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APRIL, 2004
Two of Britain’s shining
stars of the 19th century are back in the news about 200 years after one was
born and 200 years after the other changed the world.
After Richard
Trevithick’s practical railway locomotive first ran 200 years ago in
Pen-y-darren, South Wales, horsepower would never be the same. After 200 years, this
"Father of the Railways" is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
Also back in the news is the little giant of
British engineering, I.K. Brunel, himself a major contributor to the
development of modern transportation via his designs for railways, bridges, stations,
tunnels, and steamships. A public works project near Paddington Station in western central
London has uncovered a long-forgotten Brunel bridge, and the move toward preservation has
begun.
 ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL (1806-1859)
CUTTING HIS TEETH ON THE WORLD'S FIRST UNDERWATER TUNNEL
Like Richard Trevithick, Isambard Kingdom
(I.K.) Brunel (born April 9, 1806) ranks with George & Robert Stephenson among the men
who thrust Britain into the steam age. And like the father-and-son Stephensons, Brunel was
a member of an engineering dynasty.
I.K.’s father Marc Isambard Brunel
(1769-1849) was born in France and fled to America during the French Revolution where he
earned a reputation as an architect and engineer in New York before moving to England in
1799. In 1818, he invented a tunnel-boring shield, which he used to dig the first Thames
Tunnel near Greenwich between 1825 and 1843.
ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL
Son Isambard joined his father in 1823 and
oversaw the completion of the first Thames Tunnel—the first underwater tunnel in the
world. Although designed for horses and wagons, when it opened in 1843 it was for
pedestrians only until it became a railway tunnel in 1869. It remains in service today,
carrying the London Underground’s East London Line underneath the Thames between
Wapping and Rotherhithe, a little more than a mile east of Home at
First’s London apartments at St. Katharine’s Dock. The Brunels built the
tunnel so well that major refurbishments to the tunnel were first made only during the
1990s, 150 years after its completion.
ENGINEERING A TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK
Brunel's next major project was the Clifton Suspension Bridge across a deep river gorge at
Bristol, England, which—owing to competition with another great British engineer,
Thomas Telford, as well as financing difficulties—took more than 30 years to build.
CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE
Looking to build a high-speed, state-of-the-art
railway from London to the Severn River docks at Bristol, I.K. surveyed and built
(1833-1841) the Great Western Railway (GWR). The line was part of a planned fast transport
link between London and New York, and Brunel also built the ships for the sea crossing
from Bristol. History’s first transatlantic steamship service was on Brunel’s Great
Western (1838). It was succeeded by a faster, bigger ship, The Great Britain
(1845, now preserved at Bristol), the first propeller-driven iron steamship. Brunel’s
final shipbuilding effort resulted in The Great Eastern, capable of carrying
4,000 passengers or up to 10,000 troops—the largest ship on earth for 40 years. The
Great Eastern never succeeded as a passenger liner envisioned for the emigrant trade
to Australia. Instead, it was converted to lay the first transatlantic communications
cables. Both the Clifton Suspension Bridge and The Great Britain may be visited as an easy
day trip to Bristol from Home at First's Cotswolds cottages in
and near Tetbury.
THE GWR — A LASTING MONUMENT TO BRUNEL
Despite his great contributions to tunnel, dock, and steamship technology, Brunel’s
most visible contribution remains the Great Western Railway. His French architectural
training resulted in railway design that was structurally strong with an appearance as
grand as its scale. In this way Brunel reshaped both the art and technology of
architecture. Notable in much of Brunel’s work is his use of structural and
ornamental iron, the principal construction metal of the first half of the 19th century.
His huge iron ships and monumental iron bridges represented great leaps forward in modern
engineering. His last bridge was his greatest: the Royal Albert Saltash bridge flying 80
feet over the Tamar River on the dramatic western railway approach to Plymouth, Devonshire
(not far from Home at First’s Devon lodgings). The Saltash
Bridge—still in use, and still audaciously beautiful—is a fitting final
testimony to the little giant of British engineering, for it opened in the year Brunel
died, 1859.
S.S. GREAT BRITAIN AT BRISTOL
A LOST TREASURE REDISCOVERED IN TIME FOR THE LITTLE GIANT'S 200TH
BIRTHDAY
 But it is another Brunel bridge
that’s in the news this month, 198 years after his birth. While re-working a complex
road grid around London’s Paddington Station, workers discovered an original Brunel
double-arch iron bridge completely encased inside a modern brick bridge crossing the Grand
Union Canal. Fortunately, an engineering historian realized the importance of the old
structure, which becomes the eighth surviving Brunel bridge in Britain. The rediscovery of
the bridge came just prior to demolition of the Bishop’s Road brick bridge as part of
a major London road improvement project. London’s city council acted quickly to stop
the demolition from going forward, stipulating the careful removal and salvage of
Brunel’s hidden iron bridge.
Workmen are now carefully dismantling the
bridge, which is hoped to be relocated to a site close to where it has been for well over
160 years. The current site is just beyond the north corner of Paddington Station, not far
from the Hammersmith & City Line Paddington Underground station. It is now hoped that
the bridge will be restored to its original form and become a footbridge and monument to
the great engineer of the GWR. If work can be done by April, 2006, the re-opening of
Brunel’s first iron bridge could be the perfect commemoration of the 200th
anniversary of the birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
FOR NEWS ABOUT TREVITHICK, GO TO PAGE 1
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