However, this unsatisfactory means of communication was hardly likely to escape the notice of such astute experts as Mr. J. C. Mott, doyen director of the Great Western Railway, and his far-seeing friends. They took counsel together, and, after the usual hard task of _persuading_ people, plans were matured, and in 1884 an enterprise was organised and incorporated as the City of London and Southwark Subway Company, to construct a line of railway from King William Street to the “Elephant and Castle,” with an intermediate station at Marshalsea Road. This was the initial stage of the present well-known railway. At the outset, three points had to be considered. How was the subway to be constructed? What motive power should be employed? And how was the deep level to be reached by the passengers? A subway under the Thames was no novelty. The directors of the new line were not the “first that ever burst into that silent sea” of mud and gravel at the bottom of the swift-flowing river. Brunel had been long before them with his costly Thames Tunnel, and Barlow had years ago laid upon its oozy bed the Tower Subway of iron. It was decided that a tube, or, rather, two independent tunnels of cast-iron rings, should be driven side by side beneath the bottom of the stream, a little to the west of London Bridge, and continued on the Surrey side. On this system the work was begun by the contractors, Siemens Brothers and Mather and Platt, and proceeded with quite out of public sight. It was accompanied with many disheartening delays and seemingly insurmountable difficulties; but they were all successfully overcome, and the tubes were brought to a temporary end at the “Swan,” Stockwell, to which charming retreat, by an Act of Parliament, 1887, an extension of the line had been sanctioned, making its length a little over three miles. The motive power eventually selected was electricity, steam being impracticable, and the funicular or cable system considered unreliable. Access to and from the trains was to be obtained at the stations by means of capacious twin-lifts capable of holding many people at a time. Then the problem of how best to utilise the ample “power,” generated at the Stockwell Station, for hauling the cars, had to be seriously tackled. It was not a question of a toy line like that on the Brighton beach, but of the driving at fair speed, say 15 miles an hour, of comparatively heavy coaches laden with passengers, and at frequent intervals. Altogether it was a new departure in electric traction. How the motor locomotives were effectually to pick up the current was the puzzle which had to be solved, or the enterprise might at the last moment collapse and the subscribed capital be lost.