locomotion: Dan Snow's history of Railways.

[Thos]

Not so much 19th Century.  The term, like 'sapper' had changed from the days of mediaevel siege warfare.  However, it would shortly return to common usage in reference to a task very similar to the original.

 

OT:  In Selfridge this week the wife claimed that she was going to try the Underground.  I would have thought that in that period she would have said 'the Underground Railway'.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

That's a particularly skewed view of IKB, but sadly one that's not uncommon...

 No surprise, because it is a sober and fair view. The man was a great engineering pioneer; his contribution to shield tunnelling and naval design alone permanently secure his reputation. But when it came to the railway he was in no position to be a pioneer; he was clearly a follower. Consider that there was nothing unprecedented in the matter of constructing a railway from London to Bristol and to points beyond. Any of his engineering contemporaries of like rank and proven worth could have done the functional job as well. And quite likely would have avoided his errors of judgement, which means the end result would have been superior.

 

IKB goes right out there insisting that his broad gauge is necessary for future speed and capacity potential. He got it wrong: speeds and loads much in excess of his claims of necessity are achieved on standard gauge. In the early days of steam traction the broad gauge conferred advantage in locomotive engineering, but that advantage was lost very rapidly as technique advanced. Still a great engineer, but the railway does not reveal him at the top of his game. Romance now, that's a whole other story...

[Talltim]

I still never understand why programs like this have to be dumbed down for people who know nothing about the subject. They don't do it with, for example, Match of the Day

[Tony_S]

I still never understand why programs like this have to be dumbed down for people who know nothing about the subject. They don't do it with, for example, Match of the Day

I thought that was what the expert panel did at the end of the match where they explain what happened.

Or of  as I enjoyed the programme, perhaps I am just dumb.

I wonder if all the people who didn't like the programme would like to suggest what they would put into an hour about pre 1831 railways.

[10800]

I wonder if all the people who didn't like the programme would like to suggest what they would put into an hour about pre 1831 railways.

 

At the very least, replace the flannel and fill with:

 

1) Development of steam power from Watt onwards

2 ) More context on the Industrial Revolution from (say) 1750

3) Trevithick

4) More bio on George Stephenson

5) Rainhill trials

[Guest Mikado]

I still never understand why programs like this have to be dumbed down for people who know nothing about the subject. They don't do it with, for example, Match of the Day

How on earth could you tell if football was dumbed down?

[Tony_S]

At the very least, replace the flannel and fill with:

 

1) Development of steam power from Watt onwards

2 ) More context on the Industrial Revolution from (say) 1750

3) Trevithick

4) More bio on George Stephenson

5) Rainhill trials

But I already know about those! I'm not sure if the flannel and fill included the bog walking and the navvy demonstration but it helped someone not familiar with the area or physical labour like me to get a better impression. About the only thing I did think was silly was his walking around with a pistol in his pants at the start.

[Rumblestripe]

At the very least, replace the flannel and fill with:

 

1) Development of steam power from Watt onwards

2 ) More context on the Industrial Revolution from (say) 1750

3) Trevithick

4) More bio on George Stephenson

5) Rainhill trials

The programme was targeting the social history of the early 1800s really and I thought the premise was a good one, to examine the way in which not only did the railways change Britain but also (and this was quite new to me) how the needs of Britain drove the invention of the railways. SO I thought the construction of it was valid. There was certainly too much filling and not enough meat I agree that a more detailed look at the Industrial Revolution would have filled some gaps. Walking into the Mechanics Institute in Newcastle witha lump of coal for the sake of a joke was silly and time consuming. I thought Trevithic WAS mentioned (if only in passing)? I certainly don't want to hear the story of the Rainhill Trials again! Perhaps a look at why Britain was the birthplace of the railway what it was about our geography, geology and social structure that drove the development and accelerated it's acceptance.

 

Not a perfect programme and more than a trifle dull in places. A 6/10 from me.

[BlackRat]

If it was to appeal to 'Us', then no doubt the majority would have not only found it very boring, but the prog would have no doubt enforced the stereotypical view that the majority out there see 'us' as being.

 

Some of the comments would tend to confirm that!

[bennyboy]

That's a particularly skewed view of IKB, but sadly one that's not uncommon. The programmes are essentially about railways and whilst there is no denying that IKB's locomotives were not satisfactory, he brought artistry and architecture to railway construction in a way that had not been done before. The GWR was bigger and more beautiful than anything that went before it and once Gooch brought Stephenson principles to the locomotive design, GWR locomotives were running at far faster speeds on the broad gauge than anything running on 'the coal waggon gauge'. So it is fair to say IKB didn't have anything to do with getting steam railway technology under way, but once it was under way, he provided the means to exploit it. Even his 'failed concepts' were genuine attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the technology of the day (baulk road/broken iron rails, atmospheric railway/poor hill-climbing of locomotives or static winding engines).

 

CHRIS LEIGH

 

So essentially IKB was the Steve Jobs/Apple of his day?

 

What struck me when watching the programme was that Mark Williams managed to convey the same amount of information in the first 25 minute episode of his On The Rails series, what took Dan Snow an hour to cover.

[Torn-on-the-platform]

I quite enjoyed it. It was as well made as any BBC documentary.

 

The number of irrelevant shots of Dan Snow looking pensive whilst walking around a city or looking at the landscape was frustrating, as was the way some of the stories were stretched out to add a bit of drama.

[PLD]

How you judge programs like this I think depends what you see as the aim of the program and what you expected of it.

 

Was it a piece on the social history of the early 18th century, particularly the impact of the emergent railways? - yes from that perspective it was fairly decent...

 

Was it a piece on technical development of the railways or the history of the railway themselves? - not really, it was rather basic in that respect for anyone with any degree of prior knowledge...

 

Paul

[Kenton]

Just watched it* with SWMBO (currently being bombarded with "trains done to death on TV" ). Our conclusion was that it was reasonably balanced as an appeal to all and with about the right amount of history no to bore the socks off most. It also had the added bonus for her of Mr Snow as a "hunk" (whatever that might be). A bit too much rather poor camera work and lighting - but that is pretty much the norm for documentaries. I don't think another presenter would have been any better, most of the editing is of course down to the director and production team. I think I stayed awake, just, though all of it.

 

*recorded on Sky to watch at a more convenient time.

[Ruston]

One of the things that annoyed me was when he was down in a tunnel that was "two miles long", where he could barely stand straight and where coal wagons were supposed to have been hauled through by stationary engines yet he never said where it was, who built it or anything else about it - unless I missed him saying? I couldn't see the point of him walking along in the dark and telling us about it without giving this information - he could have been down a drain under BBC Television Centre for all we knew.

 

Does anyone know where this tunnel is and what railway/ waggonway it was part of?

[Tony_S]

Does anyone know where this tunnel is and what railway/ waggonway it was part of?

Possibly this

[DaveF]

One of the things that annoyed me was when he was down in a tunnel that was "two miles long", where he could barely stand straight and where coal wagons were supposed to have been hauled through by stationary engines yet he never said where it was, who built it or anything else about it - unless I missed him saying? I couldn't see the point of him walking along in the dark and telling us about it without giving this information - he could have been down a drain under BBC Television Centre for all we knew.

 

Does anyone know where this tunnel is and what railway/ waggonway it was part of?

 

As far as I could make out from watching the programme I think it was the "Victoria Tunnel", under Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

It ran from a colliery at Spital Tongues, to the northwest of the city centre to the River Tyne.  There was a stationery steam engine to haul waggons.

 

Three links you might like to look at:

 

http://www.newcastlegateshead.com/things-to-do/the-victoria-tunnel-p360881

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Tunnel_(Newcastle)

 

http://www.victoriatunnel.info/victoriatunnel.info/Index.html

 

I have to admit I was surprised that the Causey Arch was not identified in the programme and also that there was no mention of Beamish as the location for shots of the the replica Locomotion.

 

David

Edited to correct the obligatory spelling mistake.

[New Haven Neil]

That sums it up for me.  The arch was Causey Arch, right on the Tanfield Railway, but it's name wasn't mentioned. The whole programme was fluff, the timeline was all over the place, although I have nothing against Dan Snow, WHY did he have to get his yacht in yet again?

[Old Gringo]

In post 55, Tony asked, “I wonder if all the people who didn't like the programme would like to suggest what they would put into an hour about pre 1831 railways”

.

Well, I neither liked, nor vehemently disliked Dan Snow’s well-produced, easy to watch, but ultimately disappointing  programme.  However, I would suggest that I might have included some of the following statements;

 

Wooden waggonways were built to transport minerals from pit, mine and quarry to the nearest navigable waterway (before canals and also throughout the “canal age”).

 

After Dan’s jungle-adventure, (and as others have noted) he might have said that we were looking up at the Causey Arch, built by the stone-mason Ralph Wood in 1727.  At just over 100 foot span, the arch was not bettered for nearly a century.

 

The first rail-way to transport minerals directly from mines to factories and to employ an Act of Parliament to empower its route was the Middleton Railway in 1758, the year before the Bridgewater Canal, engineered by James Brindley was opened.

 

Iron plates on top of the wooden rails dramatically improved the haulage capacity of the horse and later cast iron rails were better still.

 

Although a foreign bloke was the first to make a steam-powered vehicle (Nicholas Cugnot), William Murdoch was the first man to successfully harness steam as a motive power.  He passed the (steam) baton onto Richard Trevithick.  (We saw one of Trevithick’s plans in the excellent graphics, but nobody told us what we were looking at, or of any of his pioneering work!).

 

Only after a shortage of horsepower (caused by the Napoleonic wars) was the steam engine developed into a more reliable machine (1815 -1825) and the best engineer wasn’t called George!

 

Whilst all this was going on, pamphlets outlining the idea of iron railways connecting the major centres of population and industry throughout Britain were published between 1802 and 1825. The most important of these was by Thomas Gray, 1820 reprinted several times.

 

The man who ruined himself promoting railways was William James.  The original survey for the Liverpool & Manchester was done by James (and one of his assistants was Robert Stephenson).

 

The idea of floating a roadway across a bog was not new, only the size of the task.  The Sankey viaduct, which cropped up in a couple of stills, is probably the work of Jesse Hartley, using a style and techniques perfected by Telford for earlier canal carrying structures.

 

George Stephenson was a very clever man.  Indeed, he surrounded himself with many clever men, his son Robert, who was perhaps the greatest Railway engineer of them all and Joseph Locke, Charles Vignoles, etc., etc.  Samuel Smiles, George’s Victorian biographer, has a lot to answer for.

 

But, never let too much real history get in the way of making a very nicely presented bit of telly.  A shame really, because the history of the railways is a great story.

 

PS: It was good to see the author, Ultan Cowley, in the piece about Navvies.  Well worth reading is his book “The Men who built Britain” A history of the Irish Navvy, Wolfhound Press, 2001.

 

PPS: All the other Nationalities also took part in navvying and building the railway network of the geographical area known as the British Isles

[trisonic]

Johnny Gringo,

Is there a bio you can recommend of Robert Stephenson?

George Stephenson was a very clever man.  Indeed, he surrounded himself with many clever men, his son Robert, who was perhaps the greatest Railway engineer of them all and Joseph Locke, Charles Vignoles, etc., etc.  Samuel Smiles, George’s Victorian biographer, has a lot to answer for.

Cheers, Pete.

[The Stationmaster]

I enjoyed it. I've read / been told the Chat Moss story many times but seeing the bog walk was interesting.

I think mining engineer meant something different in the 19th century than it does today.

Possibly did Tony but in contemporaneous writings he seems to have been referred to as a 'colliery, or mine, engineer' if given any sort of appellation 'engineer' at all prior to his involvement with railways. 

[Chubber]

I think the producers wrote 10,000 header points on a barn door and fired a shotgun at it from 25 yards. 

 

The notes hit by a pellet were included at elementary school level and the pellets hitting plain wood were represented by Dan Snow walking about looking pensive.

 

Twenty minutes of programme crammed into an hour.

 

Doug

[The Nth Degree]

Speaking as a 'noob' I thought it was very entertaining - and that is exactly what it was; entertainment. Not, as some seem to think, a documentory or academic study material.

 

It highlighted the main points of the development of the railway - not every point as that would have taken hours. Who knows, it may have encouraged some people to buy a book or two to find out more?

[Old Gringo]

Johnny Gringo,

Is there a bio you can recommend of Robert Stephenson?

Cheers, Pete.

Hello Pete,

 

To celebrate the bicentenary of his birth, a group of contributors in association with the Institution of Civil Engineers, Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Newcomen Society, produced a book entitled, "Robert Stephenson - The Eminent Engineer", edited by Michael Bailey and published by Ashgate Publishing, 2003,  ISBN 0 7546 3679 8 (400 pages, 21 colour & c100 black & white illustrations included).

 

Dr. Bailey, a Past-President of the Newcomen Society and an Associate of the Institute of Railway Studies, York, was one of the team who were allowed to strip down the "original" Rocket some years ago, as part of his research into Robert Stephenson and the early railways.  "The book is the first biographical study devoted to Robert Stephenson for over a century" and each chapter is written by an expert in railway and engineering history.  In my opinion, it's a fine book, but then as you know I'm a bit of geek and a bibliophile!

 

All the best,  John.

[trisonic]

Cheers, John!

 

Best, Pete.

[Debs.]

I`m a......bibliophile!

 

You filthy beast!