Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

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Kingsway tram subway

The ramp in the middle of Southampton Row where the trams went underground, the only survivor of London's tramways below street level.

Engineering landmarksFree

Photo by Matt Brown, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Opened in 1906 and rebuilt for double-deckers in 1931, the subway took the trams from Holborn under Kingsway and the Strand to the Embankment, with stations at Holborn and Aldwych; the last tram ran through it in 1952, and the northern ramp on Southampton Row, with its iron gates and the rails still set in the granite setts, has sat behind railings ever since, historically protected and occasionally opened on tours. The southern end became the Strand underpass for cars. The best-preserved bit of tram engineering in a city that had the largest tram network in the country.

Where
Southampton Row, WC1B 4DA
Nearest station
Holborn · 2 min walk

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