A Tube line which these days runs 14 miles from Harrow & Wealdstone station in the north to Elephant & Castle in the south, the Bakerloo line first opened in 1906 and initially ran just from Baker Street to Kennington.

Not only the first Tube for CT Yerkes’ scheme of electric railways for London, it was also the first line to run across London from north to south (legend says it was built because of complaints from businessmen that they couldn’t get to Lord’s cricket ground fast enough though we’re somewhat sceptical of this claim).

Bakerloo was a nickname, a contraction of the line’s official name – the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway. It was apparently first coined by the Evening Standard. Not everyone was impressed, however – the Railway Magazine described it as a “gutter title” and said it was beneath the dignity of the railway company to accept it.

Despite a rather slow uptake – which initially resulted in trains with as few as two cars being used in off-peak periods, what’s now a brown-coloured coded Underground line did become a success and over the ensuing years expanded (and contracted) before reaching its current length with 25 stations (the busiest apparently being Oxford Circus).