Civil Engineering Infrastructure

[runs as required]

Thank you

.Factors of Safety vary considering the time the design was done, the design code and whether the loads were "live" or "dead", also depending on the sophistication of the engineer (now software)...

Railways had their own special problems, with dynamic loadings due to train movements and hammer blow from steam engines.

All good fun.

 

I found this an interesting review of railway bridge construction - particularly the critical issue of 'possession time' for bridge replacement:

The Construction of Railway Bridges Then and Now  by Alan C. G. Hayward

Edited June 25, 2018 by runs as required

[runs as required]

I’ve now  turned out my crumbling old 1959 Pan paperback “The High Girders” 1956 by John Prebble. It proves a floridly written book (without an index) where he writes of Sir Thomas Bouch’s 58 years

“Of him we know less than we know of the river” [Tay’s million or more years]”.

 “It is odd that Sir Thomas Bouch paid little attention to wind pressure when he designed his bridge".

 

I'll post more when I’ve digested it (and Tom Rolt's coverage in "Red for Danger").

 

MORE ON THE FALL OF THE TAY BRIDGE

 

SOME USEFUL LINKS

The Wiki  Tay Bridge Disaster is a good overall digital account. There are interesting pictures of the Bouch Bridge here

 

Best primary source: Tay Bridge Disaster  Report of the Court of Inquiry and of Mr Rothery  an excellent read

 

Forensic Engineering: Evaluating the evidence as to why the Tay Bridge collapsed, part of the BBC/OU's programme website for Forensic Engineering link

 

David Swinfen “The Fall of the Tay Bridge” Mercat 1994 Google extract here (from the 2nd edition; Berlinn Ltd Edinburgh 2016) a update very much in the popular style of Prebble’s Pan book

 

Some condensed extracts from Prebble’s “The High Girders” Pan paperback:

 

1  The Disaster summarised

 

Sunday 27 December 1879

The train was the 5.20pm from Burnt Island, terminal for the (Bouch engineered) train ferry across the Forth from Granton (ex Edinburgh Waverley).

 

During a westerly gale, with gusts judged to be as long as 2 minutes at over 75 mph, the Wormit signalman at the south end of the bridge hands the single line token to driver Mitchell of the 4-4-0 loco 

NBR No 224  advances with its train out onto the bridge.  

At around 7.20pm the High Girders fell with the train within them; sparks and flashes were seen from the shore; 75 people had been aboard

 

It was not until 10.30 pm that the steam ferry boat “Dundee” could leave to search for survivors with the City Provost Brownlee, Tay Bridge Stationmaster Smith, Harbourmaster Robertson, a Doctor (with ‘some medical comforts’) and other ferry officers ‘and Gentlemen’ aboard.

One of the Dundee's  lifeboat's was lowered commanded by a ferry captain with Harbourmaster Robertson and seamen rowers. They searched the rough waters around the broken stumps of the iron piers in the ebbing tide but found no survivors. The Dundee returned at 12.30am.

Meanwhile the news had gone out (at first it was said as many as 300 were usually aboard the train – until the Sunday night tickets collected at St Fort, the last Fifeshire NBR station, were brought to Dundee by ferry on Monday).

Crowds gathered at the locked doors to Tay Bridge station; rumours multiplied as they waited all night

Bouch at his Moffat home and the NBR in Edinburgh had been telegraphed.

 

Monday 28 Jan

The next morning at first light, Bouch’s resident bridge Inspector Noble’s launch  Fairweather was out with diver Simpson and Harbourmaster Robertson

Bouch arrives (with son by train from Perth); goes out around the bridge on the Forfarshire at 10 am with the Provost, Dugald Drummond and James Cox a harbour diver

All divers find visibility in river nil, thick with silt, could only operate by touch;

divers find the train in the evening

 

The Stationmaster assigns Tay Bridge station’s largest Refreshment Room as a provisional mortuary. The first body recovered 3 miles downstream is laid out in the room;

recovered items are displayed for identification by waiting relatives and friends.

 

Tuesday 29 Jan

B.O.T. representatives arrive: Major Marandin,  Col. Yolland and Major-General Hutchinson (his earlier Inspection report's recommendations become critical)

Bridge Inspector Noble’s launch  Fairweather out with  Bouch, Col. Yolland and Dugald Drummond; train items recovered

Bouch, noticably taciturn, avoids the press.

 

Wednesday 30 Jan

Major-General Hutchinson out on Noble’s launch;

train engine found on its side, regulator open, no evidence of braking

Train all within the girders: so had the train brought down the girder or had the girder failed bringing down train?

 

Thursday 31 Jan

Bouch and Contractor Gilkes out on boat; criticism of Bouch is mounting

 

Friday  1 Feb

bad weather returns - in Edinburgh NBR announce Tay bridge to be rebuilt though work on Bouch’s design for Forth bridge to be halted

 

Saturday 2 Feb

Board of Trade Inquiry convenes in Dundee

 

Sunday 3 Feb

Over the week-end more bodies are found – most well away from train wreck

Religious criticism:

NBR (and the doomed passengers) had been transgressing the Law of God travelling on a Sunday

 

Monday 4 Feb

The Inquiry hears more witnesses before adjournment back to London

 

during the following week:

press disperses

300 wagon loads of train wreckage from flotsam found down the estuary are sent to NBR Cowlairs works.

Lifeboat Grace Darling rowed north to the Tay estuary from Bamburgh Northumberland recovered a body from the train

trainspotter Gentlemen tell of trains speeding over the bridge...

 

dh

 

Edit: links added up at the front

Edited June 28, 2018 by runs as required

[runs as required]

2  Key players in the Tay Bridge saga

 

North British Railway link
Founded 1844, head office 23 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh; works (from 1865) at Cowlairs, Glasgow.
In 1869 the company came close to collapse - operating costs exceeded  receipts and were still rising fast. In 1873 the NBR discontinued paying a dividend on ordinary shares, the only Scottish railway in this position at the time.
Chairman 1866-1882 John Stirling
All this meant expediting the Tay and Forth Bridges as quickly and cheaply as possible.

 

Sir Thomas Bouch  link  1822 – 1880
His forte was cheapness, an ability to construct lines in difficult terrain which,  if operated frugally, might allow them to pay their way.
Bouch ran a large office on George St in Edinburgh’s New Town in a manner (recognisable to many of us) relying on Assistants and specialists e.g. mathematicians for calculations, with skills not available in his younger resident engineer days.  He was exposed at the Inquiry as not being capable of such management.

 

Albert Goethe link manager of the TB Contract for both the original contractor and for Gilke of Middlesbrough

 

Henry Noble  Bouch’s appointee as resident bridge inspector; formerly an apprentice bricklayer with no engineering skill. Already an Inspector of masonry structures for Bouch, he was not trained for his Tay bridge role and received no instructions about reporting.
 

Charles Meik link 1853-1923 Bouch’s Assistant for the Tay Bridge - notably the engineer of the pioneer Kinlochleven Hydro electric scheme

 

Charles De Bergue and Co link London Cardiff & Manchester
Appointed by Bouch in May 1871; contract price of £172,000, completion within 3 years!
de Bergue very much in harmony with Bouch on reducing costs of  railway infrastructure. Suffers brain deterioration (while engaged in Tay Bridge calculations ?) and dies in April 1873.
His heirs withdraw from the contract

 

Hopkin, Gilkes and Company  link of Middlesbrough
Contractors brought in 3 months after withdrawl of the first contractor; inherit de Bergue’s workers.
Bouch’s brother William (previously an S&D locomotive engineer) was a Shareholder in the company; he died in the course of the TB contract and his extensive liabilities were found (very late on in the Inquiry) to have been inherited as considerable financial debts by Sir Thomas.
Gilkes begin by establishin an on-site iron foundry at Wormit

 

Fergus Ferguson
Wormit Foundry Foreman, perhaps best known for the infamous Beaumont’s Egg. Seemed to be left on his own in quality control of the sectional cast iron columns poured in horizontal moulds on site. There were important implications in the quality of column components for strength and in thickness for weight of cast iron and therefore cost.

 

Major-General Hutchinson

who had carried out the Board of Trade inspection prior to opening.  
Hutchinson had required 6 locomotives each weighing 73 tons coupled together to run over the bridge repeatedly at 40 mph while he checked deflection on top of the high girders with a theodolite and checked the cast iron composite piers inside and out.

His report recommended a speed limit of 25mph be imposed and he wrote “I should wish to have an opportunity of observing the effects of a high wind when a train of carriages is running over the bridge”.

He was criticised for never returning to make such an inspection. He had been ill and another B.O.T. appointee (Major Marandin ?) carried out the Inspections of the related works.

 

dh

[runs as required]

An excuse to revive this thread: a A couple of (Bunberrying?) days out on successive weekends with Edwardian has got me reflecting about railway construction in upland areas – one dating from the C18 when railways were mutating out of waggonways, the other right at the end of major trunk line building for a railway to be built right across the Peak District virtually coast to coast .

 

1  the Brampton

We began with exploring the Earl of Carlisle’s Brampton Railwaydating from its first conception as a canal feeding down onto the Newcastle – Carlisle ship canal.

“Kirkhouse works looks like nothing so much as a farm, and, indeed, I believe that it was, but it was gradually colonised by a railway works!” writes Edwardian here 

 

 west elevation of Kirkhouse – the current church is up alongside the inclined plane

 

south elevation of Kirkhouse – the old churchyard is to the right

 

Most striking about the evolution of the Brampton system compared to subsequent railway construction was the absence of: 

·      any prior need for permission to acquire rights to land

·      the need for comprehensive pre-contract documentation 

·      cost estimation and financial planning 

The reason was the Earls of Carlisle (the Howard family) had absolute rights to the land from the Crown. 

Since they could do whatever they wanted with their land, one can readily read (while tracing the railway) the evolution from the intensifying of farming through the agrarian revolution to farming plus mining then predominately mining (and over the last 50 years a reversion to farming now optimised to benefit from current farming subsidies). 

The development of mining and of the Brampton railway takes off during the life of the 5th Earl of Carlisle1748 –1825 (statesman, diplomat, and author).

 

Whatever might be the pre-occupations of the current Earl: be it simple hedonism, intrigues at Court, engagement in Foreign affairs abroad, or other projects in Yorkshire (building Castle Howard!), Northumberland, Co. Durham or of course in London, the estates in Cumbria have usually been managed by the Earl’s Agent. 

A good Agent improved economic practices on the Estates and consequent land values and income “but the very best were those who allowed the public credit for their work to be channelled to their employers.” 

 

Estate management comprised age-old agricultural skills: land surveying, leasehold management, maintenance of natural resources, local infrastructure and buildings. But corn milling (originally using wooden machinery in the early C18) and then the gathering pace of the industrial revolution began requiring new technical capabilities. 

 

In the early years of the C19 William Lawson, the Earl’s Agent, had already been overseeing the relaying of the wooden wagonway using cast iron fish bellied rail on stone blocks.  He’d been extending and diverting the line with branches to mines and quarries. It appears he was using the estate’s core workforce on the earthworks, building culverts and underbridges and lineside structures. With traditional local masons familiarity with the different types of sandstone (and colours) in the setting of masonry window surrounds in coursed rubble walling. Buildings are unselfconsciously in the vernacular tradition that are part of the Cumberland landscape.

Kirkhouse office building (note the clock,

there is a bell on the wall alongside the back door to the yard)

 

James Thompson, assisting Lawson as agent at the age of fourteen, began introducing wrought iron 

edge rails without supporting wood rail beneath in 1808 to supersede the heavier costlier and friable cast iron fixed to stone blocks. 

Thompson in turn succeeded Lawson as Agent in 1819. His experience seems to have been primarily as a Colliery ‘Viewer’ or managing engineer. maintaining close links to mining practices in the North East. 

He’d introduced the wrought iron rail at the same time as Walbottle on the Tyne near Newburn. Robert Stephenson as consulting engineer to the Stanhope & Tynestill kept to stone blocks in 1830 across the high west Durham moors (33 miles long built using contractors and negotiated ‘Wayleaves’ with disastrously insolvent line rents). Lamination had been the fear with wrought iron but John Birkinshaw, of the Bedlington Iron Works enthusiastically supported Tbompson and the Brampton’s experiences with the lighter rails.  

 

When walking away from the junction and transfer siding with the NER Alston branch at Lambley westwards, it was noticeable how these later parts of the Earl of Carlisle’s Brampton railway had morphed into a much more typically British railway civil engineering look with a masonry overbridge with spandrel walls still extant across the line through Lambley village.  The remains of a very familiar looking set of brick colliery buildings are still visible dating from the NCB era. 

masonry overbridge Lambley

 

No longer extant at Kirkhouse (Churchhouse) works/farm is this elegant ‘gothic’ locoshed: 

Edwardian and I rather hoped it had been thought seemly by the Earl’s Agent in which to inter the remains for safekeeping of their old workhorse ‘Rocket’, outright winner at Rainhill.

 

I should warn anyone wanting to trace the line that it is hardly visitor friendly. The mainline and the branches are mostly not accessible having reverted to scarcely visible marks in fields.

dh

[runs as required]

2  Tracing the line of the Lancashire , Derbyshire and East Coast Railway 

 

And “now for something completely different”.

This required absolutely no exertion on my behalf save for wielding my Bankcard to purchase Vol 4: ‘The Abandoned Lines’ of the LD&ECR by Zoe Elizabeth Hunter.

 

The LDCR:150 miles of mainline with dock facilities at each end (plus 40 miles of branches)

was the largest railway scheme ever approved by Parliament in a single session. (1891-2). 

 

It is immediately evident from Hunter’s book just what an immense task it was to formulate the argument for the controversial railway and survey, negotiate and prepare the extraordinarily detailed mountain of documentation. It “necessitated an enormous outlay on preliminary expenses, This however was an economy inasmuch as it went to secure success at the first attempt.” 

In the same session of Parliament, the London Extension of the MS&L to Marylebone was refused and had to be revised before resubmission and approval the following year.

 

The Dukes of Newcastle and of Rutland; Lord Manvers of Thorseby Hall all possessed estates in the Dukeries, besides the chief promoter William Arkwright, owner of the mines in Markham vale (now the unhappy Arkwright Town.)  

Corresponding estate owners on the Cheshire side were: Lord Knutsford,  Lord Egerton of Tatton; Brocklehurst the Congleton Silk Banker (responsible for the famous wallabies around the Cat & Fiddle). All were backers.

Importantly the Duke of Devonshire was in approval after some negotiation (in and around Buxton). 

Indeed the only landowner opposing the Bill was the owner of Hassop Hall. 

(the 3 other Opposers were all existing  railways: the LNWR, the Midland and the MS&LR)

 

As the Chairman of the Parliamentary committee observed drily “In these days the construction of a line through a man’s estate might be considered an advantage” – a remark worthy of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell.

Apparently in 1845 a direct railway via Buxton to London had been opposed by landowners and later regretted. 

 

What is striking about this Johnny-come-Lately line surveyed and detailed by the LD&ECR is how much the engineers relied on precedent – researching and borrowing from documentation of earlier projects that had either been rejected or had lapsed. No fewer than six proposals preceded the Macclesfield-Buxton crossing.

 

The cartography of the Bill’s late Victorian Plans is beautiful, especially the complete set of exaggerated vertical sections.

 Exaggerated sections across from Kerridge end, Rainow, to emerge below the Cromford's tunnel above Burbage 

 

However, one cannot help wondering whether the whole LD&ECR Parliamentary Bill was simply a mine-owners' bluff: 'an enormous outlay on preliminary expenses, [but however] an economy inasmuch as Chesterfield to Lincoln was to be the only part of the railway actually constructed'. 

The whole project west of Chesterfileld was abandoned ‘for lack of subscription’ by November 1894 just a year after the revised MS&L’s ‘London Extension’ received Royal Assent.

Chesterfield-Lincoln opened in 1897, the Great Central to London in 1899; the (also  undercapitalised) GCR owned the LD&ECR from 1907. 

After the takeover, the GCR largely fulfilled all the LD&ECR's projected connectivity both to east and west coasts and with Macclesfield both via  Bollington and via Uttoxeter (with the GN) as well as south to London with the Annesley 'Wind Cutters'.

 

Included in with the Hunter book is a fascinating Chesterfield to Buxton virtual railway journey by LD&ECR 0-4-4T  that is constructed by Jetgriff following the author's overlays of the earthworks tunnels and viaducts (including both Bouch’s Belagh at Stainmore and the S Wales Crumlin metal viaducts) crossing above the Midland across Monsal Dale.

 

But it has to be admitted that overall the LD&ECR would have been a cheapo version of the Midland’s magnificent engineering through the peak. Save for the one viaduct in stone priced up crossing the N Stafford line and the canal in Macclesfield, the other viaducts are more likely to have been in the LD&ECR trademark blue brick of Horns Bridge and the Trent viaduct. 

Horns bridge Chesterfield

The Trent viaduct at Fledborough

 

The stations too would have been minimal in a colliery brick (like Macc Central). 

In all I have to be disappointed that the line would not have interacted more with the LNW around Buxton, Harpur Hill and Ladmanlow and with the GCR around Macc and Bollington. 

 

But a striking difference between project complexity at the start of the nineteenth century and its last fling

dh

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2019 by runs as required
section added

[St Enodoc]

On 12/04/2018 at 02:37, runs as required said:

In retrospect where do we think best practice CE has been achieved - in the earliest lines - or later investments where the benefit of experience ought to be playing a part?

The Channel Tunnel.

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, St Enodoc said:

The Channel Tunnel.

I do hope so, being booked on the 13.03 from Gare du Nord today, although the ongoing customs work-to-rule there may mean I have to catch a later train. But I certainly believe best engineering practice is needed in such an undertaking, and indeed in high-speed lines. 

[Nearholmer]

Something I’ve always wondered about Victorian and Edwardian railway construction is how much of it actually showed a decent rate of return. 

 

Clearly it was about  out a lot more than simply railway receipts, because it facilitated (in this case) the sale of coal at lower prices in higher volumes, so there is the profit on that to be considered, but I have a feeling that the “payback period” on a lot of these lines must have exceeded the lifespans of the concerns that built them ....... talk of dividends doesn’t cover the question, because they don’t pay-down the capital.

 

It’s almost as if, once sunk, the capital cost was ignored except for calculating dividends, which I suppose is always the way.

 

In retrospect, beyond a certain point, the Victorians might be said to have wasted money on a lot of this stuff, and that it might have been more in their own financial interests, and in the long-term interests of national prosperity, to have put money into other things instead.

 

 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Oldddudders]

Perhaps, Kevin, railways were the sexy, hi-tech of their time?

[Nearholmer]

They certainly were for maybe twenty or thirty years, and some investors in very early lines must have “made a mint”, but what mystifies me is why people carried on investing in them after the first bubble had burst.

 

i suppose that all was fine for the individual investor provided that the shares remained saleable at something like face value (although even that ignores inflation) and paid a modest dividend, but shares in many railways simply didn’t, they were money down the drain for the initial investors, so why didn’t potential investors cotton-on to that fact?  The perennial triumph of hope over experience? Folk-memory of those few who did make a huge profit? Lack of alternative, better, prospects? A bad habit?

 

Doubtless someone has published a thick book about this, to be read by economists, rather than gricers.

[TheQ]

21 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Something I’ve always wondered about Victorian and Edwardian railway construction is how much of it actually showed a decent rate of return. 

 

Clearly it was about  out a lot more than simply railway receipts, because it facilitated (in this case) the sale of coal at lower prices in higher volumes, so there is the profit on that to be considered, but I have a feeling that the “payback period” on a lot of these lines must have exceeded the lifespans of the concerns that built them ....... talk of dividends doesn’t cover the question, because they don’t pay-down the capital.

 

It’s almost as if, once sunk, the capital cost was ignored except for calculating dividends, which I suppose is always the way.

 

In retrospect, beyond a certain point, the Victorians might be said to have wasted money on a lot of this stuff, and that it might have been more in their own financial interests, and in the long-term interests of national prosperity, to have put money into other things instead.

 

 

Like today in the USA they have just floated a vegetarian burger company for I believe $1.25 billion... the company has never made a profit... Like Tesla or Uber I believe..

[Nearholmer]

But those things are very much investments in “possibly coming technologies”, a bit like investing in a railway in 1835; high risk certainly, but possibly very high reward.

 

I’m talking about later, when railways were already an established technology, and what people were doing was investing in over-provision, or at least squeezing a dry lemon.

 

Its noticeable that people haven’t liked the idea of investing in capital-intensive infrastructure schemes for a very long time (buying shares in the denationalisation of utilities wasn’t the same thing, and the Channel Tunnel was a difficult sell, if you recall) and that even digital infrastructure provision below “trunk route” level struggles to attract private capital. Maybe potential investors look back at how poor the returns were when people did!

[The Johnster]

Reading reports of opening ceremonies of locally promoted Victorian railways is illuminating.  Everybody turns out, brass bands play, bunting flutters in the breeze, a huge feast is consumed by the great and good, and beer and pies are distributed to the hoi polloi, speeches are made eulogising the benefits that the far sighted people of Backofbeyondhampton (to the envy of those wastrels and ne'er do wells down the road in Lower Medievalborough who have only just belatedly started on their scheme, doomed of course to failure), have wisely brought on their proud and ancient town by giving it unfettered rail access to the Great Markets of London and the industrial conurbations.  Everybody cheers like mad.  Wave your flag, sing God Save The Queen, be proud to be a part of The Future.

 

Everybody goes home tired, full, happy, and a little woozy after their great day.  The following morning, the scheme inevitably goes bust and is bought out by the local main line company who have no interest in it beyond preventing another main line company from building a railway on their territory.  It never makes a penny, but provides a service to the local community for a century or so until everybody buys a car and all the goods can go by lorry, then Beeching comes along and puts it out of it's misery.  One of us then models it eventually.

 

 

[runs as required]

Thank you for revisiting this thread.

St Enedoc returns to considering 'Best Practice' in nominating the Channel Tunnel.

 

Crossrail seems to have come a cropper because of its signalling software.

I'd have suggested its 'hardware' was excellent - which immediately labels me a fogey.

The nearest I ever came to heavy railway stuff (the GCR with the Sheffield District line from the LD&ECR) was on the Tinsley project in my twenties. 

We were proved far too trusting of the automatic retarders - which were an early form of 'software'.

And as for capitalisation, a decade or two later the whole investment, TMD and all, had vanished from below the M1 !

dh

[Nearholmer]

“Crossrail seems to have come a cropper because of its signalling software.”

 

i dont think its as ‘simple’ as that, but it does make the point that engineering a railway isn’t just about heroic civil engineering, the bit that the lay-person tends to see, but is about engineering a complete, functioning system.

 

increasingly, the civil engineering and the hardware of the trains and stations are ‘the bottle’, and the genie, or genius, in the bottle that makes it all work is software. This isn’t totally apparent yet in UK mainline rail, but in metro operations it is very clear - sample the DLR or, Victoria, Northern or Jubilee Lines as instances, but travel abroad to see more.

 

Put another way, modern best practice is systems engineering, not just civil engineering.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Mike Storey]

5 hours ago, runs as required said:

Thank you for revisiting this thread.

St Enedoc returns to considering 'Best Practice' in nominating the Channel Tunnel.

 

Crossrail seems to have come a cropper because of its signalling software.

I'd have suggested its 'hardware' was excellent - which immediately labels me a fogey.

The nearest I ever came to heavy railway stuff (the GCR with the Sheffield District line from the LD&ECR) was on the Tinsley project in my twenties. 

We were proved far too trusting of the automatic retarders - which were an early form of 'software'.

And as for capitalisation, a decade or two later the whole investment, TMD and all, had vanished from below the M1 !

dh

 

Crossrail, despite its systems integrations and completion problems, is a very fine example of the very different challenges facing modern engineers. Squeezing quarts into pint pots is more often the greatest difficulty, rather than the more traditional engineering requirements. Trying to get two huge tunnels to breach a hugely complex, subterranean puzzle, full of important pipework, cables, building foundations, other railway and utility tunnels, and so on, largely badly documented, without disturbing key buildings or other infrastructure, both in construction and subsequently, is no mean feat. The fact that it appears to have been poorly project managed, should not detract from the innovative engineering design and construction methods.

 

The recent NAO report does not seem to tell us much more:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/03/crossrail-delays-caused-by-desire-to-cling-to-unrealistic-timeframe

 

But the issues discussed earlier in this thread, about how to find, organise and control skills, contractors, supplies etc in the earliest days, would still seem highly relevant today. The one thing that may have, arguably, changed, is that of managing the client's expectations?

 

[runs as required]

One thing I forgot to include in my above LD&ECR post was the Consulting Engineer R. E. Cooper to the company apparently missing the opportunity to advocate concrete in construction and therefore pricing in crossing the difficult Peak landscape.

At more or less the same time, Concrete Bob McAlpine was setting about his famous concrete curved Glen Finnan viaduct. Mass concrete had been used in bridges since the 1870s – and earlier as infill in brick masonry and cast-iron caisson pier structures.

 

I’d have thought mass concrete should have been an obvious choice for engineering successions of deep cuttings, tunnels and viaducts across the grain of such a challenging already quarry pocked grit and limestone landscape.  Aggregate is much cheaper to blast and to transport than differing qualities of building stone.

Huge mounds of stone waste can still be discerned in long disused former Peakland stone masonry quarries.

 

Monsal Dale viaduct 272 ft high; 543 yds long was to be a metal trestle and girder structure.

Calver viaduct, though slightly longer, was on a curve but half the height; the book's author notes it was proposed in metal, but Jetgriff’s virtual journey models Calver viaduct in masonry.

 

I wondered whether it may have been the difference between a Consulting Engineer (say like Sir Benjamin Baker, designer of the Forth Bridge) leaving the choice of masonry open but Sir Robert McAlpine an Engineer Contractor, able to assess his risk in bidding.  

 

PS

An apology: I should have linked  this to this thread started by Argos (on my behalf) about how the LD&ECR intended routing past Buxton

[Edwin_m]

On ‎02‎/‎05‎/‎2019 at 11:18, Nearholmer said:

Something I’ve always wondered about Victorian and Edwardian railway construction is how much of it actually showed a decent rate of return. 

 

Clearly it was about  out a lot more than simply railway receipts, because it facilitated (in this case) the sale of coal at lower prices in higher volumes, so there is the profit on that to be considered, but I have a feeling that the “payback period” on a lot of these lines must have exceeded the lifespans of the concerns that built them ....... talk of dividends doesn’t cover the question, because they don’t pay-down the capital.

 

It’s almost as if, once sunk, the capital cost was ignored except for calculating dividends, which I suppose is always the way.

 

In retrospect, beyond a certain point, the Victorians might be said to have wasted money on a lot of this stuff, and that it might have been more in their own financial interests, and in the long-term interests of national prosperity, to have put money into other things instead.

I think there are two factors at play here. 

 

Firstly the internal combustion engine was non-existent or in its infancy throughout the period of railway expansion, and the few attempts to employ steam traction on the roads weren't particularly successful.  With the exception of the electric tram for shorter suburban journeys (which itself pointed to a future for the railways through electrification) there was no serious competition to the railway as a concept in that era although there was competition between the railway companies.  I suspect it was envisaged that a possible low return would be offset by a long payback period, representing a steady if unexciting income for investors.  Whereas in fact WW1 led to advances in road vehicle design and when it ended left many surplus vehicles and trained drivers.  Within a few years many of the more marginal lines were financial basket cases in the face of competition from buses, trucks and cars (probably in that chronological order). 

 

Secondly many of the branch lines were actively promoted by local interests including owners of industries who saw their better-located competitors benefitting from rail connections.  Often they would band together to raise the capital for a link to the nearest main line, probably not expecting much of a direct return but intending to recover their investment through the increased prosperity of their other holdings.  Either from the start or some time later the main line company would be persuaded to take on the branch, sometimes rather reluctantly! 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Edwin_m

[Nearholmer]

You're probably right about the expectation of a long period of "building society rates of return", and you are unquestionably right that local interests were looking to more than the immediate return on the railway, but I'm consciously looking at it in hindsight and asking whether much of the money might have been better invested in something else ........ I'm seeing it as a clear example of the wastefulness of laissez-faire capitalistic competition.

 

Among the things that it might have been wiser in the long run to invest in were: education, especially technical education (although that could probably only ever have happened through a 'tax and spend' regime that could never have come into being at the time in Britain); electrical engineering; chemicals; and, the internal combustion engine.

 

At least two, possibly all three, of the big advances of the last quarter of C19th ended-up being under-capitalised from domestic resources, and in the cases of electrical engineering and chemicals the industries really only got into their strides in Britain on the back of German and US capital. Internal combustion power was slightly different, in that British industry did somewhat better, capitalising production of licensed German designs (which is how Crossley Brothers progressed) and domestic designs (notably the Priestmann and Ackroyd Stuart engines), and British industry was actually pretty nippy when it came to 'high speed' petrol engines and to Diesel.

 

There was a raft of other, more established, industry that wasn't re-capitalised sufficiently in the latter part of C19th too, leaving Britain with a load of old early-Victorian facilities that cost it dear in competitive terms further down the line.

 

It's almost as if Britain got stuck in a "first wave of the industrial revolution" paradigm, having done supremely well in that period, and that everyone thought that more of the same (especially railways) would suffice. I guess it's a trap that is easy to fall into.

 

Oh, and Britain did 'tax and spend' on massive land-based fortifications, and on whopping great battleships, which may or may not have done any good. Perhaps they acted as an effective deterrent; perhaps they were a phenomenal waste of money, time, and effort.

[Compound2632]

On 02/05/2019 at 11:18, Nearholmer said:

It’s almost as if, once sunk, the capital cost was ignored except for calculating dividends, which I suppose is always the way.

 

"Money Sunk & Lost" -> "Gone Completely".

 

There's a lot to be said for the idea that to the great landowners and mineral-owners, the railway was a loss leader. Charles [...]* Pelham, 2nd Earl of Yarborough, was Chairman of the MS&LR in the 1850s. He is famous amongst bridge-players for the hand that bears his name, containing no card higher than a nine. He offered to pay £1,000 to anyone being dealt such a hand, on condition they paid him £1 for every other hand played. The odds on being dealt a yarborough are 1:1828. Why should such a sharp statistician have invested heavily in a railway that made such a poor return? Because the value of and income from his estates in Lincolnshire rose by substantially more than he lost on the railway.

 

On the other hand, one should also consider the religious mentality of the time, especially of the nonconformist denominations which were at their high tide in the high Victorian years. These people believed they were building the New Jerusalem: "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain" [Isaiah 40:4].

 

*many intermediate names omitted for brevity.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Compound2632

[John-Miles]

The various Marquis's of Bute invested heavily in Cardiff Docks and complained bitterly that they didn't make a penny on what they spent but in the meantime the value of their possessions in places like the Rhondda valleys made them one of the richest people in the world. As an aside, the aristocracy still own around 30% of UK land.

[spikey]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

"Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain" [Isaiah 40:4]

 

You sure it was Isaiah said that, not Isambard?

[Mike Storey]

8 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

You're probably right about the expectation of a long period of "building society rates of return", and you are unquestionably right that local interests were looking to more than the immediate return on the railway, but I'm consciously looking at it in hindsight and asking whether much of the money might have been better invested in something else ........ I'm seeing it as a clear example of the wastefulness of laissez-faire capitalistic competition.

 

Among the things that it might have been wiser in the long run to invest in were: education, especially technical education (although that could probably only ever have happened through a 'tax and spend' regime that could never have come into being at the time in Britain); electrical engineering; chemicals; and, the internal combustion engine.

 

At least two, possibly all three, of the big advances of the last quarter of C19th ended-up being under-capitalised from domestic resources, and in the cases of electrical engineering and chemicals the industries really only got into their strides in Britain on the back of German and US capital. Internal combustion power was slightly different, in that British industry did somewhat better, capitalising production of licensed German designs (which is how Crossley Brothers progressed) and domestic designs (notably the Priestmann and Ackroyd Stuart engines), and British industry was actually pretty nippy when it came to 'high speed' petrol engines and to Diesel.

 

There was a raft of other, more established, industry that wasn't re-capitalised sufficiently in the latter part of C19th too, leaving Britain with a load of old early-Victorian facilities that cost it dear in competitive terms further down the line.

 

It's almost as if Britain got stuck in a "first wave of the industrial revolution" paradigm, having done supremely well in that period, and that everyone thought that more of the same (especially railways) would suffice. I guess it's a trap that is easy to fall into.

 

Oh, and Britain did 'tax and spend' on massive land-based fortifications, and on whopping great battleships, which may or may not have done any good. Perhaps they acted as an effective deterrent; perhaps they were a phenomenal waste of money, time, and effort.

 

An interesting proposition but one that is not particularly capable of comparison to others. In Germany, they continued to build railways to nowhere, as well as advancing their other industries, and in France, the state attempted to direct railway investment and routes long before and long after the UK, but it has still resulted in a mass of closures or completely underused infrastructure, and rail use well below that of the UK in recent times. One can certainly argue demographic differences, but it also possible to identify completely different restrictions on free enterprise in Germany, where lenders, primarily banks, directed by the Lander, have a mandatory stake in the future of enterprises that require their services. The attempt by the German State to semi-privatise DBAg, to allow it commercial freedoms, is resulting in a massive sell-off of its most profitable, non-domestic activities, after a honeymoon period where it seemed to have the answer.

 

The UK led the world in certain industries post WW2, aviation, chemicals, specialist metallurgy and so on, and one could even suggest automobiles and a few others, for a while, but the very same issues that you describe for the late 19thC and up to WW1, returned, and are still with us. 

 

There is no doubt that bad decisions, bad as in UK plc, have been made in the past, but it is hard to point to where or whence, such investment should be made in future. The Chinese have one answer, but at the cost of enormous and unsustainable "private" debt, the Yanks have another, involving protectionism and the strength of the dollar, neither of which solutions have proven to be long term answers without a nice big war to change the context.

 

Nearer home, the lack of return on investment for civil infrastructure, can be viewed readily in the utterly poor work of the South Eastern Railway, and to a close extent, the LC&DR.  We still live with that now. Which is why HS1 had to be built.

 

[Compound2632]

48 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

Which is why HS1 had to be built.

 

 

Mitterand said, the reason the Eurostar trains ran so slowly this side of the channel was so that the passengers "pourrait mieux voir  le paysage Kentoise". 

[runs as required]

From accidental years finding myself working for the Italian foreign aid industry (directed to Ethiopia Eritrea and Mozambique) I have to confess a total love affair with the Italian FS (yup I'm a Remainer).

Wife and I love nothing more than holidays (with early 1900s Baedekers and Kilometrico tickets) exploring the successive ways they sought to unify Italy with north-south lines, intensive networks of byelines across the plains of the Po valley and Sicilian train ferries.

We have discovered old pre-war railcar gems still running across the top of the Appenines: Pistoia-Bologna and Borgo S. Lorenzo-Faenza plus the 1950s famed Settebello retired running across to the Adriatic.

 

In terms of infrastructure I have never quite understood the braided strands of pre-cast viaducts between Florence and Rome past Chiusi. I've rather imagined it the Italian solution to our overcrowding on the WCML. Surprisingly one can hear cuckoos at this time of the year while hanging out of an Orvieto bedsit watching all the Pendelinos speeding past.   

dh