London's Victoria line in sixteen photographs, from Brixton to Walthamstow

The Victoria line opened in September 1968, between Walthamstow Central and Highbury & Islington. It was the first entirely new Underground line built in 50 years. It was extended to Victoria in 1969 and to Brixton in 1971, and it was the first Tube line to use automatic train operation.

It has 16 stations and no branches, and measured in straight lines between the stations it is about 20 kilometres long. The stops are closest in the middle, where Warren Street to Euston is about 590 metres, and farthest apart in the north, where Finsbury Park to Seven Sisters is about 3.1 kilometres. Half of the stations, eight of 16, are shared with other lines, and King's Cross St Pancras is shared with five. In HelloSubway the whole line takes 198 keystrokes to type, which makes it the lightest line in London. This ride goes from south to north, with one photograph for each station.

The cover photograph is Brixton Market. It is spread across Electric Avenue and the covered arcades of Brixton Village and Market Row, and it has been the commercial heart of Brixton since the Victorian era. It is long known for its Afro-Caribbean grocers, fishmongers and fabric shops.

South: Brixton to Victoria

Electric Avenue was built in the 1880s and was one of the first shopping streets in Britain to be lit by electricity, which is how it got its name. Its stalls of fruit, fish and fabric are packed beneath the railway bridge that crosses the street, and it gave its name to Eddy Grant's song of 1982.

At Stockwell, the bus garage was completed in 1952 and is Grade II* listed. Its reinforced-concrete roof of nine ribbed vaults spans the shed without internal columns, and it was a record unsupported span at the time. The garage is still in daily use.

Vauxhall has the SIS Building, a tiered, sand-coloured tower on the south bank of the Thames that has been the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service since 1994. Terry Farrell designed it, and it has appeared in several James Bond films. One stop on, Pimlico is the stop for Tate Britain, which has held the national collection of British art since 1897 and stands on the site of the old Millbank Prison.

At Victoria, Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It was completed in 1903 in a Neo-Byzantine style, with red-brick and stone-banded facades, and its 87-metre campanile stands a few minutes' walk from the station.

The West End and Euston Road

Green Park was laid out in the 17th century as a royal hunting ground. It is unusual among the parks of central London for having no lakes, flowerbeds or formal planting, only open lawns and mature trees, and the station was built beneath it in 1906.

Oxford Circus is the stop for Oxford Street. Liberty, the department store, has a Tudor Revival timber-framed building constructed in the 1920s partly from the timbers of two decommissioned Royal Navy ships.

Warren Street is the stop for the BT Tower, completed in 1964 as the Post Office Tower. It is 177 metres tall and was the tallest building in Britain for more than a decade. Its revolving restaurant closed to the public in 1980. Euston, the next stop, has Piscator, a large abstract sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi that was commissioned in 1980 for the forecourt of the station. Seen from above, its top surface resolves into the shape of a human head and body.

King's Cross St Pancras has the Western Concourse, opened in 2012 beside Lewis Cubitt's original 1852 train sheds. Its curved departures hall is topped by a lattice steel roof spanning 54 metres, claimed as the longest single-span station structure in Europe.

North: Highbury to Walthamstow

Union Chapel, at Highbury & Islington, was rebuilt in 1877 in Gothic Revival style with a distinctive octagonal auditorium. It is Grade I listed, holds Sunday services and is also one of London's best-loved live music venues. Finsbury Park opened in 1869, and the Rainbow Theatre beside the station opened in 1930 as the Astoria, an elaborately decorated cinema. It became the Rainbow in 1971 and one of London's most legendary rock venues, closed as a music venue in 1981, and its Grade II* listed Art Deco shell is now home to an evangelical church.

Tottenham High Cross, near Seven Sisters, is an octagonal brick monument built between 1600 and 1609 on the site of a wooden wayside cross recorded since 1409. It marks the historic centre of Tottenham village on the old Roman road of Ermine Street, and its Gothic-style stucco decoration was added in 1809.

Walthamstow Wetlands, a short walk from Tottenham Hale, is one of the largest urban wetland nature reserves in Europe. The site covers 211 hectares and is made up of ten reservoirs built between 1853 and 1904 that still supply London's drinking water.

At Blackhorse Road, the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum is in the Low Hall Pumping Station of 1885, which is Grade II listed. Three retired 1967 Stock Victoria line carriages sit in its grounds and are now used for events and recitals.

The line ends at Walthamstow Central. The William Morris Gallery is in the Georgian house known as Water House, the childhood home of William Morris from 1848 to 1856, in the grounds of Lloyd Park. It holds the world's most comprehensive collection of his work, which includes textiles, wallpaper, books and Arts and Crafts furniture.

Type it yourself

The Victoria line is the best first line in London. The longest names are King's Cross St Pancras at 23 letters, Highbury & Islington at 20 and Walthamstow Central at 19, so you will press the apostrophe and the ampersand as well as the letters. The shortest is Euston at 6. The difficulty ranking shows how it compares with the other lines, and the Circle line ride covers the other side of the centre.