The early method was called "cut and cover," which is exactly as fun as it sounds. Workers would arrive on a street, block all traffic, and dig a massive trench right down the middle of the road. It was like demolishing your living room floor to install a basement, except the living room was a bustling metropolis.
They’d then brick up the sides, throw a roof over it, cover everything back up, and—voilà—you had a tunnel. Imagine the chaos. For years, London was just a series of giant construction pits linked by wooden planks. Locals must have thought, "Right, they've finally lost it. They're turning the city into a giant gopher maze."
The first trains were steam-powered, which meant the tunnels quickly filled with suffocating, eye-stinging smog. Passengers would climb out of the carriages looking like chimney sweeps who'd been crying. Gentlemen wore white collars that turned grey by the end of the journey; ladies’ bonnets became soot-catchers. It was a health hazard that smelled like a wet dragon’s armpit.
When Blasting Became a Sport
Then came the deep-level tubes. The Victorians, never ones to shy away from a slightly dangerous idea, invented the "Greathead Shield." This was a giant, iron cylinder that workers would shove into the earth while digging inside it. Imagine a giant, blunt cookie cutter being slowly pressed into a cake made of mud and rock.
15 Amazing Vintage Photos of the London Underground Being Built
But here’s where it gets bonkers: to make the tunnels round and smooth, they used something called a spontaneous combustion of gunpowder... okay, it was just regular blasting. They'd pack the tunnel face with explosives, yell "Fire in the hole!" (in posh Victorian accents, presumably), and blow a chunk of London’s basement into oblivion. The ground above would shake so hard that chandeliers in Mayfair mansions would tinkle like wind chimes.
Surprising fact: they actually used compressed air to keep the tunnel walls from collapsing. Workers would enter an "air lock" with their lunches and tools, and the pressure would make their ears pop so violently they’d hear God whispering. If a worker got the bends (a.k.a. "the tube disease"), they’d be rushed to a special tank to decompress. It was less "commute" and more "deep-sea diving without the fish."
