He praised the efforts of the Metropolitan Railway Company in almost religious terms: the engineers were latter-day saints shedding light on infernal darkness: "The company has had to find its way though obstacles which those only can truly appreciate who have had to contend with them. They had to make their way through gas-pipes and water-pipes and sewers, and that greatest of all obstacles, that modern dragon which Mr Fowler, the modern St George, has four times vanquished — the Fleet Ditch." (The River Fleet, which once ran though Farringdon, has been as much a dragon to today's Crossrail engineers as it was to Fowler and his navvies.) "The line has had to worm its way through a complicated and intricate labyrinth under difficulties almost insuperable," continued Mr Lowe. "Everyone who observed carefully today must have seen how admirably this difficulty had been dealt with and overcome — how, even in this dull and dismal day, darkness was penetrated by the light of heaven."

There were cheers and a bumper was drunk to the success of the Metropolitan Railway. The Times pronounced it "a great success".

The following day the line opened to the public. More than 50,000 people turned up; half of them had to be turned away. The first trains left the platforms at 6am "in order to accommodate workmen," reported the Guardian, "and there was a goodly muster of that class of the public."

From 8am, every station was crowded with passengers and the carriages were filled to overflowing. "The crowds were immense, and the constant cry, as the trains arrived, of ‘No Room', appeared to have a very depressing effect upon those assembled." It was, the paper reported with relish, like "the crush at the doors of a theatre on the first night of a pantomime".

The Guardian commented favourably on the gas lamps in every carriage. It was possible, the paper said, to read a newspaper when the trains stopped at a platform, but in motion the draught caused the lamps to flicker so as to make it impossible.

The journey from Paddington to Farringdon took 33 minutres, including stoppages, but the paper reported that much delay was caused by the crowds and the running about of officials and that on ordinary days there would be less fuss and delay.

The only person who was missing from the crush was Charles Pearson, the energetic gadfly who had brought about the scheme; he had died just four months before. How he would have thrilled to the tunnels being bored through the city today, almost twice as wide as those of his own age, and to the great trophy heads of the tunnel boring machines left buried in their catacombs beneath the city.

When the new line opens in 2018 — when the workmen outside my window have finally packed away their drill-heads — I will be first in the crush to travel on the new line from Paddington to Farringdon and to drink a bumper to the extraordinary ambition of Charles Pearson and his descendants.