A locomotive and rolling stock from the City & South London Railway. It was the first deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world and the first major railway to use electric traction. It opened in 1890 and had six stations on 3.2 miles of track in a pair of tunnels which passed under the River Thames to Stockwell. The diameter of the tunnels restricted the size of the trains and the small carriages with their high-backed seating were nicknamed padded cells. If you travel from Bank to London Bridge on the Northern Line you are travelling through those original tunnels.

This shows the rolling stock used on the City and South London Railway. These carriages had longitudinal bench seating and sliding doors at the ends, leading onto a platform for boarding and alighting.

It was reasoned that there was nothing to look at in the tunnels, so the only windows were in a narrow band high up in the carriage sides. Gate-men rode on the carriage platforms to operate the lattice gates and announce the station names to the passengers.

Metropolitan Railway electric locomotives, circa 1907, were used with conventional carriage stock. The locomotives were withdrawn from passenger service after electrification of the line to Amersham was completed in 1961.

An Underground train built around 1923 with what is known as a clerestory roof which contains small windows or ventilators.

The later,1938, rolling stock became a little more rounded.

The current Underground system carries approximately 1,230 million passengers each year and each Tube train travels 114,500 miles each year.