Thames Tunnel

“ Subsequently his attention was mainly devoted to projects of civil engineering, the most noteworthy being the Thames Tunnel. In 1820 he had prepared plans of bridges for erection in Rouen and St Petersburg and in the island of Bourbon. In 1823 he designed swing-bridges, and in 1826 floating landing-stages, for the port of Liverpool. A company, which was supported by the duke of Wellington, was formed in 1824 to carry out his scheme for boring a tunnel under the Thames between Wapping and Rotherhithe. ”

“ The Thames Tunnel was thought an entirely new manifestation of engineering genius; but the tunnel under the Euphrates at ancient Babylon, and that under the wide mouth of the harbour at Marseilles (a much more difficult work) , show that the ancients were beforehand with us in the art of tunnelling. Macadamized roads are as old as the Roman empire ”

“ Five thousand helpless husbands, whose only crime is their unfortunate sex, are incarcerated in the Thames Tunnel!
Not a glass of grog, or a newspaper, or a cigar is allowed them!!
Hundreds perish daily for the want of the common necessaries of life!!!
The Black Hole is beaten hollow!!!!
Frightful rush, and tremendous overflow in the Thames Tunnel, through an insane attempt of the Boy Jones to escape by the roof!!!!!
301 Those who are not drowned, go mad. ”

“ There is a sublimity in this human Niagara that makes one look on his own race with something of awe.
We walked down the Thames, through the narrow streets of Wapping, Over the mouth of the Tunnel is a large circular building, with a dome to light the entrance below. Paying the fee of a penny, we descended by a winding staircase to the bottom, which is seventy-three feet below the surface. The carriage-way, still unfinished, will extend further into the city. From the bottom the view of the two arches of the Tunnel, brilliantly lighted with gas, is very fine ”

“ In the extreme west the borough includes within its bounds the historic Tower of London, the Royal Mint and the fine Tower Bridge over the Thames. There is no bridge below this, but the construction of the Rotherhithe Tunnel was authorized in 1900. The Thames Tunnel is used by the East London railway. Among institutions the principal is the People's Palace, Mile End Road, opened by Queen Victoria in 1887 as a place of intellectual and physical recreation and education. ”

“ The projected Tunnel under the Thames is not only a novel object in this part of London, but, should it ever be accomplished, it will be a wonderful triumph of human talents over seeming impossibilities.
Although so many useful and even important improvements have been recently effected in the metropolis, there are yet many things left undone that ought to be done, and others proceeding in a manner that will neither be creditable nor beneficial. The widening and opening of New Streets from Pall Mall to the British Museum ”

“ In 1835 he was appointed one of the assistant-engineers, under Sir I. K. Brunel, on the Thames Tunnel works. On the retirement of Richard Beamish in 1836, he became acting-engineer until the completion of the tunnel, 25 March 1843.
In 1842 he made designs for the embankment of the Thames from Westminster to Blackfriars; the metropolitan improvement commissioners accepted his designs, and the government established for their consideration the Thames Embankment office in Middle Scotland Yard in connection with the department of woods and forests. ”

“ Go to the Colosseum."
Longfellow.
It was in the middle of May, when London is usually inundated with strangers from the country, who come up to attend the anniversaries, that a party of friends called on me with a request that I would accompany them to some of the lions of the metropolis. We started for the Thames Tunnel, one of the wonders of London. The idea of making a thoroughfare under the largest river in England was a project that could scarcely have been carried out by any except a most enterprising people. ”

“ The Blackwall double-track tunnel under the River Thames, which is the largest tunnel ever built by the shield system, cost $600 per lin. ft.
In making estimates of the cost of projected tunnel work based on the cost of tunnels previously constructed through similar materials, it is important to keep in mind the date and location of the work used as the basis for calculations. For example, a tunnel excavated in Italy, where labor is very cheap, will cost less than one excavated in America, where labor is dear, all other conditions being the same. ”

“ Marine engines and paddle-wheels were next improved by Brunel; and these were followed by his carbonic-acid gas engine, which proved too costly a machine. Then came the crowning event of his life, the construction of the Thames Tunnel, taking the idea of his excavating-machine from the boring operations of the Teredo navalis. In this formidable work he was assisted by his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then only nineteen years of age; and after most perilous operations, the tunnel was completed, and opened March 25th, 1843. ”

“ With us great undertakings do not languish for want of public interest and assistance. A crane standing for many years on a half-built tower, as is the case with the tower of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany—no! thank God, such cranes have no locus standi in England. May be, we are an awkward, square-built people; but after all we are a people, and that’s what not every nation can say of itself.”
Life in the Thames Tunnel is a very strange sort of life. ”

“ At [Pg 307] that period, the tunnel contained a central arcade lighted by gas; nowadays, it is so dark that no man can discern when he enters and when he leaves; for it has been absorbed into the great railway system, and instead of traversing it on foot one is whirled through it in a train, so that the traveller might be carried underneath the Thames, at a depth of more than seventy feet below the surface, without knowing that he had been on anything else but an ordinary underground railway. ”

“ This formed a perfect support immediately behind the shield, as well as the permanent lining of the tunnel.
Figure 16.—West portal upon completion, 1876. (Photo courtesy of New-York Historical Society.) Click on image for a color version of poster.
BRUNEL’S THAMES TUNNEL
The interior surfaces of tunnels through ground merely unstable are amenable to support by various systems of timbering and arching. This becomes less true as the fluidity of the ground increases. ”

“ As long as these conditions exist, ferry-boats must be used in large numbers and continue to obstruct the North River. This difficulty probably cannot be overcome by the construction of bridges, as in the case of the East River, but it does not seem too much to expect that, eventually, tunnels to provide for the vehicular traffic, like the Blackwall tunnel under the Thames, will be established under the North River. ”

“ In addition to the power drill the building of this tunnel induced the invention of apparatus to suck up foul air, the air compressor, the turbine and several other contrivances and appliances in use at the present time.
Great strides in modern tunneling developed the "shield" and brought metal lining into service. The shield was invented and first used by Sir M. I. Brunel, a London engineer, in excavating the tunnel under the River Thames, begun in 1825 and finished in 1841. ”

“ They never quite removed the machine from the heading when they were finished, but it was maintained right up to the outbreak of the Second World War, when it became derelict."
Adams and I walked back to the car. As we did so, he revealed himself as being pro-tunnel. "It's a tragic thing, this tunnel business, I think. If the tunnel had been built forty or fifty years ago, just think of what an asset to Europe it would have been," he said. We packed ourselves in, and Burgess drove us down a very rough, narrow road to the level of the railroad line. ”

“ Yet, with all the encouragement, few of the pro-tunnelers in England seem willing to make a flat prediction that the British Government will actively support the construction of a tunnel. They have been disappointed too often. Then again, despite the generally high hopes that this time the old strategic objections to the construction of a tunnel have been pretty well forgotten, pro-tunnelers are well aware that a number of Englishmen with vivid memories of 1940 are still doubtful about the project. "The Channel saved us last time, even in the age of the airplane, didn't it?" ”

“ Trains coming through the tunnel from France were to emerge into the daylight and the ordinary open air of England either from a four-mile-long access tunnel connected to the South-Eastern's railway line at Abbots Cliff or—this was a favored alternative plan of Sir Edward's—at Shakespeare Cliff via a station to be constructed in a great square excavated a hundred and sixty feet deep in the ground, which would be covered over with glass, lighted by electric light, and equipped "with large waiting rooms and refreshment rooms." ”

“ While a true vehicular tunnel could also be constructed, the obviously tremendous problems of keeping it safely ventilated at present make this particular project, according to the engineers, prohibitively expensive to build and maintain. The train journey from London to Paris via the proposed tunnel would take four hours and twenty minutes; the passenger trains would pass through the tunnel in about thirty minutes. Passengers would pay 32 shillings, or $4.48–$2.92 cheaper than the cost of a first-class passenger ticket on the Dover-Calais sea-ferry—to ride through the tunnel ”

“ Leaving the asylum grounds, the railway re-crosses the road by a hideous skew girder bridge of 180 feet span, supported by giant piers and retaining-walls, and then crosses the deep cutting of the South Eastern, to enter a cutting of its own leading into a tunnel a mile and a quarter in length—the new Merstham tunnel—running parallel with the old tunnel of the same name through which the South Eastern Railway passes. At the southern end of this gloomy tunnel is the pretty village of Merstham, where the hillside sinks down to the level lands between that point and Redhill. ”

“ The character of the difficulties encountered in performing this duty will depend upon the depth at which the tunnel is driven. In constructing shallow tunnels by the cut-and-cover method care has to be taken first of all not to disturb the street traffic any more than is absolutely necessary. This condition precludes the single trench method of open cut tunneling in all places where the street traffic is at all dense, and compels the engineer to use the methods employed in Paris and New York, as previously described, or else the transverse trench or slice method employed in the Boston Subway. ”

“ This, Adams said, was to reinforce the tunnel at the point where it passed underneath the railway line. We went on again, this time walking on a dirt floor, and then we came to a timbered junction, from which the tunnel branched off again to the right in the north-east direction that was originally intended to bring it into line with the gallery at Shakespeare Cliff, while to the left there was a low-roofed chamber that probably once housed a siding and a maintenance workshop for the Beaumont boring machine. ”

“ In the construction of railroads it is frequently necessary to pierce the hills, so as to preserve a line of road as nearly level as practicable. The method of proceeding with tunneling depends mainly upon the kind of material to be excavated. This having been generally ascertained by borings and trial shafts, the work is commenced by sinking the working shafts, which must be sufficiently capacious to admit readily of lowering men and materials, raising the material excavated, fixing pumps, and also for starting the heading of the intended tunnel when the required depth is reached. ”

“ The first man to perceive and seize upon the benefits to be gained by combining the two systems was, most fittingly, Greathead. Although he had projected the technique earlier, in driving the underground City and South London Railway in 1886, he brought together for the first time the three fundamental elements essential for the practical tunneling of soft, water-bearing ground: compressed-air support of the work during construction, the movable shield, and cast-iron, permanent lining. ”

“ Taking it as a whole, I don't think there is another such a piece of work in the world. It is the greatest work that has yet been done of this kind, and there has been less repairing than is usual—though an engineer might well be beaten in his calculations, for he can not beforehand see into those little fractured parts of the earth he may meet with." As Stephenson had promised, the invert was put in, and the tunnel was made perfectly safe.
(Map of Midland Railway)
The construction of this subterranean road employed the labor of above a thousand men for nearly four years. ”

“ The machine made one and a half to two revolutions a minute, and Sir Edward estimated for his stockholders that with simultaneous tunneling with the use of similar equipment from the French shore—the French Tunnel Company had already sunk a 280-foot shaft of its own at Sangatte and was preparing to drive a gallery toward England—the Channel bottom would be pierced from shore to shore by a continuous single pilot tunnel, twenty-two miles long, in three and a half years. ”

“ Colonel Yolland also mentioned in his report that during his previous visit, on July 15, "I had an escape from what might have been a serious accident. The wet chalk in the bottom of the tunnel, between and outside the rails of the tramways, is so slippery and greasy that it is almost impossible to keep on one's feet ”