The Anonymous Widower

The Golden Age of Tunneling

London is one of the most dug under cities in the world and has been for many years.

The first large tunnels under London were Sir Joseph Bazalgette‘s Victorian sewers, built  in response to the Great Stink. In some ways it was a large and very expensive scheme, but it started the clean-up of the Thames and effectively removed cholera from the City. It was in some ways the first great project, as it did what it said in the spec, vast numbers of people weren’t killed builling it and lots of it still works today. It is all documented in an excellent book; The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis, which should be compulsory reading for anybody who wants to call themselves a project manager.

Then came the Underground described so well in the Christian Wolmar’s book; The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How it Changed the City Forever.

Since the Second World War, we have seen a few tunneling projects and the reuse of some of the old ones.

The Victoria Line, the world’s first totally automated passenger railway was built in the 1960s. We missed a trick here, as we never realised what we had built. So the automation was vacuum tube, but for well over thirty years it showed how a well-designed underground railway could perform.  It is now being upgraded with new signalling and new trains and the old reliability is rumoured to be suffering. Everybody is blaming the convenient scapegoat of the old 1967 trains running in partnership with the new ones, until all the new are delivered.  I don’t! I blame bad project design and management. In the 1960s they got the automation absolutely  correct and created a good system.  They should have replaced all the old stuff with something that was modern and compatible and then built new trains, that were compatible with the old signalling.

They should also have used the principles of the line; no junctions, totally underground, hump-backed stations to save energy, full automation to create new lines where they were needed.  But they didn’t, as the Victoria Line wasn’t sexy and didn’t appeal to the vanity of politicians. But it was and still is a superb design.

The Jubilee Line was then created by splitting the Bakerloo.  The extension to Stratford was built on a grand scale and has some of the most amazing stations in the world.  Was it the first example of bad co-operation between bankers and politicians, designed to appeal to both their vanities? It was also designed to serve that other monument to the vanity of politicians; the Dome.

In some ways a lot of the design of the extension of the Jubilee line, with large stations and platform edge doors were an attempt to future proof the line  and in some ways, this has been vindicated by the decision to stage the 2012 Olympics at Stratford and the decision to build other lines which interchange with it. Only time will tell if the original cost was worth it.

In some ways the design of the Jubilee shows just how good the design of the Victoria was and the trick we missed was not building  the Jubilee to the principles of the earlier line.  Even now, despite being still a relatively new line, it is still being constantly upgraded.

There was also the building of High Speed One, which tunneled into St. Pancras from East London. Did they get this right? Substantially yes and it seems to work, although the Eurostar trains have suffered reliability problems.  But that’s not down to the tunnels.

Other unqualified successes are the Docklands Light Railway extensions to Lewisham and Woolwich in tunnels under the Thames. The original DLR was built down to a cost, but in some ways this has proven to be a virtue, as like Topsy it keeps growing and has earned a big place in the hearts of those who use it.  It will also play a big part in getting people to the Olympics.

But two of London’s most successful tunneling projects are reuse of old tunnels; Thameslink and the East London Line.

Thameslink was originally built by connecting the suburban lines running out of St. Pancras to those running south of London to Gatwick and Brighton using the old Snow Hill Tunnel. The economic argument says that as you do away with expensive terminal platforms in London, you can spend the money to buy more trains and electrify the lines. Thameslink was a victim of it’s own success and the necessary upgrades with a new station over the river at Blackfriars and twelve-coach trains are running many years late and billions of pounds over budget. Perhaps we needed a less elaborate Julibee Line, that interfaced properly with Thameslink?

The new East London Line uses the Thames Tunnel under the Thames. In some ways, it is a modest scheme, but I believe that like the DLR, it’ll prove to be an unqualified success. It surely must be the only new railway in the world running through a tunnel built in the first half of the nineteenth century.  The tunnel surely is the supreme monument to its creator, Sir Marc Brunel and his more famous son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was engineer in charge for much of the building.

Now, two major tunneling projects are in progress; CrossRail, which is actually being built and High Speed Two, which is just being planned. I am dubious about the latter, as I think that the money could be better spent upgrading existing lines and trains.

But in some ways to London, the most important scheme is the creation of electrical cable tunnels under the city to carry the high voltage mains here, there and everywhere.  This PDF explains the project and shows how good thinking and engineering can benefit everyone.

So perhaps the golden age of tunneling will arrive in the next few years.

December 28, 2010 - Posted by AnonW | Health, World | Crossrail, East London Line, Electricity, Engineering, Joseph Bazalgette, London, Project Management, Trains, Water