How the world's first metro system was built - Christian Wolmar

It was the dawn of 1863, 00:08 and London's not-yet-opened subway system, 00:11 the first of its kind in the world, had the city in an uproar. 00:16 Digging a hole under the city and putting a railroad in it 00:20 seemed the stuff of dreams. 00:22 Pub drinkers scoffed at the idea 00:24 and a local minister accused the railway company of trying to break into hell. 00:29 Most people simply thought the project, 00:31 which cost more than 100 million dollars in today's money, 00:35 would never work. 00:36 But it did. 00:38 On January 10, 1863, 00:41 30,000 people ventured underground to travel on the world's first subway 00:46 on a four-mile stretch of line in London. 00:49 After three years of construction and a few setbacks, 00:52 the Metropolitan Railway was ready for business. 00:56 The city's officials were much relieved. 00:58 They'd been desperate to find a way 01:00 to reduce the terrible congestion on the roads. 01:03 London, at the time the world's largest and most prosperous city, 01:08 was in a permanent state of gridlock, 01:10 with carts, 01:11 costermongers, 01:12 cows, 01:13 and commuters jamming the roads. 01:16 It'd been a Victorian visionary, Charles Pearson, 01:20 who first thought of putting railways under the ground. 01:23 He'd lobbied for underground trains throughout the 1840s, 01:26 but opponents thought the idea was impractical 01:29 since the railroads at the time only had short tunnels under hills. 01:34 How could you get a railway through the center of a city? 01:37 The answer was a simple system called "cut and cover." 01:42 Workers had to dig a huge trench, 01:44 construct a tunnel out of brick archways, 01:47 and then refill the hole over the newly built tunnel. 01:51 Because this was disruptive 01:52 and required the demolition of buildings above the tunnels, 01:55 most of the line went under existing roads. 01:58 Of course, there were accidents. 02:00 On one occasion, a heavy rainstorm flooded the nearby sewers 02:04 and burst through the excavation, 02:07 delaying the project by several months. 02:09 But as soon as the Metropolitan Railway opened, 02:13 Londoners rushed in to ride the new trains. 02:16 The Metropolitan quickly became a vital part of London's transport system. 02:20 Additional lines were soon built, 02:22 and new suburbs grew around the stations. 02:25 Big department stores opened next to the railroad, 02:28 and the railway company even created attractions, 02:31 like a 30-story Ferris wheel in Earls Court to bring in tourists by train. 02:37 Within 30 years, 02:38 London's subway system covered 80 kilometers, 02:41 with lines in the center of town running in tunnels, 02:44 and suburban trains operating on the surface, often on embankments. 02:48 But London was still growing, 02:50 and everyone wanted to be connected to the system. 02:53 By the late 1880s, 02:55 the city had become too dense with buildings, sewers, and electric cables 02:59 for the "cut and cover" technique, 03:01 so a new system had to be devised. 03:04 Using a machine called the Greathead Shield, 03:07 a team of just 12 workers could bore through the earth, 03:11 carving deep underground tunnels through the London clay. 03:15 These new lines, called tubes, were at varying depths, 03:19 but usually about 25 meters deeper than the "cut and cover" lines. 03:23 This meant their construction didn't disturb the surface, 03:26 and it was possible to dig under buildings. 03:29 The first tube line, the City and South London, 03:32 opened in 1890 and proved so successful 03:36 that half a dozen more lines were built in the next 20 years. 03:40 This clever new technology was even used to burrow several lines 03:44 under London's river, the Thames. 03:47 By the early 20th century, 03:49 Budapest, 03:50 Berlin, 03:51 Paris, 03:51 and New York 03:52 had all built subways of their own. 03:55 And today, with more than 160 cities in 55 countries 03:59 using underground rails to combat congestion, 04:02 we can thank Charles Pearson and the Metropolitan Railway 04:06 for getting us started on the right track.