Test 1

RE ADI NG

R EA D ING P A S S AGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

The development of the London underground railway

In the first half of the 1800s, London’s population grew at an astonishing rate, and the central
area became increasingly congested. In addition, the expansion of the overground railway
network resulted in more and more passengers arriving in the capital. However, in 1846, a Royal
Commission decided that the railways should not be allowed to enter the City, the capital’s
historic and business centre. The result was that the overground railway stations formed a ring
around the City. The area within consisted of poorly built, overcrowded slums and the streets were
full of horse-drawn traffic. Crossing the City became a nightmare. It could take an hour and a half
to travel 8 km by horse-drawn carriage or bus. Numerous schemes were proposed to resolve these
problems, but few succeeded.

Amongst the most vocal advocates for a solution to London’s traffic problems was Charles
Pearson, who worked as a solicitor for the City of London. He saw both social and economic
advantages in building an underground railway that would link the overground railway stations
together and clear London slums at the same time. His idea was to relocate the poor workers who
lived in the inner-city slums to newly constructed suburbs, and to provide cheap rail travel for
them to get to work. Pearson’s ideas gained support amongst some businessmen and in 1851 he
submitted a plan to Parliament. It was rejected, but coincided with a proposal from another group
for an underground connecting line, which Parliament passed.

The two groups merged and established the Metropolitan Railway Company in August 1854. The
company’s plan was to construct an underground railway line from the Great Western Railway’s
(GWR) station at Paddington to the edge of the City at Farringdon Street – a distance of almost
5 km. The organisation had difficulty in raising the funding for such a radical and expensive
scheme, not least because of the critical articles printed by the press. Objectors argued that the
tunnels would collapse under the weight of traffic overhead, buildings would be shaken and
passengers would be poisoned by the emissions from the train engines. However, Pearson and his
partners persisted.

The GWR, aware that the new line would finally enable them to run trains into the heart of
the City, invested almost £250,000 in the scheme. Eventually, over a five-year period, £1m
was raised. The chosen route ran beneath existing main roads to minimise the expense of

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 Reading

demolishing buildings. Originally scheduled to be completed in 21 months, the construction of

the underground line took three years. It was built just below street level using a technique known
as ‘cut and cover’. A trench about ten metres wide and six metres deep was dug, and the sides
temporarily held up with timber beams. Brick walls were then constructed, and finally a brick
arch was added to create a tunnel. A two-metre-deep layer of soil was laid on top of the tunnel
and the road above rebuilt.

The Metropolitan line, which opened on 10 January 1863, was the world’s first underground
railway. On its first day, almost 40,000 passengers were carried between Paddington and
Farringdon, the journey taking about 18 minutes. By the end of the Metropolitan’s first year of
operation, 9.5 million journeys had been made.

Even as the Metropolitan began operation, the first extensions to the line were being authorised;
these were built over the next five years, reaching Moorgate in the east of London and
Hammersmith in the west. The original plan was to pull the trains with steam locomotives, using
firebricks in the boilers to provide steam, but these engines were never introduced. Instead, the
line used specially designed locomotives that were fitted with water tanks in which steam could
be condensed. However, smoke and fumes remained a problem, even though ventilation shafts
were added to the tunnels.

Despite the extension of the underground railway, by the 1880s, congestion on London’s streets
had become worse. The problem was partly that the existing underground lines formed a circuit
around the centre of London and extended to the suburbs, but did not cross the capital’s centre.
The ‘cut and cover’ method of construction was not an option in this part of the capital. The only
alternative was to tunnel deep underground.

Although the technology to create these tunnels existed, steam locomotives could not be used in
such a confined space. It wasn’t until the development of a reliable electric motor, and a means of
transferring power from the generator to a moving train, that the world’s first deep-level electric
railway, the City & South London, became possible. The line opened in 1890, and ran from the
City to Stockwell, south of the River Thames. The trains were made up of three carriages and
driven by electric engines. The carriages were narrow and had tiny windows just below the roof
because it was thought that passengers would not want to look out at the tunnel walls. The line
was not without its problems, mainly caused by an unreliable power supply. Although the City &
South London Railway was a great technical achievement, it did not make a profit. Then, in 1900,
the Central London Railway, known as the ‘Tuppenny Tube’, began operation using new electric
locomotives. It was very popular and soon afterwards new railways and extensions were added to
the growing tube network. By 1907, the heart of today’s Underground system was in place.

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 Reading

Questions 7–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7 Other countries had built underground railways before the Metropolitan line
opened.
8 More people than predicted travelled on the Metropolitan line on the first
day.
9 The use of ventilation shafts failed to prevent pollution in the tunnels.
10 A different approach from the ‘cut and cover’ technique was required in London’s
central area.
11 The windows on City & South London trains were at eye level.
12 The City & South London Railway was a financial success.
13 Trains on the ‘Tuppenny Tube’ nearly always ran on time.

p. 120 19
 R E ADI NG

REA DI N G P A S S AGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In late 1946 or early 1947, three Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep
near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead
Sea in what is now known as the West Bank. One of these young shepherds tossed a
rock into an opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised to hear a shattering sound.
He and his companions later entered the cave and stumbled across a collection of
large clay jars, seven of which contained scrolls with writing on them. The teenagers
took the seven scrolls to a nearby town where they were sold for a small sum to a local
antiquities dealer. Word of the find spread, and Bedouins and archaeologists eventually
unearthed tens of thousands of additional scroll fragments from 10 nearby caves;
together they make up between 800 and 900 manuscripts. It soon became clear that this
was one of the greatest archaeological discoveries ever made.

The origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written around 2,000 years ago between
150 BCE and 70 CE, is still the subject of scholarly debate even today. According to the
prevailing theory, they are the work of a population that inhabited the area until Roman
troops destroyed the settlement around 70 CE. The area was known as Judea at that
time, and the people are thought to have belonged to a group called the Essenes, a
devout Jewish sect.

The majority of the texts on the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some fragments
written in an ancient version of its alphabet thought to have fallen out of use in the fifth
century BCE. But there are other languages as well. Some scrolls are in Aramaic, the
language spoken by many inhabitants of the region from the sixth century BCE to the
siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In addition, several texts feature translations of the Hebrew
Bible into Greek.

The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament of the
Bible except for the Book of Esther. The only entire book of the Hebrew Bible preserved
among the manuscripts from Qumran is Isaiah; this copy, dated to the first century BCE,
is considered the earliest biblical manuscript still in existence. Along with biblical texts,
the scrolls include documents about sectarian regulations and religious writings that do
not appear in the Old Testament.

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Test 2

The writing on the Dead Sea Scrolls is mostly in black or occasionally red ink, and
the scrolls themselves are nearly all made of either parchment (animal skin) or an
early form of paper called ‘papyrus’. The only exception is the scroll numbered 3Q15,
which was created out of a combination of copper and tin. Known as the Copper
Scroll, this curious document features letters chiselled onto metal – perhaps, as some
have theorized, to better withstand the passage of time. One of the most intriguing
manuscripts from Qumran, this is a sort of ancient treasure map that lists dozens of gold
and silver caches. Using an unconventional vocabulary and odd spelling, it describes 64
underground hiding places that supposedly contain riches buried for safekeeping. None
of these hoards have been recovered, possibly because the Romans pillaged Judea
during the first century CE. According to various hypotheses, the treasure belonged to
local people, or was rescued from the Second Temple before its destruction or never
existed to begin with.

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been on interesting journeys. In 1948, a Syrian
Orthodox archbishop known as Mar Samuel acquired four of the original seven scrolls
from a Jerusalem shoemaker and part-time antiquity dealer, paying less than $100
for them. He then travelled to the United States and unsuccessfully offered them to a
number of universities, including Yale. Finally, in 1954, he placed an advertisement in
the business newspaper The Wall Street Journal – under the category ‘Miscellaneous
Items for Sale’ – that read: ‘Biblical Manuscripts dating back to at least 200 B.C. are for
sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual
or group.’ Fortunately, Israeli archaeologist and statesman Yigael Yadin negotiated their
purchase and brought the scrolls back to Jerusalem, where they remain to this day.

In 2017, researchers from the University of Haifa restored and deciphered one of the last
untranslated scrolls. The university’s Eshbal Ratson and Jonathan Ben-Dov spent one
year reassembling the 60 fragments that make up the scroll. Deciphered from a band
of coded text on parchment, the find provides insight into the community of people who
wrote it and the 364-day calendar they would have used. The scroll names celebrations
that indicate shifts in seasons and details two yearly religious events known from
another Dead Sea Scroll. Only one more known scroll remains untranslated.

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Test 2

Questions 6–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 6–13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
6 The Bedouin teenagers who found the scrolls were disappointed by how little
money they received for them.
7 There is agreement among academics about the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
8 Most of the books of the Bible written on the scrolls are incomplete.
9 The information on the Copper Scroll is written in an unusual way.
10 Mar Samuel was given some of the scrolls as a gift.
11 In the early 1950s, a number of educational establishments in the US were keen to
buy scrolls from Mar Samuel.
12 The scroll that was pieced together in 2017 contains information about annual
occasions in the Qumran area 2,000 years ago.
13 Academics at the University of Haifa are currently researching how to decipher the
final scroll.

40 p. 122