Brunel: The Man Who Built Britain. Channel 5 tonight 8PM

[durham light infantry]

It's important to remember that there were a multitude of different track gauges in use in Britain at the time Brunel picked 7' instead of 4' 8.5". It wasn't a case of everyone using 4' 8.5" apart from one random maverick who decided to be different, as is often the way it seems to be presented.

A Roman 'Passus' is 4'8.5" and there are 1000 of them in an Roman mile. In an area with so much Roman remains, the infrastructure was reused for 1500 years before George Stephenson came on the scene in the North East. So there is little doubt that he thought it was standard gauge over 200 years ago, and he and Robert used it therafter.

 

Mike

[TStanb]

Good doco for serious enthusiasts and novices alike, however...

...a bit of a vehicle for the good looking Rob Bell. Did he ever manage to stay out of shot for more than 5 seconds?. Even when the spotlight was on the interviewees, he manages to stay in shot nodding. And why is it necessary to keep panning to the interviewer face on just to see them nodding? It's silly.

It was almost as if it was the Rob Bell Show supported with a bit of stuff about Brunel.

[Coppercap]

Good doco for serious enthusiasts and novices alike, however...

...a bit of a vehicle for the good looking Rob Bell. Did he ever manage to stay out of shot for more than 5 seconds?. Even when the spotlight was on the interviewees, he manages to stay in shot nodding. And why is it necessary to keep panning to the interviewer face on just to see them nodding? It's silly.

It was almost as if it was the Rob Bell Show supported with a bit of stuff about Brunel.

 

Rather like most (but not all) of the other programmes he's presenting.

[brack]

Ah, the Brunel cult, hero worshipping an engineer vastly inferior to Stephenson and Locke just because he had a big hat.

Edited March 14, 2018 by brack

[Trog]

I’d like to add a vote for a now largely forgotten engineer who did far more for the nation than Brunel ever did or could (interestingly enough, he was known to IKB, who championed his appointment) - Joseph Bazalgette, the great pioneer of public sewer networks.

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Bazalgette's application for the appointment to do the London sewer job had both I K Brunel and Robert Stephenson listed as the referees, now that's what you call a CV. 

[richard.h]

The thing that always sticks in my mind regarding Brunel (apart from his obvious acheivements) was that he was the son of an engineer who fled France to escape persecution so France's loss was our gain.

I think that says a lot about our willingness to accept new people and ideas even in Victorian Times

[Hroth]

Ah, the Brunel cult, hero worshipping an engineer vastly inferior to Stephenson and Locke just because he had a big hat.

And a beeeg ceegar!

 

Don't forget that!

[rockershovel]

Brunel’s great genius which set him apart from Stephenson and others, was self-promotion. He could charm money from the flinty hearts of the Victorian banking establishment, like no one else before or since despite a distinct habit of producing hopeless money-pits or plain bonkers ideas like the atmospheric railway.

 

It’s worth remembering that the 7’ Gauge was by no means unique; there was an extensive network of 6’ gauge in New York State at one time, and the Dutch also had some 1945mm gauge (6’ 4.5”)

[dibber25]

What everyone seems to have missed about Brunel is that his work had STYLE. If the Stephensons' work was the Sports Direct trainer of the day, Brunel was the Nike. (I live in a building designed by John Livock on behalf of Stephenson. It's neat, functional and still standing after 150 years but it doesn't have the style, class, detail of a Brunel/Digby-Wyatt exercise. CJL)

[Hroth]

...

 

It’s worth remembering that the 7’ Gauge was by no means unique; there was an extensive network of 6’ gauge in New York State at one time, and the Dutch also had some 1945mm gauge (6’ 4.5”)

And a bit closer to home, the Irish standard gauge is 5'3".

 

Were carts wider in Ireland than the ones seen by Stephenson in England?

[brack]

And a bit closer to home, the Irish standard gauge is 5'3".

 

Were carts wider in Ireland than the ones seen by Stephenson in England?

The first railway in Ireland was actually 4'8.5", later lines were built to various broad gauges. A gauge commission was appointed to decide what to do for purposes of interchange and came up with the ridiculous solution that everyone had to regauge to 5'3", rather than settling on the standard gauge used elsewhere or the gauge with the highest mileage (that might be been too logical). This was then enshrined in law as the standard gauge for Ireland.

[rockershovel]

What everyone seems to have missed about Brunel is that his work had STYLE. If the Stephensons' work was the Sports Direct trainer of the day, Brunel was the Nike. (I live in a building designed by John Livock on behalf of Stephenson. It's neat, functional and still standing after 150 years but it doesn't have the style, class, detail of a Brunel/Digby-Wyatt exercise. CJL)

Brunel ABSOLUTELY had a certain panache. Look at the Tamar Bridge, the Clifton suspension bridge or the story about the sun shining through the Box Tunnel on his birthday.

[Hroth]

The first railway in Ireland was actually 4'8.5", later lines were built to various broad gauges. A gauge commission was appointed to decide what to do for purposes of interchange and came up with the ridiculous solution that everyone had to regauge to 5'3", rather than settling on the standard gauge used elsewhere or the gauge with the highest mileage (that might be been too logical). This was then enshrined in law as the standard gauge for Ireland.

Beggars belief!

 

But at least there was a "standard" gauge, apart from all the narrow gauge lines...

[TheSignalEngineer]

I thought the program went a bit over the top in building Brunel into the father of naval architecture and shipbuilding. Ironically an engineer who worked with Brunel and whose legacy to naval architecture was far more significant than that of Brunel is all but unknown to the general public, William Froude.

William Froude was not only one of the best at naval matters he also previously developed a method of accurately laying out track transition curves and produced special tapered bricks to make a better skew arch bridge.

[jjb1970]

The Froude number is still an extremely important value in naval architecture and Froude's analytical work left a lasting legacy immeasurably more important than Brunel's in the field of naval architecture IMO.