the first section of the Circle from Bishop’s Road (Paddington) to Farringdon Street —almost a toy railway in point of length. Then the achievement was thought to be little short of miraculous.

PULPIT WARNINGS At firgt there jvas a storm of objections. From the' pulpit came stern warnings of what would follow man s “burrowing like a mole beneath the feet of honest God-fearing citizens.” People doubted whether it would be possible to sink such a gigantic brick tube under the earth. Some prophesied that the weight of the traffic above would cause a and that the inhabitants of adjoining houses would be poisojied by the sulphurous exhalations. , The first section was begun in 1860, and took two and a-half years to complete. The work of the engineers amid the labyrinths of sewers, gas mains, and water mains beneath the City streets was likened at the time to a delicate surgical operation. The difficulty of coping with the. old Fleet Ditch and its rising tide. of filth was enormous. j By 1868 the original line had extended eastwards towards Moorgate and yvestwards towards Kensington. On October 1, 1884, the Aldgate-Mahsion Hous.e line was completed to finish the Cir-j cle, and on October 6, 1884, passengers were carried for the first time over the circular route. v-- J The Inner Circle also has a placet in railway history, because it was the; first underground railway to be electrified.