Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 36, 2009

The Tower Subway is a tunnel beneath the River Thames in central London, close to the Tower of London. Its alignment runs between Tower Hill on the north side of the river and Vine Lane (off Tooley Street) to the south. A small cable car (dubbed an omnibus by the tunnel's operators) shuttled a maximum of 12 passengers from end to end through a single bore, 450 yd long and 7 ft in diameter, on 2 ft gauge track. The journey, powered by a 4 hp (3 kW) stationary steam engine on the south side of the tunnel, took about 70 seconds. However, the cramped, low-capacity Subway proved uneconomical almost as soon it was officially opened on 2 August 1870, the railway service lasted just three months, too few passengers being carried and the speed of the carriage being too slow, and the Tower Subway went into receivership in November 1870. Its innovative method of construction provided the template for the construction in 1890 of the City & South London Railway, the first of London's "Tube" railways. The Tower Subway is sometimes cited as the world's first underground tube railway, though it was not the first underground railway.