[HN Gopher] November 1861: Chalmers' under Channel railway
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November 1861: Chalmers' under Channel railway
Author : timthorn
Score : 17 points
Date : 2024-11-18 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theengineer.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theengineer.co.uk)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Not mentioned is what to do with the smoke from the locomotive. I
| expect all the passengers would asphyxiate before they emerged
| from the other end.
| noneeeed wrote:
| They have another article about a more conventional tunnel idea
| that addresses that issue. They were well aware of the issue.
| The only way to make this work at that time would have been
| something like Brunel's atmospheric railway. That was plagued
| by issues when in the open, goodness knows what it would have
| been like to run underground for such a long distance.
|
| https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/this-week-in-...
| Animats wrote:
| The big problem with atmospheric railways was sealing the
| slot in the tube where the piston inside the tube connects to
| the load. Early atmospheric railways used oiled leather,
| beeswax, and tallow. Those were not really good enough
| materials for the job.
|
| There are solutions for this today. They're widely used in
| rodless pneumatic cylinders.[1] The seal is flexible metal
| strip to metal, forced closed by the interior pressure of the
| cylinder. In the 1980s, there was a brief revival of the
| technology by Aeromovel, which built a few theme park and
| airport systems. None seem to be still running.
|
| [1] https://tameson.com/pages/rodless-cylinder
| mechanicum wrote:
| In the original (1861) article (big red link halfway down that
| page), Figure 2 (the tower reaching above the surface) is
| described primarily as a ventilator to draw away "smoke and
| foul air". He had thought about it.
|
| Atmospheric/pneumatic railways were still a popular idea in the
| mid 19th century. The Dalkey and Paris - St Germain atmospheric
| railways had each had over a decade of service before closure
| in the 20 years before Chalmers' patent. They obviously had
| their own, considerable issues, but would have reduced the
| ventilation requirement.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| We simply run the trains backwards, emitting exhaust behind us!
|
| (ofc the trouble is how to handle the next train coming in 15
| minutes)
|
| OTOH there are such a thing as 'fireless locomotives' which
| just load up on steam pressure from a stationary boiler and
| then operate for some miles without need for fuel or any
| exhaust more noxious than water vapor. But this scheme didn't
| come for some decades after 1861. I wonder if a cable car would
| have been feasible.
| euroderf wrote:
| > I wonder if a cable car would have been feasible.
|
| I would think no reasonably usable cable of that total length
| would work. But what if you could break it up into segments,
| with a car releasing the cable of one segment and coasting to
| grasp the cable of the next segment, and some other system
| (possibly massively thick cables, possibly some mechanism)
| underlying it and supplying power to the smaller loops.
| Animats wrote:
| That's how SF's cable cars work, where lines cross or there
| are switches.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > Tunnels and bridges have been proposed and in 1880 work started
| on experimental tunnels in Folkstone that were dug by hand and an
| early tunnel boring machine.
|
| The extent of this work from 1880 and 1881 is shown on
| OpenStreetMap[0].
|
| [0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.10884/1.29304
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