A Curious Structure On The Western Curve
The picture shows a rather curious white corrugated structure covering the Western Curve at Dalston Junction.
A White Steel Tent at Dalston
When I first saw it, I thought it was some sort of protection for concrete, whilst it was drying.
But it would appear that it’s the ventilation for the railway tunnel under Kingsland High Road. It is designed so that the prevailing westerly winds will draw the air out of the tunnel. I think, it’s also designed to work in case of fire.
This looks to me, like a classic case of very sound passive engineering. An active solution with electrically-driven fans would be a lot more complicated and expensive.
Where Have All the Brass Washers Gone?
I’m in need of some more oversized brass washers to complete the staircase.
Oversized Brass Washers
My supplier has told me, they can’t get any more. I can’t find any on the Internet in the UK either.
The Hopefully Very Last Bolts
The staircase is now almost refurbished and needs just a few things.
I think it would be improved if oversized washers were put on my dome-headed bolts.
But perhaps the last thing to do is replace the three brass-painted coach screws with dome-headed coach screws.
A Dome-Headed Bolt and Coach Screws
The picture shows shows from the top; a fake dome-headed bolt, a stainless steel coach screw and one of those used by Jerry, the builder.
It would seem that the solution is to saw the head off the stainless steel coach screw, put a screw thread on it and then screw on a dome-headed nut.
How to Make Dome-Headed Bolts
As I have said several times on this blog, the builder of my house was possibly named Jerry. His worst piece of work was undoubtedly the staircase, which instead of using brass nuts and bolts, as probably specified by the architect used brass painted steel ones.
I have got part of the way, but to fix the staircase to the floor of the house, Jerry used Rawlbolts, which couldn’t easily be replaced, as they were set in concrete. I got this far and you can see it looks a bit better but some are round one way and others the other.
In the end I decided I wanted some dome-headed bolts. But just like the perfect woman doesn’t exist, the perfect bolt doesn’t either. Although there are some good ones about.
So I had to make my own. I started by purchasing some 10 mm. mild steel studding from Thomas Brothers at Archway. I used steel rather than brass, as this might give less trouble with dissimilar metals in contact causing corrosion and anyway Thomas Brothers don’t sell brass studding. They also were kind enough to cut the studding in half, so that I was less likely to poke someone’s eye out on the bus home.
I started by securing the studding in my Workmate.
Studding Secured in the Workmate
I then sawed off an appropriate length using a standard hacksaw, The stud was cut to be perhaps two centimetres longer than the steel bolt I wanted to replace.
The Cut Length of Studding
The problem with cutting any screw threads is that when you cut it, you damage the threads and nuts are difficlt to fit. You can mitigate the problem by putting a new blade in the hacksaw, but you really need one of these.
Hexagonal Screw-Cutting Die
It is a 10 mm. hexagonal scre-cutting die, that effectively cuts threads in round bars. Or in this case recuts damaged threads.
My father had lots of these, although his were round and were held in a special wrench. But because they are hexagonal, you can use them with a good ring spanner to cut the thread. I’m doing just that here, after first mounting the cut stud vertically in the Workmate.
Recutting the Threads
I actually turned the die from one end of the stud to the other to make sure that all damaged threads were repaired. All I had to do then, was screw a dome-headed nut onto the pristine length of studding.
A Dome-Headed Bolt
They are now all installed in the staircase.
The Bolts in Place
You can’t tell which ones are my fakes and which are the ones the builder put in the right way round. Or was it the wrong way?
He didn’t put them in level either!
More Engineering Pornography
I have a full-size electric drill, but I need something light to put plugs in the plasterboard walls, as although the hand-drill is good, the chuck is not very good and I can’t drill holes deeper than a couple of centimetres.
So I went to Franchi in the Holloway Road and bought a Bosch wine bottle opener.
Bosch IXO Vino
But it also puts in screws and drills holes.
Bosch IXO Vino with Drill Bit
It is actually quite powerful and is ideal for those small jobs, which don’t need the strongest of tools. It also sits in a small charger/holder, so you don’t have to charge it up, when you haven’t used it for a few months.
So ladies, you now know what to buy your man for his birthday! Or for yourself, if you’re an alcoholic with a penchant for expensive wine in corked bottles and you don’t have the strongest of hands.
Engineering Pornography
I needed a 17 mm. ratchet spanner to try to fix the stairs. They may be more expensive, but they are so easy to use if you have gammy hands. Or just one good one like me!
So I bought this double-ended one made by TengTools from Franchi in the Holloway Road.
A TengTools 17/19 mm. Ratchet Spanner
It looks, feels and works so good it’s almost pornographic.
Twenty years ago, this sort of hand-tool, might well have been made in the United States, but TengTools are a Swedish company. So perhaps the United States isn’t building on its traditional strengths to get itself sorted out.
The Virtual Beagle
The headline of “It might look like a dog’s dinner; but this artificial stomach will save (canine) lives” caught my eye as I read The Times this morning.
Apparently, AstraZeneca have virtually replaced dogs with an artificial stomach for drug testing. So not only is it good for drug development, it’s good news for dogs. I’ve always felt that animal testing was wrong from a scientifically correct point of view as keeping animals is expensive and the in vitro and computer alternatives are cheaper and much easier to scale up.
The Times article doesn’t say who is behind this development, but it does quote Troy Seidle of the Humane Society International as saying.
This new use of the intestinal model in drug testing is a fantastic example of how innovative technologies can replace animal experiments and improve medical research at the same time.
I have searched the Internet and it would appear that the company behind this wonderful development could be SimCyp, based in Sheffield.
But why is everybody being so coy about this development? This British company should be on page one of all the newspapers.
On a personal note, I was involved in computer simulation of processes for several years in the 1970s, when I worked at ICI. We always felt that computers had a large part to play in modelling the body, but little seems to have been heard over the last four decades. These are two pictures of the PACE 231R analog computer, I used for simulation of chemical processes.
In my view, there are computers, good computers and the PACE 231R.
The 231R was built in the 1960s and it was all valve or vacuum tube, if you are from the United States. It was a formidable beast for solving differential equations and I have a feeling that there isn’t one left even in a museum. These pictures taken by a colleague at ICI seem to be two of the only ones of a 231R in a working environment. Hopefully the Internet will preserve them for ever!
The biggest claim to fame of the 231R was that two of them were used in tandem to solve all of the mathematics and differential equations of getting the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. They were actually linked to virtually a real spacecraft to test everything out.
So when Apollo 13 blew up and they had to use the Lunar Excursion Module to bring the astronauts home, it was these two computers that were reprogrammed to try to find out how to do it. They wouldn’t have stood a chance with a digital machine, but the engineers, programmers and astonauts were able to get the two 231R’s to find a strategy. I’ve never seen the Apollo 13 film, but I suspect that the role of the 231Rs is downplayed or ignored.
So when you ask me, what is the greatest computer ever made, there is only one answer. The amazing PACE 231R.
The Joy of Engineering
In many ways I am an engineer first, second and all the way to last.
In my troubles over the last couple of years, my reasoning and problem solving abilities have got me through it to a certain extent. I even cook like an engineer. And these skills I learned in my long training and experience as an engineer, from helping my father in his print works, through the vacation jobs at Enfield Rolling Mills, my degree at Liverpool University, the experience at ICI and then my years of programming, where I wrote planning and data management systems for a variety of industries.
So why are engineers different?
Many people like doctors have a theory and try to prove it, whereas engineers have a problem and try to solve it, whilst sticking to the best scientific and management principles. One of my principles is that you can’t ignore scientific correctness at any time. This is probably, why if you want to louse up a project, you just let politicians get their sticky fingers on it. Everywhere around you, you see good engineering ideas, that work, that probably had to overcome difficult obstacles from ignorant politicians to come to fruition.
There is a simple idea from close to me. Imagine the outcry if today, an electricity company said that they were going to lay 400 thousand volt cables underneath the towpaths of the Regent’s Canal and then cool them with water from the canal. After all water and electricity don’t mix! Do they? But that is what was done in the 1960s and as far as I can tell, there have been no problems. It would appear too, that the cooling system is being upgraded judging by signs beside the canal. So engineers are making a good idea even better.
Yesterday, the Head of the Electrical Engineering Department at Liverpool University invited me for a coffee and I spent an enjoyable hour with him discussing the problems of the world, that engineers could solve.
Few were controversial, but time and again engineering ignorance of the great and good came up as the reason a proven idea wasn’t implimented.
We must give everybody at least a basis of a scientific or engineering education, so that when someone says he’s going to do something, the idea can be properly discussed and the correct decisions taken. As an example, the public in this country is very much against waste incinerators, whereas in some countries like Austria, they have had serious discussions and use the best engineering designs to get rid of the waste that can’t be easily recycled, often by incineration in plants designed to advertise what they do.
So it is to be welcomed in the news today, that JCB have got involved in an academy to give young people a proper science, engineering and business education.
Let’s hope it’s not the only one.
I’ve enjoyed my time as an engineer so far and I’m not going to give up on it yet.
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
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.
