456 



LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILWAY. 



LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILWAY. 



Brunei's famous Thames Tunnel, 1,300 feet 



lono- was opened, although not for railway 

 purposes, on the 25th of March, 1843. In 1863 

 a select committee of the House of Lords on 

 Metropolitan Railway communication reported 

 in favor of the construction of the East Lon- 

 don line, as part of an outer circle of railway 

 communication within the Metropolitan Dis- 

 trict. In the year 1865 the company obtained 

 their act of corporation for the construction of 

 a line of about eight miles in all, to form a junc- 

 tion with the Great Eastern Railway at or near 

 Shoreditch, to pass thence, principally in tun- 

 nel, under the docks at Wapping, and through the 

 Thames Tunnel. to Rotherhithe, thence to junc- 

 tions with the London & Brighton and the 

 Southeastern Railways at their respective sta- 

 tions at Newcross. In December, 1869, the line 

 was opened from the north end of the Thames 

 Tunnel at Wapping to a junction with the 

 Brighton line at Newcross. Other junctions 

 with the lines on the south side are almost com- 

 plete (September 18th), and the heavy works 

 between the Wapping shaft and the junction 

 with the Great Eastern are in a very advanced 

 state. The curves and gradients are favorable, 

 the quickest of the one being on a radius of fif- 

 teen chains, and the sharpest of-the other a short 

 length of one in sixty. The road is level under 

 the docks, and then rises for a short length to 

 Shad well Station. The rails are to be double- 

 headed, and of steel, weighing 75 Ibs. to the yard. 

 The heavy works on the north side .from the 

 Wapping shaft are completed, including the cov- 

 ered way under the dock-basin. They are of 

 pretty much the same character as the works of 

 the Thames Tunnel, separate up-and-down lines, 

 with a four foot six inch wall between. The 

 arches are of the ordinary horseshoe shape built 

 with seven rings of brick, and are surrounded 

 with three feet of puddled clay. They have 

 also inverts of brick or concrete. The height 

 of the arches from the rail-level to the crown 

 of the arch is twenty feet, and the greatest 

 width twenty-five feet. Much of the property 

 required for the railway between the river and 

 the dock-basin was of an inferior character, and 

 was swept away, to the improvement of the 

 locality. The most important works in under- 

 pinning are of the workhouse of St. GeorgeV 

 in-the-East, one of the London Dock ware- 

 houses, and of the piers under it, and of the 

 groined arches forming the rum- vaults, which 

 were carried down to the level of the railway 

 foundations. Farther on the foundations of 

 the Blackwall Railway viaduct were carried 

 down to the London clay, to fifty feet below 

 the original depth. 



There will be a goods-station at Whitechap- 

 el, on the north side of the main thoroughfare, 

 where the rail-level is as near the surface as it 

 can be without altering the levels of important 

 thoroughfares. There will be a goods-station 

 at Shad well also. 



The most interesting engineering exploit on 



the section is the covered way under the Lon- 

 don Dock eastern basin. Operations were car- 

 ried on, in the first instance, from the surface, 

 and consisted in dredging trenches in the bot- 

 tom ' of the dock until the London clay was 

 reached. The next process was the driving of 

 the piles, clean-squared, and driven as closely 

 jointed as possible. These are about fourteen 

 inches on the side, and about a minimum of 

 forty feet long. Fourteen steam pile-drivers 

 were employed in sending them home. There 

 are two rows of coupled piles outward toward 

 the dock, and one row on the inside toward the 

 railway works. These, placed at four feet six 

 inches apart inside, and the clay-puddle hard- 

 rammed between the two wooden walls, are 

 the coffer-dams for the protection of the work- 

 men in constructing the covered way under 

 the dock-basin. Some idea of the resistant pow- 

 ers that had to be provided in the construction 

 of the works, as well as for their enduring pow- 

 er, may be formed from the statement that the 

 ordinary depth of water in the dock is twenty- 

 one feet ; under this is a bed of three feet of 

 clay-puddle, followed by four feet six inches of 

 brickwork, being the crown of the arch, under 

 which is the covered way, of about fifteen feet 

 clear headway -under the dock. In one part 

 of the basin the water communication between 

 one side and the other, and over the railway, 

 has been restored. In the construction of these 

 exceptionally heavy works at such low levels, 

 of fifty feet to sixty feet below Trinity datum 

 line, powerful mechanical appliances have been 

 necessary, that have included twelve pumping- 

 engines, working night and day ; three of these, 

 of fifty-six horse-power nominal, employed at 

 the London Docks, are equal to lifting fifty feet, 

 eight thousand gallons per minute. The whole 

 of the water pumped is from the Thames, or 

 from springs, not a drop percolating from the 

 docks through the finished works. A large 

 number of powerful steam-cranes have also 

 been employed for lifting the excavated earth 

 from the workings. Recently a million bricks 

 have been used, and six hundred tons of Port- 

 land cement per week, besides a large quan- 

 tity of blue-lias lime. The large quantity 

 of puddled-clay required for the works has been 

 brought from the neighborhood of Rochester, 

 as the London clay is totally unsuited for pud- 

 dling. 



The engineering works of the East London 

 line have been designed by Sir John Hawk- 

 shaw, as engineer-in-chief, Mr. W. Hunt being 

 the resident engineer. Costly although the line 

 has been (500,000 per mile), its cost is much' 

 lower than that of any other metropolitan lines, 

 some of which have cost from 850,000 to more 

 than 1,000,000 per mile. 



The completion of the East London Railway 

 will supply the missing link in the connection 

 between railways separated by the Thames, 

 and greatly facilitate intercourse between Mid- 

 dlesex and Essex, and Kent, Surrey, and Sus- 

 sex, and Dover. 



