Tower Subway
The Tower Subway is a tunnel built in 1869/70 under the Thames in central London , in close proximity to the Tower of London . It runs from Tower Hill on the north side to Vine Lane on the south side. In this tunnel, people were transported by car, making the Tower Subway the first underground train in the world to be built in a deep tube. The first cut-and-cover metro was the Metropolitan Railway in 1863.
prehistory
From the end of the 18th century and especially in the first half of the 19th century, the area on the Thames grew from the London Bridge downstream ( Rotherhithe , Bermondsey , Greenwich ) into a very busy industrial and commercial area. The London Bridge, which was a little too far upstream, and the existing ferries for passenger transport in the area in question were increasingly felt to be inadequate, so that a more efficient connection between the two banks of the river was required. The constant mooring of sailing cargo ships ruled out the construction of a bridge and the construction of an underground connection was considered.
In 1807 the engineer Richard Trevithick started building a tunnel. The project failed after a long construction period due to the unfavorable geological conditions (penetrating quicksand) and inadequate technology.
In 1825 the construction of a tunnel was started again under the direction of the engineer Marc Brunel , now elsewhere between Rotherhithe and Wapping . It was the Thames Tunnel , which opened in May 1843 due to various difficulties , and was the world's first tunnel under a river.
Construction and construction
After the Thames Tunnel, the Tower Subway proposed by Peter William Barlow and tendered for construction in 1863 was the second tunnel planned under the Thames. The only applicant for the construction was James Henry Greathead , who, together with Barlow, his former teacher, had developed the first segments made of welded steel for the tunnel construction . Then Greathead had a new variant of a tunnel advance shield patented. The new technology promised to build the tunnel in a single year and cost around £ 16,000 , less than a fortieth of what the Thames Tunnel had cost. In fact, the shield was moving forward around 2 m a day, and the tunnel tube was completed in just ten months - not least due to the fact that the tube was laid deeper than that of the Thames tunnel and could thus avoid collapsing the ceiling. The Tower Subway opened on August 2, 1870.
The tube was 450 yards (411.48 meters) in length and 7 feet (2.13 meters) in diameter. The minimum distance between it and the river bed above is 22 feet (6.71 meters).
The track width of the passenger car was 2½ feet (762 millimeters). The car ran on eight wheels, was fitted with a manually operated brake and could hold twelve people. Similar to a funicular railway , a steel cable pulled the car through the tube, powered by two stationary steam engines with an output of 4 hp . The ride in the car took 70 seconds.
The entry shaft on Tower Hill is 60 feet (18.29 meters) deep and the one on Vine Lane is 50 feet (15.24 meters). At the time of operation, the passengers on both sides of the river were transported up and down with a lift that could hold six people and was also operated by steam power.
use
The plans envisaged the use of the Tower Subway as a kind of underground railroad , making it the world's first tube railway . A small wagon, called omnibus by the tunnel operators , shuttled between the two banks through the single-track tunnel.
The system could never be operated profitably. The only car had room for twelve people, and a toll of 1 penny was levied for one journey, and first class passengers 2 pence. Since there was no siding, no second car could run in the tunnel.
Only a few months after the opening, on December 7, 1870, car operations were stopped. The tunnel was illuminated and was opened as a pedestrian link on December 24th of that year. Access to the tunnel was now via a spiral staircase on both sides. From then on, an average of 20,000 people used the tunnel every week and paid a toll of half a penny each. Shortly after the Tower Bridge above it opened in September 1894, the Tower Subway was closed due to a lack of customers.
In the early 1920s, the tunnel was given a new function as a route for the London Hydraulic Power Company -operated hydraulic lines and for the drinking water supply. While the drinking water pipes are still in operation today, telecommunications cables are now being passed through instead of the obsolete hydraulic lines.
Of the access structures, the small entrance building on Tower Hill is still preserved today.
See also
literature
- Bennett, David: Metro. The history of the subway. transpress Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-613-71262-8
Web links
- Subterranea Britannica: Tower Subway (English)
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Upstream London Bridge Tunnel on the Northern Line |
River crossings of the Thames |
Downstream Tower Bridge |
Coordinates: 51 ° 30 '30.4 " N , 0 ° 4' 44.3" W.