Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 10, 2012



The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) was a British railway company established in 1893 that bored an underground "tube" railway deep below the streets of London. Construction began in 1898, but was delayed by funding problems that included the collapse of its parent company through the massive fraud of its main shareholder Whitaker Wright. In 1902, the BS&WR came under the control of American financier Charles Yerkes who quickly raised the funds to enable the line to be completed. When opened on 10 March 1906, the BS&WR's line served nine stations and ran completely underground in a pair of tunnels for 5.81 km between Baker Street and its southern terminus at Elephant and Castle. Extensions took the northern end of the line to the Great Western Railway's Paddington terminus by 1913 and to Watford by 1917, with services covering a total distance of 33.34 km. In 1933, the B&SWR and its parent company, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, were taken into public ownership and, today, the railway's tunnels and stations form the London Underground's Bakerloo line. (more...)

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