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THE METROPOLITAN RAILWAY MONITOR.

IF you want to go from the City to Hammersmith, and are near the Moorgate Station, whence the trains start regularly every twenty minutes, go by rail. Otherwise, get into a bus. It is practically the quicker way. Unless you carry a time-table in your head, and know exactly when your train is due, you may be a little too late, and have to wait for the next. If you don't keep a sharp look-out, you will miss that.
    When you do travel by the Metropolitan Railway, mind these directions. rake a third-class ticket. Anyhow, never take a first. The second and third class carriages are obvious; the first you may have to run up or down for. At intermediate stations the train sometimes stops only a few seconds; and, if you don't jump in at once, will be off without you.
    As you will find no one on the platform who can or will give you any information, always get into the first train that arrives. Hold the carriage door open until the Guard comes to shut it, and then shout out your destination. If you are right for it, he will most likely tell you; if you are not, you can get out again.
    In like manner, if you are bound for any other station than the terminus, open the door at every one you come to, and ask which it is. You will thus probably succeed in getting an answer.
    Unless you are so familiar with the line as to be able to recognise every station at a glance, you will scarcely ever know which is which. The porters still continue to shout "Oosh ! Oosh ! " for Shepherd's Bush, and "Nil! Nil !" (which of course is nothing) for Notting Hill; never articulating the name of any station. The Gaulois, the other day, stated that the town of Gerond had made a pronunciamento. Unhappily, that is never done by the attendants of the Metropolitan Railway.
    This indistinctness is all the more remarkable from its contrast with the particularly clear voices of the newsboys. "Times, Pall Mall Gazette, Daily, Telegraph, Standard, Star, Punch!" you hear these youths sing out as loud and plain as any cathedral canon could possibly intone the service. Of course. They are paid to sell the papers. They are interested in making themselves heard.
    As you can seldom hear, so neither can you hardly ever see, on the Metropolitan line, the name of the station at which your train has stopped at. It is posted on a single board, so that the chances against your catching a sight of it are numerous.
    Once again, then, take care to open the door every time your train stops, and keep bawling "Hoy! What station is this?" till you are told.
    However, the Metropolitan Railway is, as Iago says of wine, "a good, familiar creature, if it be well used." At any rate, it is an instituion commendable in one respect, as being eminently calculated to foster habits of vigilance, activity, and self-help.

Punch, October 3, 1868

Metropolitan Railway, from Moorgate-street, (terminus Paddington) joins the London and Chatham and all the South-Coast Railways to the network of lines north of the Thames, by a lighted subway under the New-road and Euston-road, &c., and so forms a connected line from the south-east to the north-west. It is open from Moorgate-street to Paddington and Kensington on the one side, and the Crystal Palace, &c., on the other. By its junction with the West London Railway it embraces all that portion of the metropolis, including Kensington, Brompton, &c., and continues to Westminster, whence passengers are carried to the City, by the completion of the line under the Thames Embankment as far as the Mansion House station near Cheapside.

Routledge's Popular Guide to London, [c.1873]

    At one time, finding myself near a station, I thought  I would make a trip in the Underground Railway. I go down two or three stairs and find myself suddenly thrown from daylight into obscurity, amid feeble lights, people and noise, trains arriving and departing in the dark. Mine draws up and stops; people jump down and people jump into the carriages; while I am asking where the second class is, the train is gone. 'What does this mean?' I say to an employee. 'Never mind,' he answers, 'here is another.' The trains do not succeed, but pursue each other. The other train comes, I jump in and away we go like an arrow. Then begins a new spectacle. We run through the unknown, among the foundations of the city. At first we are buried in thick darkness, then we see for an instant the dim light of day, and again plunge into obscurity, broken here and there by strange glowings; then between the thousand lights of a station, which appears and disappears in an instant; trains passing unseen; next an unexpected stop, the thousand faces of the waiting crowd, lit up as by the reflection of a fire, and then off again in the midst of a deafening din of slamming doors, ringing bells, and snorting steam; now more darkness, trains and streaks of daylight, more lighted stations, more crowds passing, approaching, and vanishing, until we reach the last station; I jump down; the train disappears, I am shoved through a door, half carried up a stairway, and find myself in daylight. But where? What city is this?

Edmondo de Amicis Jottings about London (trans), 1883+

    I had my first experience of Hades to-day, and if the real thing is to be like that I shall never again do anything wrong. I got into the Underground railway at Baker Street after leaving Archibald Forbes’ house. I wanted to go to Moorgate Street in the City. It was very warm—for London, at least. The compartment in which I sat was filled with passengers who were smoking pipes, as is the British habit, and as the smoke and sulphur from the engine fill the tunnel, all the windows have to be closed. The atmosphere was a mixture of sulphur, coal dust and foul fumes from the oil lamp above; so that by the time we reached Moorgate Street I was near dead of asphyxiation and heat. I should think these Underground railways must soon be discontinued, for they are a menace to health. A few minutes earlier can be no consideration, since hansom cabs and omnibuses, carried by the swiftest horses I have seen anywhere, do the work most satisfactorily.

R. D. Blumenfeld, Diary, June 23, 1887