RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted February 11, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted February 11, 2014 I can see a very obvious answer, have a daddy longlegs or whatever it was called, like there used to be at Brighton on standby with a set of trolley wires planted alongside teh track. I beleive that the drivers had to be qualified as master mariners. Jamie. ADMIN - new topic split from the Somerset Levels flooding topic. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacific231G Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 The "driver" of the Brighton "Daddy long-legs" was a fully-qualified ship's captain (master mariner if you like) as the powers that be decreed this was a sea voyage. It was painfully slow, achieving less than 1mph through the water, though arguments suggest this was due to being under-powered and unable to overcome the resistance of the waters. Shingle washed over the tracks causing further problems. History also tells us that it was an abject failure and fell apart in the first storm ..... Perhaps OT except as an example of a deliberately floodable railway but Volk's "Daddy Long Legs" wasn't the only such vehicle or even the first . (All pictures are free of copyright) The "Pont Roulant" (rolling bridge) was privately operated and ran for about 150-200 metres across the St. Malo harbour mouth between St. Servan and St. Malo for almost fifty years from October 1873 (23 years before the Brighton contraption opened) until Feb 1923 when it was closed following damage cause by a ship colliding with it. The "car" was slightly smaller than the Daddy Long Legs with a 7x6 metre platform but could carry fifty people and, at least at first, also transported horses and carts on the outside deck. It charged travellers using the saloon for the two minute journey double the fare of those braving the elements on the outside desk. Unlike the Brighton "Daddy Long Legs" the Pont Roulant served a useful transport function connecting St Servan with St Malo across the harbour mouth so saving users a journey of several kilometres. The run was obviously very much shorter than the Daddy Long Legs and the car was hauled by chains which ran on rollers on the sea bed. It was originally powered by a steam engine on the quayside at St. Servan but in 1911 that was replaced by electric motors. The conductor on the vehicle signalled the engineman to start and stop the run by use of a trumpet and there seems no sign that the vehicle ever had any cables for electric lighting or communication. The Pont Roulant was really a conventional railway though with a gauge of 4.6m using flat bottom rails and the four carrying wheels were single flanged and one metre in diameter. It appears that this and the Brighton Daddy Long Legs were the only examples of this form of transport in the world which is perhaps surprising but I suppose sea and river beds are rarely flat enough or sufficiently exposed at low tide to enable such a railway to be built. The open and tidal harbour mouth where the Pont Roulant plied its trade no longer exists. Development of the port has replaced it with a lock and a road with a lift bridge now connects the two towns. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmsforever Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 The stone sleepers can be seen at low tide I don't think I would have wanted to have ridden in it when the sea was rough waves coming through the floor etc ,but a brilliant idea to solve a problem the Victorians were brilliant engineers. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluebottle Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Fascinating! You don't expect to see something like this outside the drawings of Heath-Robinson! The stone sleepers can be seen at low tide I don't think I would have wanted to have ridden in it when the sea was rough waves coming through the floor etc ,but a brilliant idea to solve a problem the Victorians were brilliant engineers. I agree regarding Victorian engineers, but I think that the French would prefer to describe the idea as belonging to La Belle Époque rather than the Victorian age. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theo C. Cupier Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Not a railway, but Google the Burgh Island sea tractor. Although I wouldn't fancy a trip after seeing this link Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lmsforever Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Crikey what a way to travel surprised it stayed upright Poirot would not have wanted to go there in that weather. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacific231G Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 The stone sleepers can be seen at low tide I don't think I would have wanted to have ridden in it when the sea was rough waves coming through the floor etc ,but a brilliant idea to solve a problem the Victorians were brilliant engineers. lms forever said Crikey what a way to travel surprised it stayed upright Poirot would not have wanted to go there in that weather. The harbour mouth where the pont roulant ran was fairly sheltered as it faces the Rance estuary rather than the open sea from which it was protected by a spit of land and the outer harbour breakwater. The device does look as if it would topple over in the first gale but was probably less vulnerable than a rail mounted dockside crane and the proof of the pudding was the fifty years during which it ran. Early artists impressions show what look like ballast weights at the base of the platform and images looking down on it at low tide do indicate quite a lot of horizontal girdering at the base so with a largely wooden upper platform it probably wasn't as top heavy as it appears. It did suffer a derailment after a ship grounding on the bottom had damaged the rails but it doesn't appear to have toppled. I suspect that it simply didn't run during the heaviest storms. You can see that on the St. Servan side where the machinery was it "docked" behind a slight niche in the harbour entrance wall and there's also a wooden structure there that looks like it would have been "moored" to in heavy weather. If you google images of St. Malo Pont Roulant you'll find about a gazillion more photos of the thing from every angle. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted February 13, 2014 Author RMweb Premium Share Posted February 13, 2014 I believe that some of the foundations for Volks machine can still be seen at Brighton. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJS1977 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 I believe that some of the foundations for Volks machine can still be seen at Brighton. Jamie Indeed they do,and featured in an episode of Coast along with some snazzy CGI: Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerces Fobe2 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 I just love quirky railways and they don't come more quirky than Volks daddy long legs. XF Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacific231G Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 I've done a bit more delving on this and apparently Volk was inspired to build his daddy long legs after seeing the St.Malo pont Roulant but his use of electricity was far more significant in the long term. I've also come across a reference to a similar machine in Liverpool Bay. This was, if it existed, cable/chain driven like St. Malo rather than Volk's self powered machine. I don't though know any more about it and most sources say that St.Malo and Brighton were the only places where anything like this existed so it may only have been a project. Though Volk's "Daddy Long Legs" was damaged in a storm he did repair it and it was the construction of new sea defences in the shape of a series of groynes that forced its demise. Volk was compensated for this and the money apparently used to extend his electric rallway in Brighton. This may have suited Volk as the DLL would certainly have been heavy on maintenance costs facing as it did the full force of the sea. The French didn't AFAIK build any more railways running underwater but they did develop a vast system (over 1000kms) of canal haulage that replaced horses with electric tractors running on rails along the tow paths from near Dunkirk to Mulhouse via Strasbourg with various branches. That ran until about 1970 and in a few specialist cases around canal tunnels until comparatively recently. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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