Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[Hroth]

On 15/03/2021 at 14:50, billy_anorak59 said:

Quick question, while there is a lull in the main discussion, please? I'm sure someone here will have the answer.

I acquired a map in an antique emporium some years ago now, of the 'Proposed Chester and Birkenhead Railway' and dated 1836. It's quite finely drawn, as of most similar maps of the period. Unfortunately the top left corner was missing, but it displays fine.

 

I was just wondering as to why such a map as this was issued, and hence get some idea of its audience and how many were produced?

For example, do you think it was part of a prospectus to invest, or maybe as a more official document?

Thanks.

 

 

 

A nice map.  What does it indicate as the Birkenhead terminus?  I would expect it to be Monks Ferry, but it would be nice to know.  The railway viaduct over the Shropshire Union canal between Chester and Ellesmere Port  has a building date of 1840 on the arch that straddles the canal.

 

[sir douglas]

i know some here already know from the 19th century FB group but there is a youtube about early railways, not just UK but has done some US and French videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC75PkfxmwyEM6RrVStVwqwQ/videos

 

[billy_anorak59]

On 16/03/2021 at 15:54, Hroth said:

What does it indicate as the Birkenhead terminus?  I would expect it to be Monks Ferry, but it would be nice to know. 

Not Monks Ferry. The map pre-dates the rumpus the Ferry companies made which forced the original terminus to be built at Grange Lane, not at Woodside. I think Grange Lane was only the terminus for 2-4 years or so before Monks Ferry opened.

The map does show a version of a Woodside station, but not as was built later, in 1870, to the other side of Chester Street.

 

On the section view, it shows an 'Archway' (sorry, not a brilliant photo) - does that mean 'Tunnel'?

 

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by billy_anorak59

[Compound2632]

56 minutes ago, billy_anorak59 said:

On the section view, it shows an 'Archway' (sorry, not a brilliant photo) - does that mean 'Tunnel'?

 

By the look of it, maybe a cut-and-cover tunnels, with demolition and rebuilding of the town centre buildings on the line of the railway.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, billy_anorak59 said:

Not Monks Ferry. The map pre-dates the rumpus the Ferry companies made which forced the original terminus to be built at Grange Lane, not at Woodside. I think Grange Lane was only the terminus for 2-4 years or so before Monks Ferry opened.

The map does show a version of a Woodside station, but not as was built later, in 1870, to the other side of Chester Street.

 

On the section view, it shows an 'Archway' (sorry, not a brilliant photo) - does that mean 'Tunnel'?

 

 

 

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

By the look of it, maybe a cut-and-cover tunnels, with demolition and rebuilding of the town centre buildings on the line of the railway.

 

I should have looked at the "Disused Stations" site...

 

The Birkenhead and Chester, as you say, originally terminated at Grange Lane, but as they wanted to tap into the Liverpool trade, they had to connect to a ferry so the extension to Monks Ferry was built and operational by 1844. The  "Archway" was a 436 yard tunnel from Grange Lane to Monks Ferry which became too limited for the traffic by the 1870s, resulting in the construction of Woodside.

 

Grange Lane and Monks Ferry

Birkenhead Woodside

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, billy_anorak59 said:

 

 

On the section view, it shows an 'Archway' (sorry, not a brilliant photo) - does that mean 'Tunnel'?

 

 

 

I remember reading that early tunnels were often cut and cover, as the technology was limited. I'm not sure that's quite true. 

 

I think it is more to do with the depth of the tunnel.  The development of tunnel shields facilitated deeper tunnels later in the century, true, but they were not an impossibility. It's more that they weren't always necessary. Thus, although the use of shields is as old as the public railway (Marc Brunel on the Thames tunnel), the development of the patent Greathead circular shield no doubt facilitated deeper tunnelling in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, but cut and cover remained the sensible and, I suspect, necessary way to create shallow tunnels, particularly in urban settings.  You cannot bore under buildings if you are too close to the surface to allow them to be supported.  The early lines into London used cut and cover, but so, I believe, did Canary Wharf tube station.

 

A cut and cover tunnel involves a trench and then building a tunnel structure in it and then filling above it. It seems to me that an ''archway'', i.e. a long, arched 'way', is exactly what someone in the early Nineteenth century would be building within the cut trench before covering over the top.

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

I remember reading that early tunnels were often cut and cover, as the technology was limited. I'm not sure that's quite true. 

 

I think it is more to do with the depth of the tunnel. 

 

Geology is a major factor. Where there is stable rock and plenty of headroom, conventional tunnelling - cutting a drift - came naturally to people such as the Stephensons, with their mining background. Cut and cover wasn't an option at Kilsby Tunnel!

 

 

I'm sure J.C. Bourne must have had some baroque Nativity in mind when he painted that.

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Geology is a major factor. Where there is stable rock and plenty of headroom, conventional tunnelling - cutting a drift - came naturally to people such as the Stephensons, with their mining background. Cut and cover wasn't an option at Kilsby Tunnel!

 

 

I'm sure J.C. Bourne must have had some baroque Nativity in mind when he painted that.

 

Then there is the whole 'clack-kicking' thing, were that is to soil type

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

The early lines into London used cut and cover, but so, I believe, did Canary Wharf tube station.

 

Sort of. Quite a few modern metro stations have been built by creating an open 'box', from surface down to the level of the tunnels, then decking that box over. I'm 99% sure that was the way Canary Wharf was built, and that a big issue with it was the need to ensure that the box didn't start to float, like a great big ship, on the water that saturates the ground there - I think it has oodles of piles down below it to anchor it. The great advantage of a box is that it allows much greater freedom to design and lay-out the circulating spaces, which is always a serious PITA with deep-level stations.

 

I ought to remember Canary wharf better, because I could see the construction underway from my office at the time, but I was far more focused on the power supplies for the trains and stations than on what the "civils boys" were doing.

 

The station construction on the Jubilee Line extension that impressed me most was Westminster, which is again a box, but has the District Line crossing it - the District had to effectively be put on a bridge, and a great big hole dug out underneath it, with only minimal interruptions to the running of the service.

 

If you really want to get into this stuff, these papers are a start 

https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/abs/10.1680/icien.1999.132.6.36

 

Now, to return from the end of C20th to start of C19th .........

 

 

[Edwardian]

Thanks for that, Kevin, that's very interesting. I suppose the ability to install a 'box' clearly takes the technique beyond the Nineteenth Century examples. I suspected the reference to the Jubilee extension might draw you in ....!

[Compound2632]

But aren't some of the deep tube stations based around circular boxes - steel cassions sunk down to rail level, providing the access stairwells and lift space? Warren Street?

[whart57]

Those pictures drawn by Bourne showing tunnels of cathedral like proportions always puzzled me. Growing up in East Kent I was more aware of the story of Tyler Hill tunnel on the Canterbury and Whitstable line, one of the earliest, some say the earliest tunnel on a public railway.

 

 

This tunnel, which gave the line the nickname "The Bung", was very cramped. Even in the mid-nineteenth century the SER required modified locomotives, and the Rs and R1s with their cut down boiler fittings set the visuals for the line right up to closure in 1953.

Classic early Victorian first class carriages with the curved quarterlights were still in use on the C&W up till 1907 because of their low roof line and the last of the mid-nineteenth century four wheelers lasted to the end of WW1. In 1920 some relatively new - only 40 years old - ex LCDR carriages were modified for service by replacing the 3'6" wheels with 3' ones and putting in electric light so they didn't need the oil lamp pots on the roof.

 

The reason for the tunnel was that a straight line was needed from Canterbury for cable haulage. The Canterbury and Whitstable was the last of the pioneering lines. A few months after its opening the first trains would run on the Liverpool and Manchester and the dawn of the Railway Age had come.

[Caley Jim]

The Glasgow Central Low Level line was built by cut and cover along the whole length of Argyll Street. 

 

Jim 

[Nearholmer]

39 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

But aren't some of the deep tube stations based around circular boxes - steel cassions sunk down to rail level, providing the access stairwells and lift space? Warren Street?

 

We really need a civil engineering historian here, and I'm certainly not one, but I think that the Victoria Line stations were built using iron/concrete-segment lined shafts, some of pretty large diameter, rather than caissons, but there is a documentary film on YouTube about it that I haven't watched for ages.

 

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=construction+of+victoria+line&&view=detail&mid=F9A7AB88F9B80535AF2FF9A7AB88F9B80535AF2F&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dconstruction%2Bof%2Bvictoria%2Bline%26FORM%3DHDRSC3

 

The box form of construction that I was referring to above creates far, far bigger open spaces below ground, much less constraint on how the innards of the station can be arranged.

 

Rockershovel, who posts on RMWeb is a tunneling engineer, and worked on JLE and I think possibly the most recent upgrade of Kings Cross, so can probably tell more.

 

Just to give an impression of the difference in scale, although these drawings don't show construction envelope or "back of house" areas.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Hroth]

Well outside the scope of this thread, the Mersey Railway from James Street station, via Lord Street and Church Street, was cut and cover to the terminus at Liverpool Central.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersey_Railway

 

An interesting map that shows that the line to Central was an extension, the Mersey Railway originally terminating at James Street.  Its also interesting in that it shows the B&C termination at Monks Ferry, and the goods extension to the Birkenhead Docks.

 

Going back to "Disused Stations", there are some nice photos of the original 1840 Birkenhead terminus building at Grange Lane . Part of the building still exists but is appallingly  neglected and I expect WBC will create a scheme which will have it demolished sooner or later...

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Hroth

[Compound2632]

Kilsby Tunnel was built on a grander scale than many early tunnels but there is still some exaggeration in J.C. Bourne's illustration. The big ventilation shafts were big though - which in the fullness of time had the advantage that 60 ft rails could be turned without having to carry them all the way out of the tunnel. 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

Geology is a major factor. Where there is stable rock and plenty of headroom, conventional tunnelling - cutting a drift - came naturally to people such as the Stephensons, with their mining background. Cut and cover wasn't an option at Kilsby Tunnel!

 

Which there wasn't at Kilsby, hence the big shafts (with room for the pumping engines) and enormous quantity of bricks used for the lining.

[Northroader]

The original Metropolitan Railway was a good example of cut and cover, good engraving showing the construction methods outside the front of Kings Cross, and while looking at it came across Kings Cross itself, quite allowable on here as being built in 1830, but demolished for the Met. I see in the demolition picture it was a pub under a monument, and it was DEMOLISHED!!! Vandals!!!! Where is Betjeman when you need him??

[Nearholmer]

13 minutes ago, Hroth said:

the Mersey Railway from James Street station

 

In which connection, this is a seriously interesting place, and although I think it is no longer open every day, it does open for odd "heritage days" 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shore_Road_Pumping_Station

 

It served as a substation as well as a pumping station, and in the early years of electrification it contained immensely large lead-acid batteries that could be used to power a train out of the tunnel in emergency, if the generated supply failed. When I saw it the cells were still there, although dry and stripped of electrodes, each as big as a spare bedroom. Many years ago, I oversaw a high voltage switchboard replacement here, and we had to design all the cable runs so as to respect the historic fabric of the building, and permit public access, which was "interesting". 

[Regularity]

19 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Well outside the scope of this thread, the Mersey Railway from James Street station, via Lord Street and Church Street, was cut and cover to the terminus at Liverpool Central.

But not, I suspect, the bit between Hamilton Square and James Street...

[Caley Jim]

12 minutes ago, Regularity said:

But not, I suspect, the bit between Hamilton Square and James Street...

Unless the foreman's name was Moses! 

 

Jim 

[Nearholmer]

While we are on "holes in the ground that I have known", this one/two is/are very interesting, and unusually for me is actually "in period"; former wide canal tunnels converted to rail use.

 

https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/strood-tunnel-thames-and-medway-canal-kent-53284

 

https://www.kentrail.org.uk/higham_tunnel.htm 

 

There is a sort of pit/void in the middle, which once contained a pumping station, and when I was down there c1980 (unsuprisingly, planning to build a traction power supply location), there was still a big old egg-end boiler, all surrounded by luxuriant fern-growth, looking like a set for an Indiana Jones film.

 

 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Hroth]

28 minutes ago, Regularity said:

But not, I suspect, the bit between Hamilton Square and James Street...

 

14 minutes ago, Caley Jim said:

Unless the foreman's name was Moses! 

 

Jim 

 

The way it oozes water from the river, you'd suspect so...

 

As for WBC and the pumping station...

 

[Hroth]

37 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The original Metropolitan Railway was a good example of cut and cover, good engraving showing the construction methods outside the front of Kings Cross, and while looking at it came across Kings Cross itself, quite allowable on here as being built in 1830, but demolished for the Met. I see in the demolition picture it was a pub under a monument, and it was DEMOLISHED!!! Vandals!!!! Where is Betjeman when you need him??

 

Is that a youngish Sgt Colon "guarding" the monument?

 

The Cross was a relatively recent object, to commemorate George IV and not well regarded, so its demolition wasn't much of a loss...

 

https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/king-s-cross-statue-of-george-iv

 

[Edwardian]

40 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Is that a youngish Sgt Colon "guarding" the monument?

 

The Cross was a relatively recent object, to commemorate George IV and not well regarded, so its demolition wasn't much of a loss...

 

https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/king-s-cross-statue-of-george-iv

 

 

It's bonkers and tasteless enough (though I rather like it) to have been built in Ankh!

 

EDIT: I assumed the presence of the Peeler suggested it was a cop shop in the basement. Kevin suggests a pub.  If the latter, it is certainly Colon-appropriate!

Edited March 17, 2021 by Edwardian