For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Let the train take the strain (15.07.11)

All over central London holes are appearing, some small, some like at Tottenham Court Road, huge, all for the purpose of improving your travel experience with Cross Rail. The scheme might, at this point, seem a crazy idea, but its predecessors were simply barking mad.

The first ever railway in London was the London & Greenwich Line and ran for almost its entire 3.75-mile length along an elevated viaduct, thereby, its planners reasoned, avoiding congestion at ground level. Unfortunately, it would take 878 brick arches to construct which were both expensive and time-consuming, for what was a journey that could be walked in less than an hour.

Later in 1840 the Blackwall Tunnel to Minories line used stationary engines at either end and hauled the carriages along using stout cables attached to the carriage ends.

In 1861 a London engineer Sir John Fowler designed a smokeless engine for London’s new underground network. Fuelled by red-hot bricks placed under the boiler it unsurprisingly made only one brief experimental run and was for given the moniker “Fowler’s Ghost”.

Before electrification smoke-filled tunnels continued to be the norm, and how anybody survived a journey, one can only imagine. Early Metropolitan Line trains were initially fitted with a tank in which the smoke was routed allowing it to be discharged each time a train broke cover.

At Crystal Palace in 1864, the new atmospheric railway was launched. It was smoke-free as its tightly fitting carriages were pushed into a circular tunnel in the manner of a piston forcing them along using only air pressure. History doesn’t record how many ear drums were perforated. In 1867 a similar system was demonstrated at the American Institute Fair in New York [pictured], Alfred Ely Beach demonstrated a 32.6 m long, 1.8 m diameter pipe that was capable of moving 12 passengers plus a conductor.

In 1943 Professor Sir Patrick Abercrombie, forgetting that there was a war on, proposed that tunnels were excavated all over the place in order to reduce congestion on the surface. Apart from the fact that hardly any traffic was seen in London during the war, it proposed that a tunnel be bored under Buckingham Palace; the plans probably to this day lie on a shelf gathering dust.

Not content with the Victorian vandalism of removing the colonnades along the length of Nash’s Regent Street. The Greater London Council in 1967 (probably at the behest of Ken Livingstone) commissioned a feasibility study for twin overhead passenger monorails to run down the middle of Regent Street. Once they were built one supposes that another feasibility study would be needed to decide where the Christmas decorations should be situated.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Power to the people (08.07.11)

Cabbies pass it every day on their way to the Wyndham Grand Hotel or when taking a shortcut through Chelsea Harbour with hardly a glance in its direction and like its younger sibling Battersea downriver, Lots Road Power Station lies dormant awaiting redevelopment; this disused industrial building is the world’s oldest thermal power station and almost certainly the first steel-framed building in Britain.

At the turn of the last century, Edwardians decided, rather sensibly, that smoke-filled tunnels with steam locomotives carrying passengers on London’s Underground were not the way to go, and electric-driven trains were the way forward.

The bohemian painters of Chelsea objected to removing smoke from the tunnels populated by the workers and instead discharging the pollution over their green and pleasant riverside residences. But built it was and for the present stands a testament to Edwardian engineering at its very best; 220 piers supporting brickwork on a German steel frame; 453ft long, 175ft wide, 140ft high; chimneys 275ft tall; originally its 64 boilers drew water from an artesian well 500ft deep, supplemented by 60 million gallons a day drawn from the Thames via a single pipe wide enough for a horse to walk through.

At first, the electricity was used to power the District Line but as demand grew and as the Underground network was extended it was burning 500 tons of coal a day; later it converted to oil and then to natural gas running eight newly installed Rolls-Royal Avon turbines.

Eventually, electricity would be more cheaply obtained from the National Grid than generating the network’s own power at Lots Road and so this industrial dinosaur has now lain dormant for decades. The power station’s attractive location standing on the bank of the Thames opposite one of London’s most beautiful Georgian churches, St. Mary’s, Battersea, has made it a victim of more ubiquitous luxury flats.

Now a development planned by Sir Terry Farrell hopes to provide about 800 residential apartments and penthouses units in riverside towers of 37 and 25 storeys and the conversion of the historic Lots Road Power Station. The development will see a signature waterside restaurant, cafes, retail units and offices together with a leisure complex. Planning permission has been granted and development is underway.