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Key facts

Length: 67km

Stations: 34 

Opened: 1863 

Introduction

The Metropolitan line is the oldest underground railway in the world. As its most extensive, the railway reached 80km into Buckinghamshire, but services were cut back after it lost its independence and became part of London Transport (LT) in 1933. Today it has 67km of track and 34 stations, running from Amersham and Chesham in the north-west to Aldgate in east London, as well as a branch to Uxbridge.

Why is it called the Metropolitan line?

The line was named after its predecessor, the Metropolitan Railway, the first underground railway in the world.  

History

By the 1850s, congestion in London had reached crisis point. A wide range of solutions were proposed, but all were rejected by Parliament. The radical solution of an underground railway eventually proved to be politically acceptable, thanks to the dedication of social reformer and City Solicitor Charles Pearson. The Metropolitan Railway opened in January 1863 and was an immediate success, though its construction took nearly two years and caused huge disruption in the streets. 

The Met was constructed using the ‘cut and cover’ technique. Scenes like this at King’s Cross provoked complaints that ‘for the best part of three years a great public thoroughfare has been turned into a builder’s yard’. 

The 5.6km line connected the mainline stations at Paddington, Euston and King’s Cross to Farringdon, at the edge of the City. Success meant that extensions to both ends of the line soon followed.  

Did you know?

When the Met first opened on 10 January 1863 it served seven stations: Paddington (Bishops Road; now just Paddington), Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road (now Great Portland Street), Gower Street (now Euston Square), King’s Cross (now King’s Cross St. Pancras) and Farringdon Street (now Farringdon) 

By 1868 the Met was joined by a second underground railway company with close business ties, the Metropolitan District Railway. The intention was that the two would cooperate to form an ‘Inner Circle’, linking all London’s mainline termini. However, disagreements over money led to a falling out and both companies instead chose to prioritise their individual extensions. The Circle was only completed after government intervention in 1884. 

The Met saw themselves not as a commuter railway, but as an ambitious player in the mainline railway world, extending out from Baker Street in the 1870s and 1880s into open country. By 1899 they had reached Verney Junction and Brill in Buckinghamshire, more than 80km from Baker Street. 

Despite their differences, the Met cooperated with the District in plans for electrification in 1900. However, their ideas were rejected when a powerful American businessman, Charles Tyson Yerkes, took over the District and a group of struggling Tube schemes in 1901. Under Yerkes, the Circle and District were electrified along American lines by 1905, powered by a new generating station at Chelsea, which in turn powered the new Tubes. The Met built its own power station at Neasden using the same system but electrified more slowly.  

The Met had been exploiting the land along its lines since the 1880s but entered a new phase when their first housing estate was built at Pinner in 1900. The name ‘Metro-land’ was coined in 1915 to publicise the area, and in 1919 a subsidiary company was set up to concentrate on housing.  

Through the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of homes were built. Gradually Metro-land was electrified, with services to Harrow in 1908 and Rickmansworth in 1924. A new electric line from Wembley Park to Stanmore opened in 1932, but further north steam locomotives continued as before. 

Did you know?

The longest distance between adjacent stations by rail is the 6.2km between Chesham and Chalfont & Latimer, which is also the most westerly point served by the Underground 

While the rest of London’s underground railways all succumbed to the domination of the railway group Yerkes founded, the Metropolitan alone remained independent. They were forced to give up that independence when all of London’s public transport came under the centralised control of London Transport (LT) in 1933.  

The Met’s mainline ambitions were over, with LT closing the rural Brill branch in 1935 and the withdrawal of services north of Aylesbury a year later. The Stanmore branch transferred to the Bakerloo in 1939. 

Platform view of Rickmansworth Underground station by Sport & General, September 1961
B/W print Platform view of Rickmansworth Underground station by Sport & General, September 1961

Electrification to Aylesbury was planned as part of LT’s ambitious 1935-40 New Works Programme, but progress was interrupted by the Second World War and steam passenger services continued beyond Rickmansworth until 1961.  

Modernisation in the early 1960s saw extensive track and signal work and new A stock trains. These worked the line until replacement with S stock trains between 2010 and 2012 under the new Transport for London (TfL) organisation. This was part of wider modernisation project across all the Underground’s sub-surface lines, replacing infrastructure and signalling and introducing automatic operation. 

Did you know?

Amersham is the highest station above sea level, at 147m 

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