From eight years to eighty, this entire family has been enthralled by the engineering feats of the new Crossrail tunnel - especially the part beneath Oxford Street -  pricey cement with a 2hour life getting along it during rush hour in relay, the meeting of tunnels beneath, getting equipment down  'mole holes' and fitting huge pieces like giant Lego with London barely knowing what was going on. Impressive 4 hours of viewing with our wonder and admiration. Thus it must have been for many other railways - but possibly not so well recorded. Thumbs up for engineers!

Brunel's Great Western Railway line from London to Bristol necessitated the excavation of a 3km long tunnel under Box Hill 10km NE of the city of Bath. For speed the tunnel was dug from each end and outwards from the base of six shafts up to 90m deep. All the excavations linked up correctly to give a dead-straight tunnel with a steady 1 in 100 gradient. So straight is the tunnel that twice a year, usually round about 6 April and 5 September (it varies year to year and in particular depends on whether it's a leap year) the rising sun shines down the entire tunnel length.

It has been claimed that Brunel specifically designed it like this to mark his birthday ... but that is actually on April 9th. And of course credit for the tunnel's construction should really be given, not to Brunel, but to the on-site engineering manager, Samuel Hansard Yockney and all his navvies, who were working for the civil engineering company of George Burge Ltd of Herne Bay.

Trestle bridge in the Sierra Nevada mountains, on the Central Pacific Railroad, circa 1869.

Note the Chinese workers;

Trike,

Somewhere I read that at least the contracts under which the latter if perhaps not the early Chinese workers were employed, said that their payment wasn't due until their time was up.

As a matter of fact the safety regulations weren't really up  to date, and the working conditions caused plenty of accidents, leaving quite a few of the workers either disabled or dead.

This lead to the contractors keeping much if not all of the so far unpaid wages, as the Chinese workers 'didn't fulfill their part of the contract'.

Alas my source is forgotten, but I recall that it concluded 'the dead and disabled workers actually paid for much of the building of these railroads.'

I just hope my memory serves me right, and I haven't maligned anyone unjustly.


Edited because of spelling

Neilsen,

Here's an article about Chinese workers on the Central Pacific.

It says they were paid monthly.

Though payment due at end of contract sounds like the kind of sharp practice some of the 19th century Railway Barons would use.

Some good photos as well:



CPRR; Chinese

I think this must be a candidate for a "remarkable railway".

http://www.urban75.org/railway/brighton-sea-railway.html

Thameslink which runs North/South across London to Crossrail's East/West;

Planned to be operational in 2027, Japan's Maglev train ( Magnetic Levitation ):

Made famous by the Harry Potter films, the Glenfinnan Viaduct has 21 arches:

The Ribblehead viaduct on the Settle-Carlisle line in West Yorkshire has 24 arches:



Nowadays the viaduct stands in splendid wild isolation with just a solitary pub, a couple of farms and a small chapel as the only buildings for miles around, but the site was a hive of activity during its construction (1870-75). Although once home to a couple of thousand people, there are few remains today of the navvy shanty settlements that had sprung up next to the viaduct, and which were named by their inhabitants: Jericho, Sebastopol, Belgravia and Batty Wife. But there are the graves of about one hundred men, as well as those of a few of the accompanying women and children, buried in the small churchyard.

Here's the viaduct during construction with part of the camps just visible beyond the worksite at the right:



Then just a few miles further north on the same Settle-Carlisle line there's the 2.4km long Blea Moor Tunnel, and then immediately after that there are two more impressive viaducts at Dent Head and Arten Gill:

Of course if we're comparing viaducts by the number of their arches, the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick has 28:

These views are 'Doin' me 'ead in,' to quote the lady wot does for me..... I find these several pics of viaducts  very beautiful. Why? I wonder.

I think there is something aesthetically pleasing about a viaduct.

The Balcombe Viaduct over the Ouse on the Brighton line:

A road rather than a railway. The Millau Viaduct in Southern France, really spectacular views:

Eccentric indeed:

Biggest little railway in the World

couple of unusual sights here - https://www.plaskynastoncanalgroup.org/pontcysyllte/ - including the aqueduct and viaduct at Chirk.

Triceratops wrote:

Eccentric indeed:

Biggest little railway in the World

I begs your pudding! It's been a fascinating programme (series ends next weekend unfortunately). The advance team doing the structural engineering solutions for getting over streams, up steep inclines, over weirs and canals etc, with nothing but sheets of plywood, a jigsaw, and a lot of imagination are my favourites - though to be honest everyone is coming out of it well.





A helix to help get them up the scale equivalent of "Mount Snowdon on top of another Mount Snowdon" ... the exit track is part of what had previously served to get the Silver Lady over a canal.

I never realised that it was shown in Norway. Do you get the Portillo train journeys as well? The current one is set in New England & Canada. Last week it took in the Cog Railway running up Mount Washington NH.
This one in Switzerland is even steeper:

There's a website I found (not sure how legal it is) that streams all the main UK channels in real-time. If Portillo is currently showing then I should be able to see it, though I can't stand the lad (smug, lousy political views, and a little too dishonest for my liking) and am not much of a "Great Railway Journeys" type buff either. However I'll give it a go.

I liked Paul Theroux's two railway journey books from the 70s however - The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) and The Old Patagonian Express (1979). Of course with a book one has to imagine the scenery ...

The Silver Lady made it to Inverness in Sunday's episode and pulled in to the newly constructed Flora McDonald Grand Central Station bang on schedule.



I'll miss that programme ...

Yes, I watched it as well just to see how it finished.

Not about railways per se, and this is really about more modest transport means but when I looked at the Swedish clip about changing the side of the road for driving (in 1967) I noticed that there were quite a few trams in use.  In the UK I only know of three tram systems - in Blackpool, then the Metro between Wolverhampton and Birmingham Snow Hill and the one is south London - there may be others.  I don't think there are any trolley buses now (trolley buses having an overhead link to electric wires but ran on the road and trams ran on a track - that may be simplifying it a little).  There is a trolley bus museum in the UK (closed now as it's off-season) www.sandtoft.org.uk/  I can remember there being quite a few of them (trolley buses) in Wolverhampton and its surrounds in the early 1960s at least, though at that time I didn't go to Wolverhampton all that often although I did some "temping" there in adulthood and they had disappeared by then.  Plans apparently were put forward to re-introduce trolley buses to Leeds quite recently but the plans never ultimately went ahead.  That news had passed me by somehow.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Leeds  They may still exist in other countries.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Not about railways per se, and this is really about more modest transport means but when I looked at the Swedish clip about changing the side of the road for driving (in 1967) I noticed that there were quite a few trams in use.  In the UK I only know of three tram systems - in Blackpool, then the Metro between Wolverhampton and Birmingham Snow Hill and the one is south London - there may be others.  I don't think there are any trolley buses now (trolley buses having an overhead link to electric wires but ran on the road and trams ran on a track - that may be simplifying it a little).  There is a trolley bus museum in the UK (closed now as it's off-season) www.sandtoft.org.uk/  I can remember there being quite a few of them (trolley buses) in Wolverhampton and its surrounds in the early 1960s at least, though at that time I didn't go to Wolverhampton all that often although I did some "temping" there in adulthood and they had disappeared by then.  Plans apparently were put forward to re-introduce trolley buses to Leeds quite recently but the plans never ultimately went ahead.  That news had passed me by somehow.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Leeds  They may still exist in other countries.

Lady,

I saw the trolley busses in Ghent, but I thought there were in other cities too. I have a vague rememberance to have seen them in Brussels too...
http://www.wulfrunian.net/Ghent.htm

Kind regards from Paul.

Tram / "Light Rail" systems
"There are eight tramway/light rail systems in the UK—in Croydon, London's docklands, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham and Blackpool. Other new light rail schemes are in the planning stage in South–Central London and Edinburgh. Systems are also proposed in Leeds and Liverpool, although funding has been refused by the government, making them unlikely to proceed; for the same reason plans for schemes in Bristol and Portsmouth have been abandoned."
This is out of date - actually the truncated, wildly over budget Edinburgh scheme is now operational.
Also there are a number of "heritage" tram systems - Great Orme at Llandudno  being my favourite,
with the exception of the Horse Tram in Douglas.

G, you're a veritable mine of information about transport (thinking of canals and trains/trams).  I've been on the Dockland Light Railway (it was at one time part of my daily commute when I lived in London) though when I had to travel right across London to the museum I was more likely to go entirely by underground train or a combination of overground and underground.  I seem to remember that part of the Docklands Light Railway already existed as an older railway that was brought back into use.* 

When I lived/worked in London I went on a guided walk with one of the companies like "The Original London Walks" (in fact I think it was them) in South London once and the lady leading the walk said that some of the tunnels that went on to form the extension of the Jubilee Line had been there for 20 years approximately before the line came into use.  I don't know what their original purpose was.

 * The Chiltern Line (from Marylebone) at one time sold a quite cheap over 50s ticket.  I think that ticket has now stopped but it was at one time cheaper for me to travel from Marylebone to Birmingham, Moore Street and walk across to Birmingham New Street to get a train from there to my town of birth than to travel from Euston to my hometown direct.  I was surprised to find out that Birmingham Snow Hill had re-opened (and indeed the Metro runs from there).  I remember it closing in 1967 but had re-opened in 1987 without Sincerely Thine being aware of the fact.

I clicked on the link (from January last year) concerning the aqueduct at Chirk and one thing I noticed was that the brickwork on the canal bridge by the Poacher's Pocket (not the aqueduct) was made of red brick very much like the bridges on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal not too far from LiR Towers.  Still, I suppose then as now there would have been specifications in place so maybe a particular type of brick was designated for canal bridges so I should not be too surprised.

I haven't been to Birmingham for a while but it seems an extension to the West Midlands Metro (a light tram system) opened in December 2019. The colour of the trams has changed I'm sure (last time I was on this system it went between Wolverhampton and Snow Hill, Birmingham).  I can recognise the parts of central Birmingham the new extension travels through.  Some citizens of that city seem to think it's possible to walk from near New Street to the library in the time in takes to ride the tram that distance.  I note the weather was damp and miserable when the attached clip was filmed and it's still damp and miserable two months later. The trams run part of the route on battery - not unknown with trams but this is said to be the first example of trams running part of the route on battery in the UK.

Deleted - double post.

BBC 4 showing a programme about Talyllyn and Ffestionog railways.


Youtube from the 50s:

Cadeby Light Railway:

"Zillertal" on the Welshpool & Llanfair, which ran a two-day "members only" test at the weekend, prior to reopening on 1st Aug in a limited form.

Revamped footage of German monorail 1902.

NB: Wuppertal did not actually exist in 1902, it was formed later by the amalgamation of the industrial cities of Barmen & Elberfeld and the communities of Vohnwinkel, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg, Langerfeld and Beyenberg along the valley of the River Wupper;

Trike, I was there...

Each time a new one had to visit the factory in Wuppertal it was nearly obliged  as welcome of the factory to do the trip in the hanging train. For me it has to have been I guess in the Eighties.

I found it not such an extraordinary trip, but perhaps was I even then already a bit "blasé", having done the San Francisco streetcars, the Lissabon elevator, the Hell's gate on Fraser river



Kind regards, Paul.