Trainspotting
But it was the railways that ensured London's complete transformation. After all, this was the age of industrial revolution and the great city was never going to miss out. Euston station was built in 1837; Waterloo, Paddington, Victoria and the rest all followed shortly afterwards. In the 25 years from 1852 to 1877 the railways took over, as networks were laid that remain to this day. London would never look or feel the same again.
'Railways meant they could move to the suburbs.'
The biggest impact of the railways was the way they revolutionised working life. The big, national railway networks were accompanied by local, commuter lines. These were ideal for the clerks and other lower-middle-class professionals who could not afford to live in the safer areas of central London - and who chose not to live in the cheaper areas, where crime was booming. Railways meant they could move to the suburbs.
London Bridge and Fenchurch Street stations began running commuter services in the 1840s, servicing once far-off places like Deptford, Croydon and even Brighton. In 1859, work began on the Metropolitan Railway, running underground from Paddington to Farringdon. It was an instant success when it opened four years later and, in its first year, carried almost ten million passengers. The 'Tube', as it came to be known, was born.
The first electric line opened in 1890 and ran from King William Street to Stockwell, a distance of three miles; the Waterloo and City line ('the Drain') opened in 1898. On the surface, horse-drawn omnibuses first appeared in 1829; by the middle of the century there were 3,000 of them, carrying 900,000 passengers each day. Along with cabs, carts, carriages and trams, they filled London's roads. With gasoline-powered omnibuses arriving in 1897, London in 1900 would have been a far noisier place than it had been even 50 years earlier.
Published: 2004-02-16
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