Going Underground (For the First Time) - Unit 9

C1 Advanced · Open Cloze · Ready for C1 Advanced 4th Edition Workbook, Macmillan Education

For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

The London Underground (0) ___ its origins in the Metropolitan Railway, the world’s first underground passenger railway, which opened in 1863. On its first day, it carried (1) ___ impressive 38,000 passengers, after which, its importance to the city was never (2) ___ any doubt. The first tunnels were built using the so-called ‘cut-and-cover’ method, whereby shallow trenches were cut along the ground before (3) ___ covered with a supporting roof. It wasn’t (4) ___ 1890 that the first deep tunnels opened, whose circular shape gave (5) ___ to the nickname ‘the Tube’, which still endures today. The early Underground was a serious health hazard, thanks (6) ___ the fumes generated by steam-powered locomotives coursing through gas-lit tunnels, (7) ___ to mention hundreds of thousands of passengers competing for oxygen. Proposed solutions included a recommendation (8) ___ male passengers to grow beards to act as air filters, but conditions only improved with the advent of electricity.

Going Underground (For the First Time)

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