Discussion Post: The Engineer's Thumb
Oct. 16th, 2016 08:01 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Engineer’s Thumb and the chosen topic is Railway Stations.
A few facts:
🛤 In the late 1820s and early 1830s, at the dawn of the railway age… stations did not really exist in a way that we would recognise today. The earliest had no buildings and any structures which did exist were made of wood. There would be no platforms and… passengers would climb up into carriages from ground level. [Ellen Tait, quoted by Paul Kerley]
🛤 But… distinctive and substantial buildings were soon built. It was through these statement-making structures that railway companies demonstrated their belief that "trains were here to stay and the whole enterprise could be trusted financially..." [Ellen Tait, quoted by Paul Kerley]
🛤 In the Victorian period competing railway companies built a number of railway stations in the City of London and in London. Since then all the stations have undergone substantial redevelopment, but many still retain some of their original architectural features including impressive roof spans. [History House]
🛤 Opened in 1836, London Bridge was [the] first station to be built. Situated on the south bank of the Thames by London Bridge, it was immediately added to and then rebuilt. Trains served south London, Kent and Sussex. [History House]
🛤 To build a new railway, you had to demolish a lot of buildings - so it was easier to get approval for lines that ran mainly through poorer areas. This puts the locations of many London railway termini into context. Property was cheaper south of the river, for example, which explains why London Bridge was chosen as the first terminus. [History]
🛤 When William Tress, architect to the South Eastern Railway, designed a station for Battle in Sussex [in 1852], he decided to do it in gothic… Tress was following the usual approach of the railway age. The stations may have been serving the most powerful and world-changing technology of their time, but the most important thing was to evoke some older, safer period, and to make the buildings look domestic. In the 19th century railways were trebly frightful – they caused terrible accidents, devastated urban and rural environments and prompted gigantic financial collapses and swindles – which was all the more reason to make their public faces look like reassuring old houses.
This habit went up to the biggest termini, such as St Pancras in London… ...train stations [are] the archetypal Victorian product, bold and dissimulating at once. Railway magnates were happy to rip through cities and landscapes, make thousands homeless, stink and pollute, but God forbid that anyone approaching their buildings should think that anything had changed. It was like clothing piano legs, but on an urban scale and more productively: hypocritical though they may be, stations like Battle and St Pancras are delightful. [Rowan Moore]
🛤 Paddington station (1852-54) became an iconic symbol of the Victorian railway largely on account of its prominent place in William Powell Frith’s vast canvas The Railway Station (1862)... [Paul Dobraszczyk]
🛤 When it first opened, Paddington station was a makeshift affair with the entrance and waiting rooms tucked into the stone arches of Bishop’s Bridge and the platforms sheltered by a basic timber structure.
Paddington station as we know it today opened in 1854 after the GWR [Great Western Railway] decided their London terminal deserved something grander. Both stations were designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His design [for the second version] was largely inspired by the gleaming Crystal Palace which had hosted the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park a few years before. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 When the new [Paddington] station was opened in 1854, the roof consisted of three arches, or spans, making it the largest train shed roof in the world at the time. In 1916... a fourth span was added. Surprisingly, Brunel's original glass roof survived until the 1990s, when it was replaced by polycarbonate panels in a refurbishment. [Laura Reynolds]
🛤 In 1842, Queen Victoria embarked upon her first ever train journey, travelling from Slough to Paddington… Thanks to its Windsor link, Queen Victoria became a regular Paddington commuter and was granted a royal waiting room – now the First Class Lounge on platform one. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 For many years the GWR relied upon horses to shift freight wagons and trot deliveries around London. [There] was a large, multi-storey stable complex called ‘The Mint’, built beside Paddington in the 1870s to accommodate 600 horses. ...the block was converted for use by St Mary’s Hospital in the 1960s, [but] the long ramps used for transferring gee-gees between floors can still be seen. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 Paddington played a key role in the development of the London Underground, for it was from here in 1863 that the Metropolitan Railway first set off. That pioneering underground route, which originally ran between Paddington and Farringdon, is still in use today… [Robert Lordan]
🛤 From the 19th century right up until recently, the station master was the key authority figure in the railway station, with responsibility for all station staff… He… was a well-respected figure with significant social standing in the local community. He was usually provided with a station house to live in. It was also common, especially in rural areas, for the station master to be running a sideline or two to supplement his railway pay packet. [Sally Sculthorpe]
🛤 And a nod to Mr. Hatherley’s profession: The City & South London Railway—the world's first deep-level electric railway—opened in 1890, and ran from King William Street in the City to Stockwell. Hydraulic lifts were installed at the stations to transfer passengers between street and platform. [That is, from above ground to underground.] [London Transport Museum]
Some useful resources:
A Selection of Great Victorian Railway Stations By Stuart Durant on The Victorian Web.
In which order were the main railway stations in London built? On History House.
Just the ticket: the joy of England’s railway stations By Rowan Moore on The Guardian’s website.
10 Great English Railway Stations On Heritage Calling. As far as I can tell, all the stations mentioned date from Victorian times (though the photographs of the stations are relatively modern).
The Victorian Railroad Station — a New Building Type On The Victorian Web. Brief article plus index to articles on a wide range of stations.
The Railway Age On History.
Railways, Above Ground - Stations - list of stations and companies From Victorian sources, on The Dictionary of Victorian London.
The beautiful stations of rail's golden age By Paul Kerley, BBC News Magazine.
The Dictionary of Victorian London Main index. Click on: Transport - Railways, Above Ground - Stations.
Paddington station: function & fantasy By Paul Dobraszczyk on rag-picking history.
Railways, above ground - Lines - Great Western Railway On The Dictionary of Victorian London. Fair amount of information about Paddington Station from Victorian sources. Transporting horses and carriages by train, reserving compartments, special cheap tickets, cloakrooms, transporting boats and canoes, where to change trains, hiring private broughams at the station.
The complete history of Paddington station By Robert Lordan on the The TimeOut website.
9 Secrets Of Paddington Station By Laura Reynolds on the Londonist website.
Paddington Railway Station On The Victorian Web.
100 years of station master memories By Sally Sculthorpe on the National Railway Museum website.
The English Railway Station On Culture24. ‘See photos from 200 years of British railway history.’ Some of the stations date from Victorian times, and some of the photographs do too.
Travel, transport and communications By Liza Picard on the British Library website. Includes a couple of interesting Victorian illustrations.
The “Train-ing” of Sherlock Holmes: The Railway in Victorian England By William A. Barton.
14 Beautiful Train Stations From Around the World On Mental Floss. Some of the stations date from the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Researching the history of railway architecture On Building History. List of sources.
Public transport in Victorian London: Part Two: Underground On the London Transport Museum website.
Bradshaw April 1910 A contribution courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sanguinity, on Google Drive. Scans of a reproduction 1910 Bradshaw: Four pdfs, focusing on travel between London and Eastbourne. (Pages are missing in some of those sections because they weren't relevant to my needs.) I also scanned ads and things, because ads can be fascinating…
...it lists out when trains split, with some cars going off with a different engine someplace else, etc. Furthermore, it's organized by railway, not by origin/destination. I'm now super-impressed every time Watson picks up a copy of Bradshaw and just casually announces when the next train leaves for a presumably-new-to-them destination.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
🛤 In the late 1820s and early 1830s, at the dawn of the railway age… stations did not really exist in a way that we would recognise today. The earliest had no buildings and any structures which did exist were made of wood. There would be no platforms and… passengers would climb up into carriages from ground level. [Ellen Tait, quoted by Paul Kerley]
🛤 But… distinctive and substantial buildings were soon built. It was through these statement-making structures that railway companies demonstrated their belief that "trains were here to stay and the whole enterprise could be trusted financially..." [Ellen Tait, quoted by Paul Kerley]
🛤 In the Victorian period competing railway companies built a number of railway stations in the City of London and in London. Since then all the stations have undergone substantial redevelopment, but many still retain some of their original architectural features including impressive roof spans. [History House]
🛤 Opened in 1836, London Bridge was [the] first station to be built. Situated on the south bank of the Thames by London Bridge, it was immediately added to and then rebuilt. Trains served south London, Kent and Sussex. [History House]
🛤 To build a new railway, you had to demolish a lot of buildings - so it was easier to get approval for lines that ran mainly through poorer areas. This puts the locations of many London railway termini into context. Property was cheaper south of the river, for example, which explains why London Bridge was chosen as the first terminus. [History]
🛤 When William Tress, architect to the South Eastern Railway, designed a station for Battle in Sussex [in 1852], he decided to do it in gothic… Tress was following the usual approach of the railway age. The stations may have been serving the most powerful and world-changing technology of their time, but the most important thing was to evoke some older, safer period, and to make the buildings look domestic. In the 19th century railways were trebly frightful – they caused terrible accidents, devastated urban and rural environments and prompted gigantic financial collapses and swindles – which was all the more reason to make their public faces look like reassuring old houses.
This habit went up to the biggest termini, such as St Pancras in London… ...train stations [are] the archetypal Victorian product, bold and dissimulating at once. Railway magnates were happy to rip through cities and landscapes, make thousands homeless, stink and pollute, but God forbid that anyone approaching their buildings should think that anything had changed. It was like clothing piano legs, but on an urban scale and more productively: hypocritical though they may be, stations like Battle and St Pancras are delightful. [Rowan Moore]
🛤 Paddington station (1852-54) became an iconic symbol of the Victorian railway largely on account of its prominent place in William Powell Frith’s vast canvas The Railway Station (1862)... [Paul Dobraszczyk]
🛤 When it first opened, Paddington station was a makeshift affair with the entrance and waiting rooms tucked into the stone arches of Bishop’s Bridge and the platforms sheltered by a basic timber structure.
Paddington station as we know it today opened in 1854 after the GWR [Great Western Railway] decided their London terminal deserved something grander. Both stations were designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His design [for the second version] was largely inspired by the gleaming Crystal Palace which had hosted the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park a few years before. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 When the new [Paddington] station was opened in 1854, the roof consisted of three arches, or spans, making it the largest train shed roof in the world at the time. In 1916... a fourth span was added. Surprisingly, Brunel's original glass roof survived until the 1990s, when it was replaced by polycarbonate panels in a refurbishment. [Laura Reynolds]
🛤 In 1842, Queen Victoria embarked upon her first ever train journey, travelling from Slough to Paddington… Thanks to its Windsor link, Queen Victoria became a regular Paddington commuter and was granted a royal waiting room – now the First Class Lounge on platform one. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 For many years the GWR relied upon horses to shift freight wagons and trot deliveries around London. [There] was a large, multi-storey stable complex called ‘The Mint’, built beside Paddington in the 1870s to accommodate 600 horses. ...the block was converted for use by St Mary’s Hospital in the 1960s, [but] the long ramps used for transferring gee-gees between floors can still be seen. [Robert Lordan]
🛤 Paddington played a key role in the development of the London Underground, for it was from here in 1863 that the Metropolitan Railway first set off. That pioneering underground route, which originally ran between Paddington and Farringdon, is still in use today… [Robert Lordan]
🛤 From the 19th century right up until recently, the station master was the key authority figure in the railway station, with responsibility for all station staff… He… was a well-respected figure with significant social standing in the local community. He was usually provided with a station house to live in. It was also common, especially in rural areas, for the station master to be running a sideline or two to supplement his railway pay packet. [Sally Sculthorpe]
🛤 And a nod to Mr. Hatherley’s profession: The City & South London Railway—the world's first deep-level electric railway—opened in 1890, and ran from King William Street in the City to Stockwell. Hydraulic lifts were installed at the stations to transfer passengers between street and platform. [That is, from above ground to underground.] [London Transport Museum]
Some useful resources:
A Selection of Great Victorian Railway Stations By Stuart Durant on The Victorian Web.
In which order were the main railway stations in London built? On History House.
Just the ticket: the joy of England’s railway stations By Rowan Moore on The Guardian’s website.
10 Great English Railway Stations On Heritage Calling. As far as I can tell, all the stations mentioned date from Victorian times (though the photographs of the stations are relatively modern).
The Victorian Railroad Station — a New Building Type On The Victorian Web. Brief article plus index to articles on a wide range of stations.
The Railway Age On History.
Railways, Above Ground - Stations - list of stations and companies From Victorian sources, on The Dictionary of Victorian London.
The beautiful stations of rail's golden age By Paul Kerley, BBC News Magazine.
The Dictionary of Victorian London Main index. Click on: Transport - Railways, Above Ground - Stations.
Paddington station: function & fantasy By Paul Dobraszczyk on rag-picking history.
Railways, above ground - Lines - Great Western Railway On The Dictionary of Victorian London. Fair amount of information about Paddington Station from Victorian sources. Transporting horses and carriages by train, reserving compartments, special cheap tickets, cloakrooms, transporting boats and canoes, where to change trains, hiring private broughams at the station.
The complete history of Paddington station By Robert Lordan on the The TimeOut website.
9 Secrets Of Paddington Station By Laura Reynolds on the Londonist website.
Paddington Railway Station On The Victorian Web.
100 years of station master memories By Sally Sculthorpe on the National Railway Museum website.
The English Railway Station On Culture24. ‘See photos from 200 years of British railway history.’ Some of the stations date from Victorian times, and some of the photographs do too.
Travel, transport and communications By Liza Picard on the British Library website. Includes a couple of interesting Victorian illustrations.
The “Train-ing” of Sherlock Holmes: The Railway in Victorian England By William A. Barton.
14 Beautiful Train Stations From Around the World On Mental Floss. Some of the stations date from the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Researching the history of railway architecture On Building History. List of sources.
Public transport in Victorian London: Part Two: Underground On the London Transport Museum website.
Bradshaw April 1910 A contribution courtesy of
sanguinity, on Google Drive. Scans of a reproduction 1910 Bradshaw: Four pdfs, focusing on travel between London and Eastbourne. (Pages are missing in some of those sections because they weren't relevant to my needs.) I also scanned ads and things, because ads can be fascinating… ...it lists out when trains split, with some cars going off with a different engine someplace else, etc. Furthermore, it's organized by railway, not by origin/destination. I'm now super-impressed every time Watson picks up a copy of Bradshaw and just casually announces when the next train leaves for a presumably-new-to-them destination.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:22 am (UTC)It looks very much like a horror movie the way they begin with Victor's story. And since it's the season of Halloween, I thought it was appropriate. But it's set in the retirement era. But we do get to see Watson on a yellow motorbike and Holmes in the sidecar, which was too cute.
There's also an episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century called The Engineer's Thumb. Not very similar, but there is a guy named Victor Hatherley and his thumb is involved. It's more about cloning organs and stealing new technology. It's available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Nru7NoiKg&index=20&list=PL0ACFBC09C84127E7
no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:08 pm (UTC)For those who care, it was the first episode made (one of Miyazaki's eps, from before the issues with the Doyle Estate came up), but not the first episode by internal chronology. Thus, it's listed as #1 on the production company's youtube channel, but it's not the episode wherein Holmes and Watson first meet.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-17 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-18 12:52 am (UTC)Yes, Hound does love his pipe. And I live for the moment when he spots a clue and says, "Hello...!"
no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 03:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 01:33 pm (UTC)I can not, however, recommend the current GWR as an example of how to run a railway.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-16 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-21 12:40 am (UTC)Railway magnates were happy to rip through cities and landscapes, make thousands homeless, stink and pollute... ::
This comment is probably going to seem completely random, but this is a story that I'm very many times before -- major transportation projects devastating poor neighborhoods, displacing the majority of a community and poisoning the rest -- and yet I've never in my life heard it in the context of railways. In this part of the world, the cities and the railroads are roughly the same age, so my gut understanding of how railways interact with urban geography is... well, very different from that.
Which is one of the things I'm very much enjoying about these linkspams: the way these factoids see-saw between completely familiar and completely alien for me (often depending variables I hadn't thought to consider!), and sometimes even manage to be both at the same time. :-D
no subject
Date: 2016-11-22 01:05 am (UTC)