1-157-557 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Tring cutting, London & Birmingham Railway, 17 June 1837 (1839). Navvies excavating the cutting. Wheelbarrows are filled with spoil at the bottom, and then winched to the top using a line attached to the wheel along a narrow plank with a labourer walking behind and guiding. Robert Stephenson (1803-1859) was appointed chief engineer of the London & Birmingham Railway (LBR), the first railway into London. Running between Curzon Street Station, Birmingham, and Euston Station, London, the 112 mile long line took 20,000 men nearly five years to build, at a cost of five and a half million pounds. From Drawings of the London and Birmingham Railway by J Bourne, 1839.