Brian Micklethwait

Today, Eurostar cut its timings to and from London by twenty minutes, or whatever it is, and on the very same day, French railway workers go on strike.  Coincidence?  The usual next sentence is: “I don’t think so”, but the truth is that I have no idea.  However, if the striking railwaymen were trying to cause the maximum pain, today was surely the day to choose.  Suddenly those French railways don’t look so smooth and efficient, and the Brits are the ones sniggering and feeling superior.

By the way, the picture here, makes the St Pancras extension look rather better than my first impressions.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of transport related blogging at my place.  See also: this about another viaduct, and this about the A380.

Brian Micklethwait

At my personal blog, I have a clutch of British railway viaduct photos, many with trains that you can just about spot!

The usual commentary about such viaducts is all about how much better they were at doing viaducts then, not like it is now, blah blah.  But engineers now do good stuff too, I think.  Better, arguably.  Just not for railways.

I mean, you might just as well say that they were very bad at making vehicles go up steeper gradients in those days.  The only reason they had to build all these viaducts is because railways had to be so very flat.  And that’s now changed, hasn’t it?

Brian Micklethwait

Michael Jennings often emails me with links to things he doesn’t have time to blog about himself, or maybe isn’t sure anyone else cares about other than me.  I don’t always respond so these suggestions, but they are always welcome.  Others who do the same thing, but somewhat less often, are likewise much welcomed.

Anyway, rather longer ago than is strictly dignified for me now to blog about but never mind, knowing that I do love bridges, Michael sent me this link, to an article about a possible tunnel, linking Spain (i.e. Western Europe) to Africa, and had this to say about the idea:

There is no economic case for it so it would be a huge white elephant, so I can’t actually imagine it being built soon. (The observations about its usefulness for freight are grasping at straws of justification - ships are fine for freight).

However, the more interesting thought comes from this statement:

“The Strait of Gibraltar, formed millions of years ago when land masses split to form what are now Europe and Africa, is only 14 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. But the water is so deep there a rail tunnel would be like a roller coaster slope, so steep as to be out of the question.

“So engineers have chosen a longer but shallower path spanning about 40 kilometres. Even there, however, the water is about 300 metres deep, five to six times deeper than the water in the English Channel where the channel runs.

“Then there is the messy terrain at the bottom of the Strait. ‘It is chaotic. The word is chaotic,’ said Sebastian Sanchez, an engineer overseeing the tunnel test site in Tarifa.”

There is an obvious word that comes from this (both the fact that the narrowest point is too deep for a tunnel and that the terrain on the bottom of the Mediterranean is complex) and that word is “bridge”.  Imagine huge towers each a kilometre or two from the shore and a single suspension span of more than 10km. We don’t quite have the materials for this yet, but in twenty years we probably shall. Then this is potentially the most mindboggling structure on Earth.

And there’s also this:

The other reason why the Spanish at the moment aren’t talking about bridges is because the obvious place to land the bridge on the European side is actually British territory.

Indeed.  The thing about these emails from Michael is that he has no time to do a proper blog posting, so he just emails me instead, but ends up doing a proper blog posting.

Brian Micklethwait

Jackie D goes for Virgin Atlantic:

I just booked a flight on Virgin Atlantic, and every step of the booking process was full of overtures to book an upgrade to Premium Economy, because now you get your own dedicated cabin, better seat, etc. Except you don’t, not necessarily: They’re only just rolling out the new, improved Premium Economy service, and it is only available on a few flights. “Read the fine print,” you grumble. Actually, there is no fine print involved. Virgin Atlantic is flat-out lying to people . . .

It would all be a total scam were it not for the fact that Virgin’s basic non-Preimium service is pretty good.  Maybe they are losing money on that, which is why they want people to pay quite a lot more for very little more.

All of which makes no sense whatever to me.  RyanAir to France is my limit these days.  Sit in a flying armpit for three hours, pay RyanAir about ten quid, and various governments another thirty, for RyanAir Cattletruck Class.  That’s air travel for me.  Actually, I quite like RyanAir, provided I can sit by a window and take stupid photos of the engines, and slightly more sensible ones of Channel Islands, the Millau Viaduct etc.

Anyway, on this Virgin thing, Adriana is apparently the source on this, and she must blog about it Very Soon, according to Jackie.

Brian Micklethwait

This looks likes a fairly boring story in more ways than one:

Two of the world’s largest tunnel slurry borers are starting to drive 9-kilometer-long tunnels under China’s Yangtze River, in Shanghai. They are a key element of the $1.6-billion, 25.5-km Shanghai-Chongming Expressway. The link between Shanghai, Changxing Island and Chongming Island is to be completed in time for the 2010 Shanghai Universal Exposition.

At the Yangtze’s estuary in Shanghai, one record-breaking, 15.43-meter-dia tunnel-boring machine set off from a shaft at Pudong late last year. The second, close on its heels, is also expected to drive 400 m a month through clay, silt and sand.

Yeah, yeah, record-breaking, I thought.  But then I took a closer look at the picture there and saw the little tiny blokes at the bottom.  This really is a big borer.

Brian Micklethwait

Here at Transport Blog we have a tradition of featuring food that looks like transport.  We have, that is to say, had postings about food that looks like transport.  One anyway.

So, news of a cake mold that cranks out cakes in the shapes of a railway train:

This is one little locomotive no one will want to miss! Our ingeniously designed cake pan bakes a complete nine-car train that’s ready to decorate and eat. From engine to caboose, there’s no limit to the colors and decorative details imaginative young bakers can add to each train car. Made of durable cast aluminum by NordicWare, the pan bakes each little cake to perfection every time. The premium nonstick interior turns out cakes with beautiful detail and is easy to clean. Hand-wash. 6-cup cap.; 15 1/2” x 9 3/4” x 1 3/4” high. A Williams-Sonoma exclusive.

Cake tin

I stumbled upon this by a route so random that it does not signify, but once I found it, how could I not pass it on to TB readers?

On a more serious note, I now have a special category at my person blog for Bridges,and have dug up and thus categorised as many earlier bridge postings that I could find.

I’ve had a Transport category for some while now.  In my opinion, this quite recent transport related posting, about a dirty-looking vapour trail, is actually quite profound.

Brian Micklethwait

Did you know that the five Thames bridges of the City of London are maintained without the taxpayer being bothered?  I didn’t.

The Trust built and continues to maintain all of the City of London’s bridges - including Tower bridge - at no expense to the taxpayer.

That’s the what used to be the Bridge House Trust and which will now be the City Bridge Trust.

It’s one of the biggest and oldest but least well-known grant-giving charities in the country, with £700m in its coffers. It traces its roots back to 1097.

It began collecting tolls to cross London bridge and then rent from the houses and shops built on it.

The bridge became so important to Londoners that they would leave legacies to “God and the bridge”.

Tolls and rents reinvested in property results in an annual income that vastly exceeds the £4m to £5m it costs for the upkeep of London, Tower, Millennium, Southwark and Blackfriars bridges.

Bridgemasters maximised income including “receiving tolls on carts passing over the bridge, tolls from ships passing under the bridge and fines for unlawful fishing from the bridge”.

Londonist‘s Mike found this somewhere in the Guardian, if I understand him right.  And he links to an interview with the author of a book on London’s bridges, a book which gets that rather rare thing for a quite obscure book, a slamming on Amazon.  Usually, everything gets either four stars or five.

The book promises much and delivers very little. Technical information is severely limited and hardly offers an understanding of any of the bridges the author seeks to describe. The author demonstrates a poor understanding of the way in which bridges are built and who builds them, describing Ove Arup’s as the builder of the Millenium Bridge and apparently oblivious of the fact that they undertook the engineering design. As to others involved in major works they get no mention at all, including Rendel Palmer and Tritton who were the consulting engineers for Chelsea, Waterloo and the Thames Barrier. Engineers are described as architects. The author appears unaware of the events on the river and makes no mention of the occasions on which bridges have been struck by ships. There is no mention of the collier hitting Battersea and virtually demolishing the main span in 1955. If you are looking for a history of the bridges and competent photographs then this is not the book for you. If you are looking for amusing anecdotes then this book has some merits.

The only other Amazon reviewer liked it:

This really is a gem of a book for anyone who loves London. Riverside walks are also all the more enjoyable for it! Far from being a dry history, it’s packed with interesting tales and is immensely readable. Recommended.

So there.  And the books publishers like it too.

David Farrer

At a Christmas drink on Thursday an Edinburgh Labour councillor told me that the City Council had at last given final approval for our new tram system. The vote was 56 to 1, the odd man out being Edinburgh’s sole SNP councillor.

The Nationalists also oppose the planned rail extension into Edinburgh airport, which would be in addition to the new tramline. I imagine that this has something to do with the low level of SNP support in the city. What the SNP does support is the construction of a new crossing over the Firth of Forth. The original Victorian rail bridge is still working fine but the 1960’s road bridge is in big trouble and now almost all politicians think that we need another crossing. But does it need to be a bridge?

Not necessarily. Increasingly, the case is being made for a tunnel. My fellow blogger Neil Craig has written a fascinating piece on other possible tunnels in Scotland.