The Waterloo & Whitehall Railway: London's Gigantic Blowpipe?

[Music] [Music] [Music] watero is Britain's largest railway station and one of its busiest too a thriving commuter Hub through which tens of millions of passengers pass every year of St with that in mind then it may come of some surprised to hear that when waterl or waterl Bridge station as it was originally known first opened in the SU of 1848 it wasn't intended to serve as the grand terminal we see today instead the company who built it the London Southwestern Railway merely viewed it as a temporary end of the line they'd already extended their line from the original Terminus at N9 Elms to aaloo and for much of the 19th century they intended to carry it further still ultimately ending with a station right in the heart of London's Financial District due to numerous obstacles though this ambition as we can see today was never achieved although the water and City Line the shortest line on the entire tube Network offers a decent compromise by providing a handy shuttle service between watero and Bank Junction when it first opened in 1898 as the watero and City Railway this dinky route which runs for approximately 1 and 1/2 miles represented the first time a deep level tube line had been directly connected to a Mainline l terminal however it wasn't the first time such an interchange had been attempted over 30 years before in the mid 1860s a vaguely similar line had been proposed that being the watero and whiteall Railway although the main aim of the London and Southwestern Railway was to forge a direct connection with the financial square mile the company's directors also figured it would be expedient to L watero to whiteall as well whiteall being both the heart of government and a gateway to the daing lights of the West End there was just one problem with this idea though although the two areas are geographically close there's a small inconvenience of the river temps being in the way London's first Subterranean line the pioneering Metropolitan Railway had begun operating in January 1863 although that used shallow cut and cover tunnels and relied upon steam locomotives for hauling the trains factors which are not ideal when it comes to forging deeper tunnels below water however just days after the Metropolitan Railway first opened the London pneumatic dispatch company began operating an Innovative new system between Houston Station and the Northwest District post office which was a short distance away on everal Street this involved propelling little Goods vehicles through a Subterranean pneumatic tube in order to quickly convey mail and although the tube was designed for carrying letters and Parcels a few Brave individuals thought it would be fun to clamber into the claustrophobic cars for a ride then the following year a much larger pneumatic pipe measuring 600 yards or 550 m in length was built at Crystal Palace Park in order to demonstrate a similar system one that was capable of properly carrying passengers at a potentially greater depth the London Illustrated news described the single Carriage used to showcase the experiment which the paying public were welcome to try as long and comfortable like an elongated Omnibus capable of accommodating some 30 or 40 passengers being pneumatic the short demonstration tunnel relied on air pressure to propel the car this force was provided by a stationary steam engine located outside the tunnel which powered a large fan which in turn was regulated by a set of iron gates it took around 50 seconds to Traverse the Crystal Palace track although it was claimed faster speeds were possible the London and Southwestern Railway clearly took note of this new technology for in late 1864 it was announced that plans were in motion to construct their own pneumatic underground line this proposal was described by the times in January 1865 as being quote an underground Railway worked without locomotives the proposed line will run under the temps and open a communication between whiteall and the waterd station near Vine Street which is a road that's now long lost as a means of communic a between one part of London and another the times continued this line will be quite an [Music] experiment in June 1865 a prospectus for the watero and whall Railway was published in which it was stated the short deep level Railway will cross the bed of the river in a watertight iron tube the Hefty tube in question was to be constructed in four sections one of which as depicted in this illustration was indeed built the company contracted to provide it being samuda brothers who specialized in ship building and were based on the AIS of dogs once complete the plan was to float these huge tunnel sections along the TS on barges towards whle where they would be sunk into a trench dug on the riverbed as it it would transpire though the project never progressed to this stage and the fate of the pipe that was built remained a mystery although it was most likely melted down rather optimistically the prospectus also claimed that the water to and wh till Railway would be completed within just one year and that once up and running commodious and well-lighted carriages would shuttle passengers between watero and whle at 3 to 4 minute intervals one reporter however fighting for the Dundee Courier wasn't sold on this new method of transport and wondered whether the public quote might hesitate to patronize a gigantic blowpipe the total cost of the line was projected to be £135,000 roughly 14 million in today's money and shortly after receiving parliamentary Ascent construction commenced on the 25th of October 1865 this involved the establishment of a work site on the Waterloo side close to the former College Warf a spot that is now covered by Jubilee Gardens next to the London Eye and from here worker began on dredging the temps in preparation for digging the trench in which the tunnel would be bloned on the opposite side of the river meanwhile hings were put up on the patch of land earmarked for the whiteall Terminus an area surrounded by North ran Avenue whall place and great Scotland Yard which is now home to the Cor your hotel as work progressed a line of wooden piles were driven into the river the tops of which poked above the water and marks the route of the intended pneumatic Railway the morning Advertiser provided some interesting details running from the station in scottsland yard the article said the line will be carried in brick work beneath the tunnel of the Metropolitan District raway and then under the lowlevel sewer to the northern abutment from this iron tubes of 16 ft diameter are to be laid in the clay beneath the river the trough in the bed of the river is now being dredged for the tubes from the south of butman the line will be completed to the waterd station in brickwork passing on its way beneath the beler and York Road to a Terminus near the southwestern station at the cab entrance to the waterd station on the York Road will be the pumping station where the engines are to be erected for working the traffic the same article even stated there were already hopes the line will be extended further specifically to Newington Bs near elephant and [Music] Castle despite the initial flurry of optimism work on the waterd and whall Railway quickly floundered thanks to the collapse of the Overland gerian Co Bank known at the time as the bankers bank which had been a major investor further headaches occurred when the project came into conflict with the Metropolitan Board of Works who under the Tage of Joseph Basel jet were busy carrying out the important work of laying a major sewer along the northern shore of the temps the path of which was set to clash with the route of the pneumatic Railway as such and understandably the board of Works insisted that any routing work required for their sewer would have to come out of the pockets of the waterd and whle Railway thus striking the company with another serious Financial Blow by December 1866 it was announced in a board meeting that due to a lack of capital work on the line had now ground to a complete Halt and perhaps rather unfairly some strong remarks were barked at the engineers who had been called to account for the stall so desperate was the situation it was suggested that the tunnel could instead be converted into a toll paying pedestrian route so that the shareholders Investments wouldn't be entirely wiped out this never happened of course although the two pedestrian tunnels further east along the Temps at grenwich and wage give a fairly good idea as to how such a foot tunnel would have looked if you're interested in finding out more I recently made an entire video about the history of these two Crossings which I'll link below [Music] the wooden piles which have been driven into the temps remained in place for several years becoming both an eyesa and a stark reminder of the waterl and whiteall railway's failure which was mocked by one journalist in the late 1860s who quipped if the whiteall and waterd Company mean business the best thing they can do do is to pull their sticks out of the riverbed and sell them for firewood although work on the project had ceased the company had been granted a new deadline of 1870 to complete the work meaning the wooden piles had to remain in place until then once that date passed they were indeed ripped out that same year an auction was held outside waterd station in which all manner of useless and abandoned equipment was sold off including pile driving engines a central fu Pump Warehouse cranes scrap iron Timber and Navi barrows whilst over at Great Scotland Yard the Metropolitan Police purchased the land that had been intended for the unbuilt station and directed stables for their horses there instead it would take another 40 years or so for a deep level line between watero and whiteall to be fully realized the bako line bridged the Gap when it began running between watero and embankment station not too far from great Scotland Yard in 1906 with what's now the northern line following in 1926 although the waterl and wh Railway quickly faded from memory a subtle reminder of the failed Project Read its head in the early 1960s when remains of the old Works were uncovered during construction of the shell Center thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this look at the watero and Dwight to railway and as ever would love to hear own thoughts if the project had been a success do you think other netic lines would have followed if so which routs do you think they would have chosen and how different would the tube map look today as a result please be sure to let me know your ideas in the comments thank you so much to all of you who support my Channel with your kind words likes and shares I couldn't do this without you if you haven't yet subscribed to robs London then I'd appreciate very much if you could please consider doing so as this along with clicking the Bell icon to receive 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Channel: Robslondon

Views: 39,152

Keywords: London, London History, The Waterloo and Whitehall Railway, London Transport History, Waterloo Station, Whitehall, Great Scotland Yard, Joseph Bazalgette, Victorian Engineering, Pneumatic Railway, Crystal Palace, Crystal Palace Pneumatic Railway, Euston Station, Unbuilt London, River Thames, Thames, Overland and Gurney bank

Id: x00oovKRYno

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024