Central line (London Underground) and Great Eastern Railway buildings east of , from when the line to Epping was a rural branch line. In terms of total passengers, the Central line is the busiest on the Underground. In 2011/12 over 260 million passenger journeys were recorded on the line. It currently operates the second-most frequent service on the network, with 34 trains per hour (tph) operating for half-an-hour in the westbound direction during the morning peak, and between 27 and 30 tph during the rest of the peak. This makes the Central line the busiest and most intensively-used railway line in the United Kingdom:
Circle line (London Underground) and the C Stock trains have recently been replaced by new seven-car S Stock trains, in a programme completed in 2015. In 1863 the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway, opened in London between Paddington and Farringdon, connecting the Great Western Railway's relatively remote terminus at Paddington with Euston and King's Cross stations and the City, London's financial heart. In the same year a select committee report recommended an 'inner circle' of railway lines connecting the London termini that had been built or under construction. In the next year the Metropolitan District Railway (commonly known as the District Railway)