£1,000,000 A MILE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 266, 3 February 1941, Page 6

£1,000,000 A MILE

WORLD'S FIRST UNDERGROUND RAILWAY CELEBRATES ITS JUBILEE

Tiie Avorld's first tube railway celebrated its Jubilee in December.

It is fifty years since Edward the Seventh, then Prince of Wales, inaugurated this pioneer line running south from the City of London under the Thames. Its original three miles of track is now two hundred, constructed at an average cost of £1,000.000 a mile. To-day it is operated by London Transport, serving a population of almost 10,000,000 souls. One line, twenty-five miles long, is believed to be the longest tunnel in the world.

Underground railways everywhere in Paris, Now York. Berlin and Buenos Aires, owe their existence to the maker of London's first Underground. James Henry Greathead bored through the blue London clay with a shield. As the shield was pushed forward, so the section bored was lined with cast-iron segments. In his first tunnel Greathead took on a job from which even Brunei, one of tho most famous civil engineers of the Victorian era, had shrunk. The completion of the world's first tube railway was the

reward of his perseverance

From the original Greathead Shield developed the rotary excavator shield forced forward by hydrau-

lic rams as its spinning cutters throw back the 'dirt.' To-day two great British engineering firms make lor export these rotary excavators evolved from Greathcad's invention.