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There is, sadly, no trace of any of the stations that were built on the first Underground line, which initially ran between Farringdon and Paddington and was soon extended to Blackfriars via Kensington, Westminster and the Victoria embankment.

The pictures here, taken by Henry Flather in the late 1860s, therefore, give us a flavour of what they were like, simple buildings that look rather like a country station. And that’s what, in essence, they were. Although today they are part of central London, at the time the first Underground lines were being built in the 1860s and 1870s, it connected a series of villages that were surrounded by fields and woods.

These astonishingly sharp images, showing work in progress, demonstrate the primitive methods used to build the early lines. There was precious little mechanisation, with a steam excavator shown in one picture being very much the exception, and work was carried out by thousands of men with little more than picks and shovels to help them.

Yet, they did an amazing job. The tunnels and cuttings on the Circle line have survived 150 years of vibration from hundreds of trains every day, and will probably still be there in another 150 years.

This collecton also shows images of London’s train stations at different points over the 19th and early 20th century, demonstrating just how quickly the arrival of the Underground transformed London into a busy metropolis

Sharon Ament, director of the Museum of London, said: “Millions of Londoners hop on the Tube or train each day. But it’s easy to forget what magnificent feats of engineering these building projects were under Queen Victoria’s reign. The railway age transformed the face of London and the layout of the city that we know today, without the modern technology that projects like Crossrail benefit from. Something to think about next time you top up your oyster card.”

These astonishing pictures are part of a summer campaign by the Museum of London to get people to "look again" at London. They are all part of the Museum's permanent collection, though not all of them are on display.

Christian Wolmar is the author of The Subterranean Railway: how the Underground transformed London.

As part of its lookagain campaign, the museum is encouraging residents and visitors to tweet their own pictures @MuseumofLondon of unseen London, using the hashtag #lookagain.