Londons Transport - A Popular History, Robin Jones

Londons Transport - A Popular History, Robin Jones.

London is not only the capital of the United Kingdom. It is also the bedrock of world history.

It has been a great crossroads of civilisation ever since the Romans sailed up the Thames and founded a city at the narrowest crossing point where they built the first bridge.

A millennium and a half after the Romans left, London found itself at the hub of its own great empire.

Decisions were made in its corridors of power which shaped the political face of the world as we know it today.

Yet what makes London tick? What is its beating heart?

The answer is simple. Its unique transport network, which historically has not only been one of the most complex but arguably the most successful of any major city.

Not only did London's transport network make the city 'happen', by transporting millions of people to and from work and leisure activities on a daily basis, facilitating the massive growth of the 19th and 20th centuries, but, like Britain itself, led the rest of the world in so many ways.

The steam railway opened up the five continents to trade and settlement

- and it was in London that passengers first rode behind a steam locomotive, 200 years ago, near the site of the future Euston station.

The building of the Thames Tunnel by Marc Brunel and his son Isambard pushed the technology of their day to the limits and several stages beyond, and paved the way for every underwater passage that we have today.

London boasted the world's first underground railway in the Tower

A. Two Routemasters in service outside St Paul's Cathedral it

TRANSPORT FOR LONDON (TfL)

B. LMS Jubilee class 4-6-0 No 45603 Solomon Islands (right