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Themes Gallery: Brunel |
Ships and Railways
- By stagecoach the Exeter to London journey took 16.5 hours, by rail
in May 1846 it took 4.5 hours and was the fastest rail journey in the
world.
- Brunel’s railways were mostly laid to a gauge of 7ft 01/4inches between
the rails. Because the narrow gauge track of 4ft 8½ inches was more
widely used it was eventually chosen by Parliament as the standard.
The last broad gauge tracks were those west of Exeter which were all
changed to standard gauge in one weekend in 1892.
- In Devon and Cornwall tall viaducts, mostly with stone piers supporting
wooden fans, carried the railway across valleys and river estuaries.
The last timber work was replaced in 1935 but many original piers still
carry today’s trains. The highest is near Trago Mills at Liskeard and
is 151 feet high.
- Brunel’s greatest feat of railway engineering was the Royal Albert
Bridge which takes the railway over the River Tamar into Cornwall.
This took nearly five years to build. The central pier goes down through
70 feet of water and nearly 20 feet of mud to get to its solid rock
foundation. The two main spans are 455 feet long and the rails 110
feet above high water. When the first span was floated into position
30,000 to 40,000 people came to watch. The whole operation was carried
out in complete silence - and without scaffolding or cranes.
- Queen Victoria’s first train journey was on Brunel’s Great Western
Railway.Brunel’s first ship, the Great Western was the first steamship
to go from England to New York and back. It left from Bristol and took
fifteen days outwards and fourteen days returning.
- The Great Western made sixty-seven crossings of the Atlantic between
Bristol and New York. She was the first ship to carry the Atlantic Blue
Riband for the fastest crossing.
- The Great Britain was the first iron ship, the first to have a balanced
rudder and watertight bulkheads and the first propeller driven ship
to cross any ocean.
- The engine crankshaft of The Great Britain was too big for any forge
to make it. To overcome this, the steam hammer was invented; this
became one of the major tools of the industrial revolution.
- The propeller on the Navy’s newest ship HMS Daring launched in 2006,
161 years after Brunel's Great Britain, is only five percent more efficient.
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