Railway architecture

SOURCE: Builder, vol. 19, 1861 Jan. 19, p. 41 See RIBA16818 for a plan of this junction. Branching off to the left is the very short lived 'Maiden Lane Curve' running to the east side of King's Cross mainline station allowing the Great Northern Railway to run directly through to Paddington.

SOURCE: Allgemeine Bauzeitung, plate vol. 14, 1849, double pl. 294

NOTES: The Art Union of London medal was designed by Benjamin Wyon and shows on the obverse a portrait of Sir John Vanbrugh and on the reverse the central block of Blenheim Palace. The medal commemmoration the opening of Lancaster Town Hall was created by the Bromsgrove Guild.

NOTES: This shows the architect's proposed elevated pneumatic railway connecting London's main termini.

NOTES: See also RIBA94570-RIBA94572 for other sheets of the printed proposal. The first scheme for a Channel Tunnel dated from 1802. In 1833 Aime Thome de Gamond, a young French engineer, made detailed surveys of the seabed before presenting the first of many schemes for a crossing which he promoted for the next 35 years. William Low, the author of the scheme illustrated here, was a Scottish engineer who had worked under Brunel and in the earlier part of his career specialised in railway engineering before becoming a mining engineer. He presented his first scheme for the Channel Tunnel in 1865 proposing a twin bore railway tunnel connected at intervals by cross-tunnels. Ventilation was to be provided by the piston-effect of the trains travelling through the tunnel. The scheme illustrated here dated 7 February 1868, his third scheme, was probably the one presented to the Anglo-French 'Channel Tunnel Committee' chaired by Lord Richard Grosvenor and financed by the Rothschilds which had been created on 24 January 1868. Although some tunnelling was begun in 1880 the Government stopped work because of security concerns. Low's design was to form the basis of the design put forward by the Channel Tunnel Study Group in 1960 and the tunnel which was eventually built.

NOTES: The station, located to the north of Manchester city centre, was built by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) and opened in 1884. The station roof was severely damaged during the Manchester Blitz, Christmas 1940. The station closed in 1969 and the site used as a car park thereafter.