The London Underground: A Timeline

Inventions of London

by Trinity Tedtsen

Title of this Milestone

Your Project Page Picture Caption

Abstract

The paragraph should give a three to five sentence abstract about your entire London HUA experience including 1) a summary of the aims of your project, 2) your prior experience with humanities and arts courses and disciplines, and 3) your major takeaways from the experience. This can and should be very similar to the paragraph you use to summarize this milestone on your Profile Page. It should contain your main Objective, so be sure to clearly state a one-sentence statement that summarizes your main objective for this milestone such as "a comparison of the text of Medieval English choral music to that of the Baroque" or it may be a question such as "to what extent did religion influence Christopher Wren's sense of design?"

Introduction

I suggest you save this section for last. Describe the essence of this project. Cover what the project is and who cares in the first two sentences. Then cover what others have done like it, how your project is different. Discuss the extent to which your strategy for completing this project was new to you, or an extension of previous HUA experiences.

As you continue to think about your project milestones, reread the "Goals" narrative on defining project milestones from the HU2900 syllabus. Remember: the idea is to have equip your milestone with a really solid background and then some sort of "thing that you do". You'll need to add in some narrative to describe why you did the "thing that you did", which you'd probably want to do anyway. You can make it easy for your advisors to give you a high grade by ensuring that your project milestone work reflects careful, considerate, and comprehensive thought and effort in terms of your background review, and insightful, cumulative, and methodical approaches toward the creative components of your project milestone deliverables.

Background

Now you're on your own! Your milestone must include a thorough and detailed background section with detailed subsections; if additional articles are required to be referenced in this background section, create those as well and link to them (the creation of all pages is tracked by the wiki site and attributed to your username). Remember to use rich multimedia whenever possible. Consult the Help page as needed! Remember, if you don't see an article on this site that is an integral part of your project, create it! Your entire page-creating/page-editing history factors into your overall grade.

First Ideas

During the first half of the nineteenth century, London was constantly clogged with carts and cabs from a large commuting population. By 1850, there were seven railway stations around the city for these commuters. The idea of the London Underground to connect these stations was first proposed in the 1830s, but the idea wasn't approved until 1854. To test if the idea was achievable, a test tunnel was built in Kibblesworth in 1855. This tunnel was used for two years during the production of the development of the first train, in 1861 it was filled up. The railway was first opened in January of 1863. Using gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives, trains traveled between Paddington and Farringdon stations.

Execution

Charles Pearson was a leading promoter of several railway lines. The City Terminus Company built a railway from King's Cross to Farringdon in 1852, in part to Pearson's contributions. Although the city approved of these underground plans, the railway companies were less interested in actually building the tracks. The Metropolitan Railway built an underground line at an estimated cost of £1 million but found it hard to raise the money due to the Crimean War. Although they were granted permission in 1854, construction dud not begin until March 1860 due to this struggle.
The tracks were mostly built using the "cut-and-cover" method and tunneling. The original railway was 3.75 miles (6 km) and opened to the public on January 10, 1863. The railway was deemed a success. The 38,000 people who rode the Tube on its first day of operation had to ride trains from other railways to supplement the service. This early success caused many other private rail companies to apply for building permits for new railways in the city.

Expansion

Electric Underground

James Henry Greathead began construction of the City and South London Railway began in 1886. This construction used Peter William Barlow's patented method of using a wrought iron shield to dig a circular tunnel. Originally, these trains were to be hauled by cables, but when the cable company went out of business the trains were converted to electric power. By 1907, the City and South London Railway extended from Clapham Common to Euston.
In 1900, T\the Central London Railway opened a railway from Shepherd's Bush to Bank. Initially heavy locomotives hauled carriages, similarly to the non-electric approach. This was found to cause vibrations that could be felt on the surface. Using the control system Frank Sprague developed in Chicago, the carriages were reformed into multiple units. The Central London Railway was extended to Wood Lane in 1908 and Liverpool Street in 1912.

Deliverable: Comparing the original to present day

How has this revolutionary mode of transportation adapted to account for the increased population of London?

Timelines

• Lines: New and Major Renovations
• Stations: New and Major Renovations

Trains

• How have the trains themselves adapted?
• What new features are there?

Cost

• Methods of paying-how have these changed over time?
• New stations/trains and renovations- how much and where from?

Conclusion

In this section, provide a summary or recap of your work, as well as potential areas of further inquiry (for yourself, future students, or other researchers).

References

Add a references section; consult the Help page for details about inserting citations in this page.

Attribution of Work

For milestones completed collaboratively, add a section here detailing the division of labor and work completed as part of this milestone. All collaborators may link to this single milestone article instead of creating duplicate pages. This section is not necessary for milestones completed by a single individual.

External Links

If appropriate, add an external links section

Image Gallery

If appropriate, add an image gallery

Category tags

Don't forget to add category tags!!! Your Milestone Pages MUST contain one "Project" Category tags like this:

[[Category:Art Projects]]
[[Category:Music Projects]]
[[Category:Philosophy & Religion Projects]]
[[Category:Drama & Theater Projects]]
[[Category:Writing & Rhetoric Projects]]
[[Category:History Projects]]
[[Category:English Projects]]

...and NO OTHER TAGS except for the year the project was completed by you, like this:

[[Category:2017]]

See the Category Help page for assistance. Don't include irrelevant category tags in your Milestone page (like the Template category!)

Delete this entire "Category section" when editing this page--Categories don't need a heading.