Subway (also known as Metro or Underground)

HISTORY

The London Underground, the world's oldest subway railway, opened between  Paddington station and Farringdon station on January 10, 1863. This first section of the Metropolitan Railway was 3.75 miles (6 km) long and originally used gas-lit wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives. 

Picture below shows a drawing of a broad gauge GWR Metropolitan class locomotive as used on the underground Metropolitan Railway from 1863 to 1869.

The London Underground was soon carrying tens of thousands of passengers each day. It transported 9.5 million in its first year. 

The Metropolitan line was soon extended from both ends, and northwards via a branch from Baker Street. It reached Hammersmith in 1864 and Richmond in 1877, but the most important route was the line north into the Middlesex countryside, where it stimulated the development of new suburbs. Harrow was reached in 1880. 

Initially steam-powered, the London Underground began electrifying some of its lines in the early 1890s. Its first electric underground railway line was between Stockwell, South London and King William Street (now Bank) opened on November 4, 1890. By 1896, it was fully electrified.

The Boston subway opened in 1897, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.

The inaugural journey of London's first Central line train, in 1900, had the Prince of Wales and Mark Twain on board.

The first line of the Paris Métro opened for operation in 1900. It was built by engineer Fulgence Bienvenüe and architect Hector Guimard for the 1900 Universal Exposition that was held in the city.

Construction of the underground New York subway began in 1900 when the city's mayor, Robert Anderson Van Wyck broke ground for a new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The first underground segment of the New York City Subway officially opened on October 27, 1904 running from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Broadway in Harlem. The fare was $0.05 and on the first day the trains carried over 150,000 passengers. The system became the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in world.

New York Subway 

The first escalators opened on the London underground at Earls Court in 1911.

The Buenos Aires Metro started operating on December 1, 1913. It was the first underground railway system in the southern hemisphere and in Latin America.

The Ginza Line, the first subway line in Asia, opened in Tokyo, Japan on December 30, 1927.

Cincinnati has a fully-built, but never used subway system from the 1920s complete with over two miles of tunnels and untouched stations nearly a century old. There was an attempt to convert it to a light rail system in 2002 by raising taxes half-a-cent for the residents, but voters shot it down.

London Underground first produced free pocket maps of the system in 1908 when the main network of lines under central London had just been completed. These maps showed a geographically accurate representation of London. 

As the lines were extended into the suburbs in the 1920s, it became impossible to show the whole system on a single small map and keep it legible. Out-of-work engineering draughtsman Harry Beck came up with the solution in 1931 by abandoning geographical accuracy and turning the map into a diagram, using electrical circuit diagrams as his inspiration. All the lines were shown as vertical, horizontal or diagonal and the central area was enlarged in relation to the outer area, with every station shown the same distance apart. 

London Underground map

The Yonge–University–Spadina line, the first subway in Canada opened in Toronto on March 30, 1954. It remains the busiest line in the city. 

The Traveleator, Britain's first passenger conveyor belt, opened at Bank tube station in 1960. 

The world's deadliest subway disaster took place in Baku, Azerbaijan on October 28, 1995 when an electrical malfunction caused a fire that killed 289 passengers and injured 265 more. The fire broke out in a tunnel between the Ulduz and Nariman Narimanov stations, and it quickly spread to the entire train.  The fire was caused by an electrical malfunction, but the possibility of sabotage was not excluded. The train was overcrowded, and many of the passengers were trapped inside. The fire also damaged the train's ventilation system, making it difficult for the passengers to breathe.

FUN SUBWAY FACTS

Today, the London Underground system is one of the largest in the world, with 256 miles (410 km) of track and 270 stations. The system operates below ground in central London but generally runs on the surface in the outlying suburbs. Approximately 55 per cent of its routes are above ground. 

The Guinness record for visiting all 270 London underground stations in a day — either by Tube train, on foot or by other public transport — is held by Steve Wilson and Andy James in 15 hours 45 minutes. Their record, which was confirmed in January 2016, was half-an-hour faster than the previous attempt.

The London underground system, once advertised as a cool escape from hot weather, has been slowly heating up due to dissipated heat from trains braking being captured and retained by surrounding clay, a natural insulator. 

A deep-level Central line train at Lancaster Gate bound for Ealing Broadway. By tompagenet (Tom Page)

King's Cross St Pancras was the busiest station on the London Underground.

Waterloo is the London Tube station with the most escalators (23).

A man named Oswald can be heard only at London's Embankment station saying "mind the gap." In 2012 they were planning on changing all voice overs but decided not to at this station when Oswald's wife told them that he had passed away in 2007. She loved listening to him when on the way to work. 

Rome has major struggles with expanding the subway system in the city because diggers keep running into major archaeological finds. The Metro C expansion has been in the works for the past 40 years and has unearthed a military complex, Hadrian's Athenaeum, and an amphitheater.

The Seoul Metropolitan Subway is the busiest metro system in the world. It had a ridership of 2. 9 billion in 2019 – the equivalent of more than a third of the world’s population taking a trip.

Serfaus is a remote, Alpine village in Austria with a population of just over 1,000 which has its own underground/metro line. It’s just 1.3 km (0.8 miles) long, has four stations and connects a parking lot with some ski lifts located at the opposite ends of the village. 

Some stray Russian dogs have figured out how to use the subway system in order to travel to more populated areas in search of food.

About 15 per cent of air samples taken from several New York City subway platforms consisted of human skin.

Researchers have identified 15,152 different types of life forms living on the New York subway.

The U.S. Capitol building has its own subway system, with three lines moving Congressmen, Senators, and staffers between the various office complexes.

Source Daily Mail