3-016-983 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Underground works at the junction of Hampstead-Road, Euston-Road, and Tottenham-Court-Road, 1864. View showing '...what extensive subterranean works are being constructed in different parts of London, yet which make no show on the surface, and the very existence of which is probably unknown to a very large portion of the inhabitants...daily walking over the site...the lines of a number of different works intersect each other [here]. There is, first, immediately under the surface of the road, a double set of mains and pipes for supplying...water and gas. Beneath these passes, transversely, the iron tube belonging to the Pneumatic Dispatch Company, through which parcels are...conveyed backwards and forwards, and occasionally the mail-bags also, between the General Post Office and this district. Under this tube, is the tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway, through which trains are constantly passing and repassing. The Pneumatic Dispatch Company's tube cuts through the crown of this tunnel. On each side of it run large sewers which form part of the London Main-Drainage works. Beneath all these structures we have shown a longitudinal section of the proposed Hampstead, Midland, North-Western, and Charing-cross Railway - a line which is not yet made'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.