The construction of the Metropolitan District Railway; c.1867

A group of railway construction workers, or 'navvies', pose for the camera beside a steam crane in Praed Street, Paddington. The Great Western Railway's Paddington terminus and hotel can be seen in the background. From a series of 64 photographs taken in the late 1860s by Henry Flather to document the construction of the railway from Paddington to Blackfriars via Kensington, Westminster and the new Victoria Embankment. Construction was by the 'cut-and-cover' method used to build the first underground railways before the development of the tunneling shield by James Henry Greathead . The first tunneled, or 'tube', railway in London was the City & South London Line, which opened in 1890