The Kilsby Tunnel (Working Shaft)
Lithographic drawing by J. C. Bourne
Engineer: Robert Stephenson
1835-38
Near Kilsby, Northamptonshire
Image source: "The London and Birmingham Railway," p. 193
The tunnel near Kilsby on the London & Birmingham Railway was "by far the longest tunnel to be built for steam engines" at that time (Labrum 219; commentary continues below).
Image downloads by Jacqueline Banerjee and George Landow, and text by JB.
Sited between Rugby and Northampton, the 2426-yard long tunnel was an enormous and enormously fraught undertaking. Worried that passengers might be suffocated when spending so long underground, Stephenson designed it to be 28' high, with huge ventilation shafts of 60' in diameter. However, almost from the start there were problems. There were quicksands below the surface, and in 1836 huge amounts of water from them gushed into the workings. Both the Stephensons, father and son, hurried to inspect the site, and initiated the "long and arduous" pumping out process: it took many months to manage it, holding up the completion of the line considerably (Labrum 221).
Entry to the tunnel, from a drawing by Christopher Davy. Source: Davy 209. According to a footnote here, this and the other illustrations for Davy's article were reduced from those originally used in "Simm's Public Works of Great Britain" (editor's note, Davy 210).
Once completed, the line from Euston to Birmingham, with its eight tunnels, was considered a spectacular achievement. 30 million bricks were used for the Kilsby Tunnel alone, and it weighed 118,620 tons ("The London and Birmingham Railway," 196). The tunnel was important not only because of its length and the scale of the difficulties surmounted, but also because, as "C. Davy, Esq., Architect" pointed out in the Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette, the episode so strikingly illustrated the need for "geological knowledge, as a science worthy the attentive study of the practical engineer" (210).
Davy, C. "The Kilsby Tunnel — Birmingham Railway." Mechanics' Magazine, Museum, Register, Journal, and Gazette. Vol. 28 (7 October 1837-31 March 1838): 210-11. Google Books. Free Ebook. Web. 28 August 2014.
Labrum, E. A., ed. Civil Engineering Heritage: Eastern and Central England. London: Thomas Telford Ltd (for the Institution of Civil Engineers), 1994.
"The London & Birmingham Railway." The Literary World: A Journal of Popular Information and Entertainment, conducted by J. Timbs. No. 13 (22 June 1839): 193-96. Google Books. Free Ebook. Web. 28 August 2014.
Last modified 28 August 2014
