Qualla: Circle line (London Underground)

Circle line (London Underground): Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sunil060902, CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of its life, the yellow line on the Tube map went round and round and round, never stopping, never beginning, an unbroken loop of central London stitched together from the wreckage of two warring railway companies. Then in December 2009, planners cut it. The Circle line stopped being a circle. Today it is a spiral, running from Hammersmith in west London out to Edgware Road, around the historic loop once, and back again. Most Londoners barely noticed the change. They were too busy doing what passengers have done on this railway since 10 January 1863: stepping out of the daylight, descending a few feet beneath the streets, and emerging somewhere else entirely.

Image: Sunil060902 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Circle line (London Underground): The First Underground

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The Circle line is the oldest underground railway in the world. When the Metropolitan Railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon on 10 January 1863, no city anywhere had tried this before. Wooden carriages pulled by steam locomotives ran through cut-and-cover tunnels just b...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Circle line (London Underground): Three Trains and a Chain

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit surprise truck, CC BY 2.0. The relationship between the Metropolitan and the District Railways was less an alliance than a slow-motion fistfight. They shared track but loathed each other. Once the inner circle was finally joined up in 1884, the Metropolitan ran the clockwise "outer rail" trains and the Dis...

Image: surprise truck | CC BY 2.0

Circle line (London Underground): Yerkes and the Electrification

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tentinator, CC BY-SA 4.0. The smoke could not last. By 1900, the new deep-level electric tubes were taking customers away from the sulphurous Circle, and the Metropolitan and District ran a joint experimental six-carriage electric train between Earl's Court and High Street Kensington. The arbitration that...

Image: Tentinator | CC BY-SA 4.0

Circle line (London Underground): 7 July 2005

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derrick Cai, CC BY-SA 2.0. At 08:49 on 7 July 2005, a bomb detonated on a Circle line train as it pulled out of Liverpool Street toward Aldgate. Almost simultaneously, a second bomb exploded on another Circle line train at Edgware Road. A third blast struck a Piccadilly line train, and a fourth, an hour la...

Image: Derrick Cai | CC BY-SA 2.0

Circle line (London Underground): Urban Myths

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Jamesgibbon at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0. A line that runs in a closed loop attracts stories. Some Londoners still swear that a body once travelled the Circle for days before anyone noticed. Others claim that a small office or school once used the train itself as a kind of free conference room, riding round and round to ...

Image: The original uploader was Jamesgibbon at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 3.0