A look into another time is provided by moving, freshly colored photos of construction workers from the 19th and 20th centuries fighting to develop and expand London Underground tunnels.
One of the first celebration pictures, dated 1898, depicts workers working on the core line of the London Underground.
The tube system was the first subterranean railway in the world and has been accessible to the general public since 1863.
On December 3, 1946, the first section of the Central Line’s eastern expansion from Liverpool Street to Stratford was formally inaugurated by Mr. Alfred Barnes, the transport minister.
A photograph was taken on November 19, 1923, the day The Right Honourable Sir Philip Lloyd Graeme launched the Hendon branch of the London Underground.
The remarkable train that one of the busiest cities in the world now depends on was created by men, as these intriguing photos from the TopFoto collection demonstrate.
The enhanced color brings the images to life by highlighting the textures and brightness of the apparel worn by the passersby, and they also reveal the entrance to the subterranean in Trafalgar Square.
The colorized pictures show the system’s initial cut-and-cover tunnels being constructed close below the surface.
A trench was dug out during the “cut and cover” method of construction, and it was afterwards covered with a support structure.
Later, at a deeper level, smaller, approximately circular tunnels were carved out, giving birth to the term “the Tube.”
The London Underground serviced six intermediate stops and ran between Paddington and Farringdon when it first opened in 1863.
Today, it runs 402 kilometers and serves an astounding 272 stops.
The network has grown to 11 lines, and as of 2020 to 2021, 296 million passenger trips were made on the underground, making it one of the busiest metro systems in the world.
Each day, the 11 lines carry up to five million passenger trips.
On May 24 of this year, the new Elizabeth Line, which includes nine new stations from Paddington to Abbey Wood, officially opened. Later this year, its Bond Street station will debut.