I worked on the Heathrow Express project at Paddington, and at the time they were digging up the concourse. Under it, we came across rail lines used as reinforcing on the supporting columns, but not any rails, Brunel rails, it is an interesting station as there is a lot of history buried in it. If I remember correctly there are 10 electrical substations buried under the station, as I was in charge of cross-linking them, until Carillon fired me due to a safety issue I stopped work on.
On all my visits to Paddington beginning in the early 1950s, I viewed the absence of cross-sleepered tracks in the station as a survival of the old baulk road (unlike other terminals with oily, littered ballast). Whether the rails rest upon unseen longitudinal timbers or 'pot's', I have never discover'd.
What a great way to end the day with this beauty, for which I'm once more grateful to the YT Algorillas. If they carry on like this, they be up to one correct video suggestion per quarter. Cd do better. 1:11 Anyway, tetchy I can be ~ I see no ships this far upriver ~ but that's as naught to not mentioning the supremacy of the Sounding Arch, the majesty of the Maidenhead Bridge, the famously flattest brick arch; then and now too.
Just how many people have achieved so much in such a short life. Of course he got some things wrong but so what? Nowadays we don't seem to be able to build anything without huge delays and completely cocked up budgets. Just look at the mess that is HS2
Yeah shame about the tunnels, the viaducts, the bridges, docks, ships. The olympian spirit of Faster stronger higher so that the result was the broad gauge and the flattest route possible of this line here, the use of mechanical power on (sailing) ships, propellor driven. The vacuum propulsion experimental railway, the beauty of the three in one supports of the Tamar bridge, the Clifton Suspension Bridge... I now see why you didn't mention any of these because my finger's about to drop off.
I d like to know how they managed to bend Broad gauge rail round curves?! Did they have furnaces on sight or calculate the bend in the rail manufacture ?🧐
The iron rail is surprisingly flexible. Anyway, it's harder with the narrow, sorry, standard gauge tracks of today. But picture a load of navvies with long handled sugar tongs (!) dangling between their legs in a bit of a curving queue, jiggling the rail down into its chairs on the wooden sleepers already in position.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch I see your point but they didn't use chairs, they were fixed by screws or spikes straight onto the longitudinal beams! It's amazing the change of gauge in the 1890s over one weekend!😲🧐
@@johntyjp It seems that you and I are talking about different times. Thank you for reminding me of the earliest m.o. and the fixing fashion of the day. I was thinking of the days when they'd settled on their version of our current track layout and fixings right up until that unbelievable weekend you mentioned.
The curves were appropriately of much (much) larger radius to suit. Original Broad gauge rails were huge flat bottomed hollow "bridge rail". This was one of the two reasons why the broad-gauge Great Western railway was far more expensive in earthworks - the other being the more gentle gradients which gave it the knick-name of Brunel's billiard table. Unfortunately it is less capital intensive and to some extent cheaper in maintenance, to have a more windy and hilly railway with more powerful locos - but difficult to see when even 45 mph on the flat is a pipe dream.
