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Box Tunnel
Box Tunnel passes through Box Hill on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) between Bath and Chippenham. The tunnel was the world's longest railway tunnel when it was completed in 1841. Built between December 1838 and June 1841 for the Great Western Railway (GWR) under the direction of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the straight tunnel descends on a 1 in 100 gradient from its eastern end. At the time the tunnel's construction was considered dangerous due to its length and the composition of the underlying strata. The west portal is Grade II* listed and the east portal is Grade II listed. Ammunition was stored near the tunnel during World War II, reusing mine workings. During the 2010s, the tunnel was modified and the track lowered to prepare it for electrification. History Background During the 1830s, Isambard Kingdom Brunel developed a plan for a railway running east–west between London and Bristol. The Great Western Main Line, would maintain either level ground or gentle gradient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Western Main Line
The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the original route of the first Great Western Railway which was merged into the Western Region of British Railways in 1948. It is now a part of the national rail system managed by Network Rail with the majority of passenger services provided by the current Great Western Railway franchise. The line has recently been electrified along most of its length. The eastern section from Paddington to was electrified in 1998. Work to electrify the remainder of the route started in 2011 with an initial aim to complete the work all the way to Bristol by 2016, but in that year the section through Bath to Bristol Temple Meads was deferred with no date set for completion because costs had tripled. History The line was built by the Great Western Railwa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bridport Sand Formation
The Bridport Sand Formation is a formation of Toarcian ( Early Jurassic) age found in the Worcester and Wessex Basins of central and southern England. It forms one of the reservoir units in the Wytch Farm oilfield in Dorset. The sandstone is very-fine grained to fine-grained and contains regular narrow bands that are calcite- cemented and more resistant to weathering, giving it a characteristic banded appearance at outcrop, such as in the cliffs between Bridport and Burton Bradstock in Dorset. It is named for Bridport and has previously been known as the Midford Sand(s), Cotteswold Sands, Yeovil Sands and Upper Lias Sand(s). It forms a locally important aquifer, particularly around Yeovil. Extent and thickness The Bridport Sand Formation is known from exposures in Dorset, Somerset and Gloucestershire and from the subsurface in numerous boreholes. It is also present offshore in the Portland–South Wight Basin, a sub-basin of the Wessex Basin. It reaches a maximum thicknes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Architecture
Classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, or sometimes even more specifically, from the works of the Roman architect Vitruvius. Different styles of classical architecture have arguably existed since the Carolingian Renaissance, and prominently since the Italian Renaissance. Although classical styles of architecture can vary greatly, they can in general all be said to draw on a common "vocabulary" of decorative and constructive elements. In much of the Western world, different classical architectural styles have dominated the history of architecture from the Renaissance until the second world war, though it continues to inform many architects to this day. The term ''classical architecture'' also applies to any mode of architecture that has evolved to a highly refined state, such as classical Chinese architecture, or classical Mayan architecture. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Box, Wiltshire
Box is a large village and civil parish within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Wiltshire, England, about west of Corsham and northeast of Bath. Box also falls in the easternmost part of the Avon Green Belt. Besides the village of Box, the parish includes the villages of Ashley and Box Hill; Hazelbury manor; and the hamlets of Alcombe, Blue Vein, Chapel Plaister, Ditteridge, Henley, Kingsdown, Middlehill, and Wadswick. To the east the parish includes much of Rudloe, formerly a hamlet but now a housing estate, and the defence establishments and related businesses on the site of RAF Rudloe Manor. Occupation here dates back at least to Roman times. The area is known for its fine stone and for centuries Box quarries were famous for their product. Today Box is perhaps better known for its Brunel-designed Box railway tunnel. Box has been twinned with Sorigny, a commune in central France, since 2016. Geography Box lies in Wiltshire, close to the bounda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station
Bristol Temple Meads is the oldest and largest railway station in Bristol, England. It is located away from London Paddington. It is an important transport hub for public transport in the city; there are bus services to many parts of the city and surrounding districts, with a ferry to the city centre. Bristol's other major station, Bristol Parkway, is a more recent station on the northern outskirts of the conurbation. Temple Meads was opened on 31 August 1840, as the western terminus of the Great Western Railway. The railway, including Temple Meads, was the first to be designed by the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Soon, the station was also used by the Bristol and Exeter Railway, the Bristol and Gloucester Railway, the Bristol Harbour Railway and the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway. To accommodate the increasing number of trains, the station was expanded in the 1870s by Francis Fox and again between 1930 and 1935 by Percy Emerson Culverhouse. Brunel's ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Broad-gauge
A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union ( CIS states, Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine), Mongolia and Finland. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Irish Gauge, is the dominant track gauge in Ireland, and the Australian states of Victoria and Adelaide. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Iberian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in Spain and Portugal. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Indian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile, and on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is the widest gauge in common use anywhere in the world. It is possible for trains on both Iberian gauge and Indian gauge to travel on each other's tracks with no modifications in the vast majority of cases. History I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bath Spa Railway Station
Bath Spa railway station is the principal station serving the city of Bath in South West England. It is on the Great Western Main Line, down the line from the zero point at between to the east and to the west. Its three-letter station code is BTH. The station is managed by Great Western Railway, who operate all trains at this station. History Bath Spa station was built in 1840 for the Great Western Railway by Brunel and is now a Grade II* listed building. It is in an asymmetrical Tudor style with curving gables on the north bank of the Avon where the line curves across from the southern bank to the station and then back again. Opened on 31 August 1840, the station was named ''Bath'' and was renamed ''Bath Spa'' in 1949 to distinguish it from station, which did not have its name altered from Bath until 1951. The station has wide spacing between the platforms because it was built with two broad gauge carriage sidings between the platform lines. The original station feat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navvy
Navvy, a clipping of navigator ( UK) or navigational engineer ( US), is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects and occasionally (in North America) to refer to mechanical shovels and earth moving machinery. The term was coined in the late 18th century in Great Britain when numerous canals were being built, which were also sometimes known as "navigations", or "eternal navigations", intended to last forever. Nationalities A study of 19th-century British railway contracts by David Brooke, coinciding with census returns, conclusively demonstrates that the great majority of navvies in Britain were English. He also states that "only the ubiquitous Irish can be regarded as a truly international force in railway construction,"Brooke (1983). Page 167. but the Irish were only about 30% of the navvies. By 1818, high wages in North America attracted many Irish workers to become a major part of the workforce on the construction of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rock Blasting
Drilling and blasting is the controlled use of explosives and other methods, such as gas pressure blasting pyrotechnics, to break rock for excavation. It is practiced most often in mining, quarrying and civil engineering such as dam, tunnel or road construction. The result of rock blasting is often known as a rock cut. Drilling and blasting currently utilizes many different varieties of explosives with different compositions and performance properties. Higher velocity explosives are used for relatively hard rock in order to shatter and break the rock, while low velocity explosives are used in soft rocks to generate more gas pressure and a greater heaving effect. For instance, an early 20th-century blasting manual compared the effects of black powder to that of a wedge, and dynamite to that of a hammer. The most commonly used explosives in mining today are ANFO based blends due to lower cost than dynamite. Before the advent of tunnel boring machines (TBMs), drilling and blas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steam Engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transformed, by a connecting rod and crank, into rotational force for work. The term "steam engine" is generally applied only to reciprocating engines as just described, not to the steam turbine. Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separated from the combustion products. The ideal thermodynamic cycle used to analyze this process is called the Rankine cycle. In general usage, the term ''steam engine'' can refer to either complete steam plants (including boilers etc.), such as railway steam locomotives and portable engines, or may refer to the piston or turbine machinery alone, as in the beam engine and stationary steam engine. Although steam-driven devices were known as early as the aeo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Rail Virtual Archive Box Tunnel
Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics * Networks, a graph with attributes studied in network theory ** Scale-free network, a network whose degree distribution follows a power law ** Small-world network, a mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors, but have neighbors in common * Flow network, a directed graph where each edge has a capacity and each edge receives a flow Biology * Biological network, any network that applies to biological systems * Ecological network, a representation of interacting species in an ecosystem * Neural network, a network or circuit of neurons Technology and communication * Artificial neural network, a computing system inspired by animal brains * Broadcast network, radio stations, television stations, or other electronic media outlets ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herne Bay, Kent
Herne Bay is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in South East England. It is north of Canterbury and east of Whitstable. It neighbours the ancient villages of Herne and Reculver and is part of the City of Canterbury local government district, although it remains a separate town with countryside between it and Canterbury. Herne Bay's seafront is home to the world's first freestanding purpose-built Clock Tower, built in 1837. From the late Victorian period until 1978, the town had the second-longest pier in the United Kingdom.Herne Bay Pier at www.theheritagetrail.co.uk (accessed 7 July 2008) The town began as a small shipping community, receiving goods and passengers from London en route to Canterbury and |
