Mahcii 



883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



181 



THE THAMES EMBANKMENT. 



THE intense feeling whicli has resulted from thi- 

 vandalism of the directors of the Metropolitan Dis- 

 trict Railway is fully warranted, for never in recent times 

 has there been so wanton or so unnecessary a spoliation of 

 a people's pride. At the same time it is matter for remark- 

 that a body of upwards of si.\ hundred gentlemen could 

 allow the liill authorising the work to pass tlirough all the 

 formalities without their perceiving its purport Surely it 

 should be somebody's business to examine every Bill in its 

 passage through the House. If not, the sooner sucli a 

 defect is remedied the better will it be for the House as 

 well as the country ; for if a similar oversight were again 

 to occur, the anger of the people would— and justly so — be 

 turned against its representatives as muth as against those 

 who take advantage of its somnolence. 



Any one who travels with any degree of frequency upon 

 the Underground Railway, cannot fail to have been im- 



pressed with the noxious atmosphere, and regular travellers 

 would hail gladly almost any means by which an improve- 

 ment might be efl'ected. We doubt very much, however, 

 whether the majority of them would not dispense with the 

 railway altogether rather than sanction the construction 

 of a series of ventilating shafts in the gardens of what they 

 are pleased to call the finest promenade in Europe, more 

 especially so when they bear in mind that the company has 

 already sold a considerable amount of ventilating openings 

 for building purposes, and now presumes to make use of 

 the public grounds free of expense. It is not, however, on 

 the embankment alone that the hideous brick, iron, and 

 slate structures hemming in the cuttings are to be erected, 

 but others are determined on in front of Westminster 

 Abbey and in Queen Victoria-street 



Curiously enough, the greater part of the shafts are to 

 be situated between Charing-cross and Mansion House 

 Stations, a portion of the line which is far from l^eing the 

 worst so far as injurious gases are concerned. The Engineer, 

 in a lengthy and intelligent article oil the suVyect, points 

 out that : " What the company wants to get rid of is 

 steam, with which the tunnel — especially between the 



Temple and the Mansion House— becomes so charged that 

 it is impossible for the drivers to see the signals until 

 they are within a couple of yards of them. We state 

 this as the result of observations personally made, 

 not from the carriages, but from the foot-plate of an 

 engine. There ought to be no steam in the tunnel 

 of the ^Metropolitan Railway, and there would be none 

 if the Company provided proper means of condensing the 

 exhaust steam of the engines. For this purpose, nothing 

 more is requin-d than a sufficient supply of cold water in 

 the engine-tanks. The drivers fill their tanks with cold 

 water at the City terminus, and they have to run with this 

 supply to Earls-court and other places and back again. 

 The result is that while the engines going out of the City 

 give oti' no steam in the tunnel between the Temple and the 

 ^Mansion House, the engines of the up trains, as we may 

 term them, carry boiling water in their tanks, which is, of 

 course, incapable of condensing steam, and the effect is 

 that, although the condensing exhaust valves are kept 

 open, the steam simply passes through the tanks, and 

 escapes through the pipes on top of them provided for the 

 purpose." 



What is mainly requisite, then, is more satisfactory con- 

 densing apparatus, l»ut what is also to be condemned is 

 the unsuitable plant adopted by the company. Our con- 

 temporary, in speaking on this point, quotes a few figures, 

 from which we gather the consumption of coal in a District 

 en^ine, is nearly cent, per cent, higher than in one of Mr. 

 Stroud ley's " terriers " in use on the South London line. 

 " On the District line the trains consist of eight coaches, 

 weighing about 70 tons, and a 43-ton engine, total 

 113 tons. The Great Western Railway Company runs 

 trains over the District line, the engine weighing 33 

 tons, and the eight coaches 50 tons, total 83 tons. 

 Mr. Stroudley's engines run nine coaches weighing 

 GO tons, the total weight being 85 tons. The Metro- 

 politan trains full seat about 350 passengers, the Great 

 Western trains about 2!>0, and Mr. Stroudley's about 

 400." These statistics demonstrate very clearly that by 

 far the greater part of the present troubles are of the com- 

 [lany's own making, and might be avoided by the adoption 

 of more suitable plant. 



I'\"en granting, however, that the generation of sulphurous 

 uciil (which, by the w^ay, almost invariably proves excep- 

 tionally unpleasant between Charing-cross and St. .James's- 

 park stations) and other gases is unavoidable, their removal 

 is not by any means an insurmountable difficulty. One 

 pound of quicklime suffices to deal with the products of 

 comViustion of one pound of coke, while to change the air 

 completely in the longest tunnel on the line (a distance of 

 221 yards), "at such a rate that it would be practically pure 

 enough for all purposes, a velocity of a little over one mile 

 an hour would suffice, and this would demand less than 

 one-horse power actual work done.'' 



Our estimable contemporary anticipates that what it has 

 said will be disputed by the compan)', Vjut " anything may 

 be expected from the persons who can seriously propose 

 to hide the ventilators on the Thames Embankment with 

 trellis-work, festooned with ivy ! If the atmosphere of 

 the tunnel is so pure that ivy would grow round the mouths 

 of the ventilating shafts, then the necessity for the shafts 

 would not exist" At the present moment the men are 

 working their hardest to get the work finished, and it 

 behoves everyone to lea\e no stone unturned until the 

 abomination is prevented or removed. Doubtless some 

 compensation will have to be given — possibly that is what 

 is Ijeing hoped for — but we must all pay for experience, 

 more or less dearly. We may depend upon it the lesson 

 will be learned never to be forgotten. 



