God, this is a wonderful piece of work and good documentation in the bargain. I'm 70, having just retired from a career of engineering, and the people who made this happen make me very proud to share my "title" with them. I've ridden many miles on the tube and often wondered how it was achieved. Now I know, at least in part. Very well done!
If you enjoyed this, sir, then I strongly suggest you watch this video below. It follows the same story, just a bit more lively and with some interesting 60s banter from the presenter. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GwRRSJ_wtIg.html
@Ian Concannon I get a seed, then plant it and bare fruit at little to no cost. But you must understand that some people are poor, all they have is money
When the world of humansends soon, it will be the result of very ambitious people, especially those who made a living in the applied sciences. I applaud this: it means human life will soon be quite impossible and no more generations will have to suffer the drudgery and horrors of everyday living. Spending a few dozen years on a cursed rock floating somewhere in space. Sleep is good, death is better, but best would be to never have been born at all. So keep on 'engineering' please. Burn it all, use it all. Full entropy is what we deserve.
When I was 18/19 I worked shovelling London Clay with these tunnel miners and the video brought it all back to me. I was a student engineer then doing tough 12 hour shifts in Bond St. on the Jubilee Line. I never thought about the safety aspect then, never considered it for 1 second, never saw anybody getting hurt, no yellow jackets, but we had hard hats. I also had to deliver the tunnel rings and take the spoil away. The video really brought home to me how really dangerous the work was, and bloody hard going 6 days a week, for £48 in the hand [Balfour Beatty]. You daren't get in a miner's way. Tough hard labour. The miner's were on £200 a week and came from Donegal and Galway in Ireland, each shift trying to outdo the other. I was just the smart-ass student from Dublin and a great source of merriment for the miners who were really decent blokes. Later on I became the planner, the designer, the project engineer, clean suit and computer, but there is a lot to be said for plain honest to god hard work.
Beautifully paced and narrated. Nowadays, you'd have Paul Morley and another handful of celebrities, intersected at 10 second intervals: due to low attention span, telling you what the Victoria Line means to them. Like anyone cares!
I too have been an engineer all my working life. I admire the accuracy of things like bolt holes with only the primitive tools they had, tape and theodolite! These days its all Lasers and computers! England used to lead the world in many fields, sadly now where are we? Most of our heavy industry is gone, no aircraft building, few car plants, mines all gone. Such a shame, the workers all took pride in what they made or built. What a top job they made of the Victoria line! Many years later i was an engineer on the District line! 👍🏻🇬🇧
We still have Rolls Royce aircraft engines produced in Derby and airbus wing sections made in Wales. We certainly aren't an industrial country anymore, but what we have is still pretty good
Even down to the humble lamp post. Look at the designs that the likes of Stanton & Stavely and Concrete Utilities made over the years and look at the boring shite we have now 😡
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?”― Tennessee Williams
You could not use tongue in cheek humour like that today, someone would deem it as the promotion of drinking and some would be offended. I think society is loosing their sense of humour.
Did anyone else notice between 41:30 and 44:30 how diverse the employees were at the concrete-lining production facility? Persons of colour, Sikhs, female operators, etc. For the 1960's, I didn't think you would see a labour force like that at such a work place. A revelation! Thanks for posting this documentary.
Now we manufacture so very little. Look at how much we did in terms of manufacturing these trains to say nothing of the construction of the Victoria line. Magnificent!
This shows what we were made of in the days when work was a thing to be proud of, not to shirk or moan about H&S and rights etc. The guys signed up to graft and complete a project, the surveyors and operatives wore ties to work and their skill resulted in a tunnel only 1" off after a mile of digging without laser sighting. The work ethic here has fallen by the wayside and the consequence is that the skills are lost and the produce (steel etc.) all comes from abroad at our cost because we can't (or won't) rise to the challenge of being competitive in a world market. I'm sure that's Michael Palin at 16:41... Excellent video - great to see the 1960s cars and lorries in London, policemen's uniforms and street furniture of the time. Good music too - subtle and non-intrusive (unlike so much overlaid on today's videos) composed by Edward Williams.👍
Annother good line: Today we are using diffrent suits than back then. The talker showed half naked males working in the Vic.line tunnels digging it and then naked males drawn digging mines in the old times and then back to the half naked males again xD
@@billyunterbuchner9197 No you are seeing hard work, excellent engineering, unique innovation, great craftsmanship, superior planning all used to create a system that is still running today as one of the main arteries of London.
Didn't show any of the cock-ups though. Would've liked to see how they dug the escalator tunnels. I remember in the 1960s there was a temporary umbrella type structure at the main entrance to Charing Cross overground Station. It was there for several years. I think it was for the excavation of a ticket hall. Not sure what the main project was.
I like the observation that they removed the inspector before filling the shaft. I guess today they would send down a camera: brave people those inspectors.
I love the old style of documentary making. Today's documentaries and hyperactive and are overladen with graphics, simulations, music, talking heads and various superfluous material. This old style documentary takes a calm studious approach. How I wish modern documentaries would return to the less is more approach
Imagine if a documentary like this was made today. It would be full of bs drama and sensationalism. Minds have gotten simpler in the last couple of decades, and are not entertained by straight forward content, It must contain flashing lights, bells and whistles.
Steel workers no matter what country there are in tend to " throw the steel around like child's toys". To all the steel workers I salute you guys as that is a job I tried but quickly discovered I had a fear of heights and while I was able to slowly do the work I was assigned I was too slow to keep the job. The foreman let me down easy and I told him it's just as well he was letting me go as I was going to let him know this job wasn't for me. He smiled and offered me a job on the ground but I told him I had a job offer with the railroad as a locomotive fireman. I was invited to a bar the steel workers used as their own near the job and I was bought many rounds for my new job and still to this day don't know how I got home but there were no new dents on my car so I must have managed. I will admit it's fascinating seeing how the job goes together. Cheers gents and please be safe out there.
Got to wonder how many people got crushed limbs doing this kind of tunnel construction. They only seem to get a fraction of a second to get their hands out of the way as the tunnel sections are mechanically put in place. Hope they were paid well for working in such dangerous conditions.
I drove both the Kinnear & Moodie and the McAlpine TBMs the later was the better machine. I also worked on station ground shields, on the Chas Brand section Sven Sisters to Hoe St station. one of the station ground shield was water hydraulic, so if you had ram leak you would just stick the hose pipe in the water tank and keep going.
My uncle dug tunnels in those days. He used to demonstrate how they achieved directional control by hanging bits of string in the living room fireplace.
9:45 yes, the removal of the inspector is of critical importance as not to cause voids when his corpse rots away within the concrete, weakening the pilings yes.
Charley FARLEY, I am very grateful, for what you have done, for the country, by building up the underground, tunnel, and I am thanking you for your hard-working, and make effort, to make life easy, for people to travel from A to B, without any difficulties, once again, for all, the worker, who did put, their experience, and hard-working, well done,
Better than any documentary that wins Academy Awards. Documentaries before the 1990s were of much higher-quality, not just BTF, but BBC, Nova, Arena and Nasa documentaries about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
I recall as a child in the 1960s, our family lived at 525 Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham. I recall well the rumble and vibrations of the tunnelling, then the subsequent trains themselves. Tottenham then was a world away from what it is now. Thankfully, we left for leafy Hertfordshire in 1969.
It is all rather jolly! I've heard that an average of one worker died a week during construction, although I cannot find any evidence of this anywhere. In those days navvies (mainly the Irish) were still expendable as no real health and safety laws had yet been brought it so keeping such records was probably not a priority. No mention of the 1.5 hours sat in the decompression chamber after a shift and the possibility of being rushed to hospital if you did get the benz. All glossed over in preference to what a marvel of engineering - which it certainly is! Let's just not forget the sacrifice in terms of human life.
@@1963TOMB When I was 18/19 I worked shovelling London Clay with these tunnel miners and the video brought it all back to me. I was a student engineer then doing tough 12 hour shifts in Bond St. on the Jubilee Line. I never thought about the safety aspect then, never considered it for 1 second, never saw anybody getting hurt, no yellow jackets, but we had hard hats. I also had to deliver the tunnel rings and take the spoil away. The video really brought home to me how really dangerous the work was, and bloody hard going 6 days a week, for £48 in the hand [Balfour Beatty]. You daren't get in a miner's way. Tough hard labour. The miner's were on £200 a week and came from Donegal and Galway in Ireland, each shift trying to outdo the other. I was just the smart-ass student from Dublin and a great source of merriment for the miners who were really decent blokes. Later on I became the planner, the designer, the project engineer, clean suit and computer, but there is a lot to be said for plain honest to god hard work.
Amazing to watch this now at Oxford Circus, the year I was born across the pond. The "manual" train line tunnelling and digging reminds me of the recent automated systems. The automated "rotary digger" systems they had were precursors to todays automation. Amazing. The tunnel workers handling the cement and metal segments had no gloves !
Good old days.. I appreciate there has to be safety but today it's so unnecessarily strict its ridiculous..nobody ever died be cause they weren't wearing hi viz..and smoking?? Well I cant see what the problem is smoking on a site
The Victoria line has changed a lot since it's 1960s construction. Up to date automatic operational system and the original 1967 stock trains replaced by the 2009 stock. The Victoria line was extended to Brixton later in the early 1970s. Only it's 1972 stock identical looking relatives are in operation on the Bakerloo line.
13:34 "He was too weak to be moved" .. (from the same joker who came up with "having first removed the inspector" at 9:46) .. presumably "he" was Lord George Bentinck, who died in 1848 (tho apparently the square was in fact named after his wife who, herself also deceased some time back, was presumably also too weak to be moved) ..
Fantastic, the engineers then were different breed, also all the tunnel builders, everything done on time and to highest standards that's when Britain was great great video.
Absolutely fascinating and so nice to see even builders/ labourers dressed in trousers and suit jackets. I would give anything to have been living back then.
great documentary - great skill of the people in those days - just couldn't get an idea in my head of how long things were when they used feet, inches and miles. Excellent !!
Modern H&S is why the old budgeting rule of "a man a million" i.e. every large construction project would cost a life for every million dollars/pounds spent, is no longer used.
NYC subway builders today (new 2nd Av line) all wear hard hats and orange safety vests. And they don't smoke while working! It is amazing what they accomplished back then with slide rules and no lasers etc. But the basic construction work is I'm sure pretty similar. And back when the first Tube was built they had far less mechanization than in the '60's and managed to build it.
+MattyT98 since when does some hard hats, Hi viz and overalls stop getting things done? It doesn't. Shoddy practises and laziness stop things being done and means they don't last. Not H&S, which in terms of construction genuinely saves lives.
No. What this actually shows is now namby-pamby we have all become. Engineering like this proves the value intelligence aligned with some common sense gets challenging work done in double quick time. These days, the focus isn’t about doing it efficiently but about ‘doing it safe’, which takes longer and costs a fortune. A whole cottage industry has developed around H&S, which in practice are barriers to progress. Back in the era of building the Victoria Line, you didn’t have the litigious society we do today where it’s about finding anything which a claim for compensation can be slung around. It’s a pathetic practice by those who are just lazy and workshy. I have the utmost respect for these men as they are REAL workers. They knew the job, rolled up their sleeves and got it done.
Fascinating stuff indeed. Thanks for sharing these excellent films. They may be a wee bit dated but they tell the story perfectly. It seems rather unfair that, out of 214k views, only 449 have subscribed to the channel. The least I can do is become number 450.👍👌😁 Merry Christmas.🎄
Great series of video's, thanks for uploading. how they worked out what went where, where everything that was already there, stress loads and Bog knows how many other calculations is incredible. On some of the construction of tunnel liners here, those blokes were working at a right old clip, probably being paid per yard. Oh, and no hard hats or gloves. There's bound to someone in the comments who says men were men then, this is bollocks. Men still do hazardous jobs and are still tough, it took years of struggle to get employers to take injury seriously, so how we work today is different, rightly so. I remember old blokes with asbestosis, missing fingers, fucked lungs and other injuries old before their times, on the scrapheap at 30, unable to work, fuck that. I've done my share of grafting and worked on dodgy sites with bad H&S, why should I incur permanent injury just to earn a few bob? Nowt to do with being manly. Right, rant over, fair play to all the lads who worked on this scheme, good work, amazing engineering....DA.
Such a weird juxtaposition, modern engineering technology and a fairly modern looking London but no hats, gloves, or boots and dangerous working conditions. I suppose the early 1960s must have been the crossover period.
I think serious h&s ppe etc started on the channel tunnel I was on hs1( Ctrl) in 2005/6 and ppe was crazy by then. Hard hats, dark glasses, long sleeve hi vis long trousers boots gloves summer 2006 one of the hottest on record, men passing out with heat stroke at the Ebbsfleet site.
1h 21m - 54s. Job finished, well ahead of schedule!! Sadly not a term you tend to hear very often in the Uk these days. Love all the health & safety too! 😂😂
No ageism here. That guy looks like he's almost in his 80s. 2:10 3:10 holy flip we don't know how lucky we are. I want that model!! 4:10 WOW. Or is it a drawing. either way its amazing! That swinging pipe at 8:50 - none of your auld H&S concerns there lmao. This is a fabulous film. All the 'good old days, workers in trousers and shirts' comment. lmao yup a tie really adds value. Some people think the 60s were some sort of utopia. ahhh hindsight and lily-gilded spectacles.
Pleasing to see quite a lot of the metal tunnel and other castings, came from the Stanton works in Derbyshire, and rail switches from Sandiacre, Derbyshire..... just down the road from me.
AAH We put out Trust in Muck and Dust. 12 Hour shifts 7 days a week till job Finnish and 20 Pints of Guinness. We were the Murphy men . Caheriveen co Kerry. The likes of which we'll never see again. Muck away Lads.
9:43 ''The next stage is to fill the hole with reinforced concrete. Having first removed the inspector.'' Nice bit here. But why not sacrifice the inspector to engineering gods?
Can someone help me with something. Why did they not build this line to a bigger loading gauge? Why did they still build everything so small? Just typical lack of foresight/too much money? In all honesty we seem to be making many mistakes with crossrail, so I wouldn't doubt it...
Actually the first proposals for the Victoria line dates back to the 1940s when the line was supposed to be full-scale (like the Met, H&C, Circle and District) but in order to make it cost-effective, they made it a tube line. From the example, every tube line at some point had a hiccup during construction, whether it's rebuilding a station or constructing an extension.
My Neighbour across the road in Glasgow in 70/80s as a kid was Mike from Donegal who worked as a tunneller all over the UK. Good money but by god he grafted. Still found time for 11 kids😂
We stand on the shoulders of giants. A project of this nature would be impossible in this day and age when everyone wants to sit in an office on a computer, and the workforce are considered too daft to make decisions themselves. The budget of a such a project today would be blown out in a few months with just the consultancy fees, before they even dug a hole. The sad fact is that value of the working class that built the railways, undergrounds, housing, hospitals, canals, factories, has never been appreciated by the liberal population who live off the backs of the generations that built the nation.
@@laurejon Well, I wasn't talking about UK specifically here. But I think the problem is the cost of land and NIMBYism in developed countries. These factors make it very hard to build something nowadays.
This was/is so amazing. To think these chaps had just recently fought a world war. And the planning for this must have been insane. I'm so proud of us. But for this film I wouldn't have known all this was going on while I was in my Pram.
