Topic: Trains/UK Railways

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πŸ”— Isambard Kingdom Brunel

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— London πŸ”— Trains πŸ”— Civil engineering πŸ”— Ships πŸ”— River Thames πŸ”— Wiltshire πŸ”— Hampshire πŸ”— Bristol πŸ”— Trains/UK Railways

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history", "one of the 19th-century engineering giants", and "one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Revolution, [who] changed the face of the English landscape with his groundbreaking designs and ingenious constructions". Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway (GWR), a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.

Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his career, Brunel achieved many engineering firsts, including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and the development of SSΒ Great Britain, the first propeller-driven, ocean-going, iron ship, which, when launched in 1843, was the largest ship ever built.

On the GWR, Brunel set standards for a well-built railway, using careful surveys to minimise gradients and curves. This necessitated expensive construction techniques, new bridges, new viaducts, and the two-mile (3.2Β km) long Box Tunnel. One controversial feature was the wide gauge, a "broad gauge" of 7Β ftΒ 1⁄4Β in (2,140Β mm), instead of what was later to be known as "standard gauge" of 4Β ftΒ 8Β 1⁄2Β in (1,435Β mm). He astonished Britain by proposing to extend the GWR westward to North America by building steam-powered, iron-hulled ships. He designed and built three ships that revolutionised naval engineering: the SSΒ Great Western (1838), the SSΒ Great Britain (1843), and the SSΒ Great Eastern (1859).

In 2002, Brunel was placed second in a BBC public poll to determine the "100 Greatest Britons". In 2006, the bicentenary of his birth, a major programme of events celebrated his life and work under the name Brunel 200.

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πŸ”— 60163 Tornado, the first new build British mainline steam locomotive since 1960

πŸ”— Trains πŸ”— Trains/UK Railways πŸ”— Trains/Locomotives

LNER Peppercorn Class A1 No. 60163 Tornado is a 4-6-2 steam locomotive completed in 2008 to an original design by Arthur Peppercorn. It is the first new build British mainline steam locomotive since 1960, and the only Peppercorn Class A1 in existence after the original batch were scrapped. In 2017, Tornado became the first steam locomotive to officially reach 100Β mph (160Β km/h) on British tracks in over 50 years.

After the project was founded by the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust in 1990, construction of Tornado began in 1994 and mostly took place at Darlington Works, with other components manufactured elsewhere. The project was financed through fundraising initiatives, public donations, sponsorship deals, and hiring out Tornado itself for special services. The locomotive was granted its mainline certificate in January 2009, having been designed in compliance with modern safety and certification standards. Tornado has worked on heritage and mainline trains across Britain since 2008. In 2022, it was withdrawn for overhaul.

πŸ”— Railway Time

πŸ”— Trains πŸ”— Trains/UK Railways πŸ”— Trains/Rail transport in Germany

Railway time was the standardised time arrangement first applied by the Great Western Railway in England in November 1840, the first recorded occasion when different local mean times were synchronised and a single standard time applied. The key goals behind introducing railway time were to overcome the confusion caused by having non-uniform local times in each town and station stop along the expanding railway network and to reduce the incidence of accidents and near misses, which were becoming more frequent as the number of train journeys increased.

Railway time was progressively taken up by all railway companies in Great Britain over the following seven years. The schedules by which trains were organised and the time station clocks displayed were brought in line with the local mean time for London or "London Time", the time set at Greenwich by the Royal Observatory, which was already widely known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The development of railway networks in North America in the 1850s, India in around 1860, and in Europe, prompted the introduction of standard time influenced by geography, industrial development, and political governance.

The railway companies sometimes faced concerted resistance from local people who refused to adjust their public clocks to bring them into line with London Time. As a consequence, two different times would be displayed in the town and in use, with the station clocks and the times published in train timetables differing by several minutes from that on other clocks. Despite this early reluctance, railway time rapidly became adopted as the default time across the whole of Great Britain, although it took until 1880 for the government to legislate on the establishment of a single standard time and a single time zone for the country.

Some contemporary commentators referred to the influence of railway time on encouraging greater precision in daily tasks and the demand for punctuality.

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πŸ”— London Pneumatic Despatch Company

πŸ”— London πŸ”— Philately πŸ”— Trains πŸ”— Trains/UK Railways πŸ”— London Transport

The London Pneumatic Despatch Company (also known as the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company) was formed on 30 June 1859, to design, build and operate an underground railway system for the carrying of mail, parcels and light freight between locations in London. The system was used between 1863 and 1874.

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