Civil Engineering Infrastructure

[rogerzilla]

If you look at the complexity of a brick or stone skew arch, you can imagine how much something like that would cost to build.   These days you'd just use reinforced concrete.  Not as pretty, though.

[caradoc]

If ever there was a line that should not have been built, the Caledonian's Lanarkshire & Ayrshire Railway would be high on the list, serving as it did merely to keep traffic of the competing G&SWR route. Fully completed in 1904, just 19 years later the two companies both became part of the LMS, and the usefulness of most of the route was at an end. This is Underbridge 91 outside Neilston, a concrete structure crossing a stream and field access road. Unusually there is no painted number on the bridge, which makes me wonder who (if anyone !) is reponsible for maintaining it.

[The Johnster]

You could argue that the Cardiff Railway should never have been built (and the Taff Vale did argue this, very strongly) and a court injunction ensured that it never reached it's full potential, but the trackbed came in handy during the 70s when the A470 trunk road was being built between Coryton and Pontypridd.  But the prize for 'should probably never have been thought of, never mind built' goes in my mind to the Manchester and Milford.  All of these sort of schemes, advisable or not, stem from a desire amongst groups of business interests to escape what they see as monopoly control from other groups of business interests that they believe are being exploitative, sometimes but not always justifiably.  In many cases only the civil engineering survives, and in some cases that's all there ever was!

[Compound2632]

Further examples include the Hull, Barnsley & West Riding Junction Railway & Dock Co. and the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast, both only part-built, motivated by the idea that an independent route to an east coast port would liberate the coal owners from the tyranny of the existing railway companies. Did the promoters of either pause to consider the already parlous financial state of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire, already occupying the ground?

[Edwin_m]

The most famous of these was the Settle and Carlisle, which the Midland famously promised to build so as to get better terms out of the LNWR via Ingleton ... and got held to that promise. 

[Compound2632]

We can keep going back - the Great Northern, from London to York, to break Hudson's monopoly; the Trent Valley and Manchester and Birmingham Railways, both attempts to outflank the Grand Junction and contributing to the amalgamation that produced the LNWR... Unnecessary railways all!

 

The Trent Valley's secretary was a young man by the name of Edward Watkin, whose ultimate monument was that most unnecessary of railways, the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire.

 

I believe that the oldest section of main-line railway now disused is the Whitacre - Hampton section of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway (opened 12 Aug 1839), closely followed by the Wigston - Rugby section of the Midland Counties (1 July 1840). 

[Nearholmer]

The drift of this thread seems to be that a significant proportion of railway civil engineering amounted to a massive folly, so perhaps we should seek to have some prime examples listed in here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly

[Compound2632]

Mention of the Settle & Carlisle drove me to pursue this line of reasoning to a reductio ad absurdum by demonstrating that significant sections of the present west and east coast main line are unnecessary railways.

 

Perhaps HS2 should be mentioned too?

[eastglosmog]

19 hours ago, The Johnster said:

..........................................  But the prize for 'should probably never have been thought of, never mind built' goes in my mind to the Manchester and Milford.  ...................................

Don't mention that to the folks wanting to reopen the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen section of the Manchester and Milford route!

[The Johnster]

To be fair they want to connect Aberystwyth with Carmarthen, not Manchester with Milford; there is an argument for Aber-Carmarthen in an area of poor road provision and high transport costs due to journey times.  The bus takes over 3 hours for about 60 miles.  

[Edwin_m]

There's a train every 2 hours between Manchester and Milford these days, so perhaps not quite such a bad idea after all. 

[Fat Controller]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

To be fair they want to connect Aberystwyth with Carmarthen, not Manchester with Milford; there is an argument for Aber-Carmarthen in an area of poor road provision and high transport costs due to journey times.  The bus takes over 3 hours for about 60 miles.  

The train wasn't much quicker, IIRC.

[eastglosmog]

1 hour ago, Fat Controller said:

The train wasn't much quicker, IIRC.

According to the 1947 GWR timetable, it varied between about 2hr 35 min and 2hr 47min.  But there were only 3 of them each way (four on Saturdays) and none on Sundays.

[The Johnster]

But the pre 1964 train was an all stopper, as is the bus, and a modern replacement would probably be able to manage with limited stops in well under 2 hours.  And while there is a 2 hourly service frequency at some times of the day leaving Milford for Manchester and vice versa, I doubt many people make the through journey.  And it takes about 7 hours.  

[Zomboid]

Railways were by and large not built for passengers. Some were built to capitalise on freight flows, and some were built to stop someone else capitalising on freight flows (either protecting or competing with a monopoly).

Taking people from place to place more quickly than had previously been possible was a happy side effect.

I doubt there has ever been much demand for humans to journey between Manchester and Milford Haven, either via Cardiff or Aberystwyth.

[Compound2632]

2 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

I doubt there has ever been much demand for humans to journey between Manchester and Milford Haven, either via Cardiff or Aberystwyth.

 

But it might have been a competitive route from Manchester to the south of Ireland, the competition being GWR / WL&WR also via Milford Haven and Waterford and LNWR / GS&WR via Holyhead and North Wall?

[The Johnster]

46 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

Railways were by and large not built for passengers. Some were built to capitalise on freight flows, and some were built to stop someone else capitalising on freight flows (either protecting or competing with a monopoly).

Taking people from place to place more quickly than had previously been possible was a happy side effect.

I doubt there has ever been much demand for humans to journey between Manchester and Milford Haven, either via Cardiff or Aberystwyth.

Or even directly, all glory to the hypnotoad.  The M & M was promoted by Manchester business interests opposed to the Bridgewater domination of exports and the LNWR; they were attracted to Milford Haven's deep water sheltered natural harbour, as Nelson had been when he sited a Naval Dockyard there at Pembroke Doxk, far from threat by those naughty Frenchies and handy for troop transports to put down rebellions in the southern counties of Ireland; in other words the same geographical features as have made the place suitable for oil and LPG traffic in more recent times.  

 

The basis of the oil trade in the area is older than the Napoleonic Wars though, the town of Milford Haven being developed as a whaling port by and for New England interests; whale oil is the basis of it all.  There is a Lord Nelson Hotel in the town of Milford Haven which features as 4 poster bed in which he and Lady Hamilton 'cavorted'; I have slept in this bed and it is very solidly built.  This is as well, Emma was a big'un and pretty enthusiastic by all accounts...

 

We are digressing a bit; one assumes that the Manchester business cabal behind the M & M were looking to import cotton from the confederate states of the US, where their business connections were, through a port and railway under their own control; I believe some was grown in India as well.  Milford Haven is well placed to receive such traffic from the shipping viewpoint, but it's miles away from anything else.  It all seems a bit far fetched to start with, and the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War must have holed it below the waterline.  

[Nearholmer]

Getting back to civil infrastructure more generally for a minute .......

 

I cycled over the routes of the railways that used to serve Dunstable today. The objective was to get somewhere else, but it turned out to be very interesting, because I'd not previously thought of the pre-Beeching-closed line from Leighton Buzzard to Dunstable as anything worth looking at, but it is.

 

Dunstable is quite high up on the same range of chalk downland that the famous cutting at Tring slices right through, so the branch to it had to climb, and since it was built quite early (opened 1848) it had to be suitable for very weedy locomotives. What emerges when you cycle up it is that it is a monster feat of chalk-shifting, because the profile is as below. I'm not sure how high the embankment is above natural ground, or how deep the cutting, but you sure as heck wouldn't want to tumble off the top of either. 

 

Apparently Stephenson's original plan was to have a gradient of 1:27, which would have implied haulage by stationary engine, but he eventually decided to go for 1:40 (very steep indeed by 1840s standards, and using the heights and distances on google maps, I think it was actually built to 1:50), and the branch had to have special small-wheeled Bury 0-4-0 locomotive to work the goods trains, and the 2-2-0 on passenger service could only schlepp three carriages up it.

 

 

I'm now hunting for an early illustration of it, because it must have looked spectactular when new, and not surrounded by trees, and it seems to be a forgotten piece of Stephensononia.

 

PS: I’ve studied the gradient a bit more closely, with the help of google maps, and it is  not a single, unbroken, gradient as i’ve sketched. The cutting part is almost flat, and the climb up the scarp is in two distinct grades, the steeper one near the top, so perhaps that bit is 1:40. Oddly, it didn’t feel steeper to pedal up!

 

Edited June 1, 2019 by Nearholmer

[eastglosmog]

Not railway, but the embankment and cutting taking the Roman Watling St up that scarp north of Dunstable is quite impressive, too.

Edited May 31, 2019 by eastglosmog

[Nearholmer]

Indeed it is, if you can filter out the modern grot that surrounds it. Its basically the same thing, only much steeper, although how much of what is visible now is the result of Telford's re-engineering of the road, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't want to take a stage-coach down it on a frosty night, let alone a Roman bullock cart.

 

The first station was sited tight against the Watling Street, where both breath a sigh of relief at the top of the hill, and it survived as the goods depot until the line was closed, but I couldn't see any trace of it and didn't look very hard ....... its not a picturesque area!

[Trog]

The Dunstable LNWR station was where the council offices are now on the west side of the A5.

 

There is a round lawn in the grounds that appears to be in the same position and size as the turntable pit.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Trog
Added info.

[eastglosmog]

While Telford was involved with the whole Holyhead road outside London, I have not seen any evidence he did any major engineering works at the southern end, apart from resurfacing works.  Judging by his work on the road in Wales, I suspect he would have built it at a flatter gradient.

Agree regarding picturesqueness of Dunstable!

[Nearholmer]

Looking at ‘disused stations’, which has quite a good history of the stations at Dunstable, Watling Street was lowered, and the railway raised, when the line from Welwyn was joined to the LNWR branch, so as to avoid a level crossing. The Stephenson era bits I’ve been rambling on about were unaffected by this.

[runs as required]

On 31/05/2019 at 21:06, Nearholmer said:

.... how much of what is visible now is the result of Telford's re-engineering of the road, I don't know. I certainly wouldn't want to take a stage-coach down it on a frosty night, let alone a Roman bullock cart....

... 'Blind Jack' Metcalf built his Trans Pennine Turnpikes to ruling gradients of (plus or minus) 1 in 15. He graduated to road building from being a stage coach driver !

Perhaps being partially sighted helped around those hairpins.

2

About cut and fill through chalk - can you attempt a fairly steep angle of repose or does rain and run off dissolve the chalk unless it is topsoiled and grassed?

i seem to remember the Swanley - Otford LC&D line has cliff like cutting approaches to the tunnel through the North Downs.

[Zomboid]

Chalk certainly works as cliffs. There's a few very steep chalk cuttings between Basingstoke and Salisbury. And of course the South Eastern coast of England.

 

I don't think they made much effort to vegetate the M3 cutting at Winchester either, though some flora has made its home there in the couple of decades since it was built.