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While complaining about the tube is where many Londoners find common ground, we don’t know what we’d do without it.

Built in 1862, the first section of the tube was opened to the public in 1863. The opening of the London Underground marked the world’s first underground line. It was built between Paddington and the City of London and began to operate in January 1863.

The first section of the tube to operate was called the Metropolitan Railway which now acts as part of the Circle Line and Hammersmith & City Line.

Now, it is the world’s 11th busiest metro system and handles around 4.8 million passengers daily across its 11 lines. Between 2016 and 2017 the tube carried around 1.379 billion passengers.

Despite its name, only 45 per cent of the rail network is actually underground with the rest being overground – but it can certainly feel like more when you spend two hours every day underground during your commute.

The Oyster card wasn’t introduced until 2003 and travel cards were introduced before that in 1983. Contactless payments were made available in 2014, making it the first metro system in the world to do so.

Click through the above gallery to see some fascinating photos from the 1860’s to the 1980’s to see just how much the tube has changed over the past 155 years to make it what it is today.