Metropolitan Railway
The Metropolitan Railway was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933. Its first line connected the main-line railway termini at Paddington, Euston, and King’s Cross to the City. Southern branches, directly served, reached Hammersmith in 1864, Richmond in 1877 and the original completed the Inner Circle in 1884. The most important route was northwest into the Middlesex countryside, stimulating the development of new suburbs. On 1 July 1933 the Met was amalgamated with the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and the capital’s tramway and bus operators to form the London Passenger Transport Board.
About Metropolitan Railway in brief
The Metropolitan Railway was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933. Its first line connected the main-line railway termini at Paddington, Euston, and King’s Cross to the City. Southern branches, directly served, reached Hammersmith in 1864, Richmond in 1877 and the original completed the Inner Circle in 1884. The most important route was northwest into the Middlesex countryside, stimulating the development of new suburbs. On 1 July 1933, the Met was amalgamated with the Underground Electric Railways Company of London and the capital’s tramway and bus operators to form the London Passenger Transport Board. Former Met tracks and stations are used by the London Underground’s Metropolitan, Circle, District, Hammers Smith & City, Piccadilly, Jubilee and Victoria lines, and by Chiltern Railways and Great Northern. The company’s name was also changed to the Metropolitan Railway in 1853. Permission was sought to connect more directly to the GWR and to the Great Northern Railway at Le Grand Grand. The Royal Commission investigation into Metropolitan Railway Termini banned construction of new lines or stations in the built-up central area in the 1830s. The concept of an underground railway linking the City with the mainline termini was first proposed in the 1846. A bill was published in November 1852 and in January 1853 the directors held their first meeting and appointed John Fowler as its engineer. After successful lobbying, the company secured parliamentary approval under the name of the “North Metropolitan Railway”-1853.
The line was soon extended from both ends, and northwards via a branch from Baker Street. Electric traction was introduced in 1905 and by 1907 electric multiple units operated most of the services, though electrification of outlying sections did not occur until decades later. From 1897, having achieved the early patronage of the Duke of Buckingham and the owners of Waddesdon Manor, services extended for many years to Verney Junction in Buckinghamshire. In the mid-19th century the increasing resident population led to a high level of traffic congestion with huge numbers of carts, cabs, and omnibuses filling the roads and up to 200,000 people entering the City of London, the commercial heart, each day on foot. The congested streets and the distance to the city from the stations to the north and west prompted many attempts to get parliamentary approval to build new railway lines into the City, but none were successful. By 1850 there were seven termini around the urban centre of London: London Bridge and Waterloo to the south, Shoreditch and Fenchurch Street to the east, Euson and King’s Cross to north, and PADDington to the west. The Metropolitan Railway Company was established to connect the Great Western Railway’ Paddington station to Pearson’s route at King”s Cross. It was also altered so that that it connected more directly with the Bayswater, PaddINGTON, and Holborn Bridge Railway Company.
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This page is based on the article Metropolitan Railway published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
