The journey of the first Tube train took place on 9 January 1863 and the first Tube line built and financed by a private company was the Metropolitan Railway. The Tube’s first escalator was installed at Earl’s Court in 1911, featuring a diagonal finish to the stairway, meaning the right foot reached the top moments before the left and in 1907 a spiral escalator opened at Holloway Road.
The “Tube” became a proper name for the first time in the early 1900s, after the Central London Railway (now the Central Line) was nicknamed the “Twopenny Tube”. The “Twopenny Tube” nickname was conceived by the Daily Mail, five days after it opened. When the Circle Line opened in 1884, the experience of riding it was described in The Times as “a form of mild torture”.
