Metropolitan Railway

The Metropolitan Railway was a British pre-grouping railway opened on 10 January 1863 between Paddington (Bishop's Road) and Farringdon Street, the world's first underground passenger railway. Built using the cut-and-cover method along the line of the New Road (now Marylebone Road), the line was initially worked by GWR broad-gauge condensing locomotives, and was a quickly-popular success.

The Metropolitan went on to build a much larger system out into rural Buckinghamshire ('Metro-land') with the Aylesbury and Verney Junction extension reaching Buckinghamshire by 1892. From the 1900s the company increasingly operated as a property developer, building suburban estates along its lines and selling them with through services to the City.

The Met was electrified at 600 V dc third-rail (with fourth-rail return) from 1905, the standard subsequently adopted across the London Underground. Steam locomotives continued to work the outer-suburban services beyond Rickmansworth into the 1960s. On 1 July 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was absorbed into the new London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB), and is today the Metropolitan, Jubilee and Hammersmith & City lines of London Underground.