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A recent post on a Facebook group regarding I K Brunel’s selection of the broad gauge for his Great Western Railway reminded me of some recent correspondence I had on the subject.
Ultimately, the question of ‘standard' gauge, 4’ 8½” or ‘broad' gauge, 7’ ¼”, was decided, like the now defunct duel between Betamax and VHS videotape recorders, by the marketplace. And in both cases, the technologically inferior solution—4’ 8½" and VHS—won out. L T C Rolt’s definitive biography of Brunel, published in 1957, provides some very interesting insights into why the so-called standard gauge was chosen in the first place. On page 107 et seq., he points out that 4’ 8½” was the width of the ‘early coal-wagon ways of Tyneside’. They were mostly pulled by horses, and it was a suitable space between the rails in which a horse could comfortably walk. Rolt continues: ‘It was natural that George Stephenson should have accepted this precedent ... on the Stockton and Darlington railway (1825)...’ part of which initially used horses to pull the wagons. George Stephenson then went on to become engineer on the Liverpool and Manchester railway (1830), the first proper commercial railway. Rolt goes on: [that was] the moment for him to have considered whether so narrow a gauge was ... the most desirable for trunk lines of a public railway ... when Robert Stephenson was asked by the Gauge Commissioners whether his father had actually advocated the gauge of 4’ 8½” for the Liverpool and Manchester he replied: “No. It was not proposed by my father. It was the original gauge of the [private] railways around Newcastle-on-Tyne, and therefore he adopted that gauge.” This classic non sequitur betrays the conservative rule-of-thumb method which the conscientious and careful but unimaginative craftsman so often adopts when he ventures into strange fields. And that is the nub of the issue. The 4’ 8½” gauge—as applied to the great commercial railways—came about almost by accident. It has always been assumed that Brunel selected his broad gauge primarily from considerations of stability at high speed, however it is instructive to see what the man himself had to say on the subject. On 15 September 1835, IKB wrote a long letter to the directors of the GWR on the question of gauge.* He said that friction in the axles of the locomotive and carriages was a primary source of resistance—leading to lower speeds or more power being needed—and that the effect of this was reduced as the ratio of the wheel to the axle diameter was increased. Using the Stephensons’ 4’ 8½” gauge with large wheels meant that the locomotive and carriages would need to be excessively high—since the wheels and springs would need to be accommodated below them—and therefore inherently unstable. Using a wide gauge, where the wheels were beside rather than underneath the locomotive and rolling stock would, as well as reducing friction losses, lead to steadier motion and less wear and tear on rails and carriages. Brunel goes on to refute the various objections to a wider gauge—wider embankments, tunnels etc., extra weight, friction on curves, but concedes that incompatibility with the London and Birmingham railway—with which the GWR had originally planned to share a London terminus—was a serious obstacle. In the event, the plan to share a terminus was dropped, apparently for other reasons, so even that objection was considerably reduced. Believers in the conspiracy theory of history might wonder whether Isambard was using smoke and mirrors here. Did he aim to bamboozle the board into accepting a critical aspect of design that would be more expensive to build—and ultimately very costly when eventually the line had to be converted to standard gauge—but one that he was convinced was better? Nevertheless, it is an unavoidable fact that however good the lubrication of the wheels was, an average train would have had dozens of axles in the locomotive and carriages, all contributing friction. It is also true that the broad gauge allowed the main driving wheels on the early locomotives to be enormous, and this would have given them greater ‘grip’ on the rails during wet or icy weather, although IKB does not mention this in the letter. At the time that the GWR had committed to broad gauge (c 1835) there were very few other railways extant. Brunel insisted on engineering best practice—as he saw it—and this always trumped questions of cost or long-term benefit, to the despair of his directors. As new railways came along, built by others than the Stephensons and using engineers with less insight than I K Brunel, it was natural that they should ‘follow fashion’, although this was not without rationale. When Brunel was building the GWR, Robert Stephenson was constructing the London and Birmingham Railway which commenced in 1833. With the L&BR running north into the heart of industrial England, it was inevitable that the many railways adjoining it would need to be compatible with it. The fact is that the ‘industry’ in the West Country, served by the GWR, was mainly agricultural, and there was not the same drive there to criss-cross the land with railways. One suspects that even had Brunel known what was going to happen, vis a vis the dual gauge and the final and expensive change back to George Stephenson’s coal-wagon gauge in the 1890s, it is unlikely that he would have changed his mind. He would have insisted that 7’ ¼” was the only viable gauge—the quality of the ride and the speeds obtained proved it—and the GWR and Brunel were the ‘only ones in step’. In fact, when it came to decision time there was so much installed track built to the Stephensons’ gauge, that changing just the GWR was an inevitable no-brainer. As a further addendum, Rolt notes that the original colliery gauge was 4’ 8”, and that at the design stage of the Liverpool and Manchester railway 'An extra half inch was added by some person unknown to fame…' Likewise probably, the extra ¼” added to the broad gauge of seven feet… * The letter is reproduced on page 17 of volume 1 of the History of the Great Western Railway, by E T MacDermot.
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Today I sold the 500th (and 501st) copy of my book, Murder in the Red Barn. The book analyses the circumstances surrounding the notorious murder of Maria Martin by William Corder in 1827. Coincidentally, on Saturday The Times newspaper published a letter from me about the murder. This was on the question of whether two books bound in the murderer’s skin at the Moyses Hall museum in Bury St Edmunds should be kept on show as a historic archive or respectfully cremated as human remains. I inclined to the latter view. Possibly due to my Catholic upbringing, I have a horror of the display of bits of dead people masquerading as ‘relics’, which are to be found in some churches. Respect is due to the dead; the morbid, ghoulish, and macabre public display of body parts belongs to medieval times.
A chance post on a local history Facebook page around eighteen months ago started me on a quest. Iron Bridge in Hanwell carried I K Brunel’s Great Western Railway over the Uxbridge Turnpike. As usual, Isambard was not content with a straightforward structure but built a spectacular three-way crossing. Girder failures and a fire caused an expenditure of three times the initial cost of the original bridge in repairs and eventually it was replaced by a steel structure in the early 20th century. The bridge today is an archaeological novelty in that elements of the seven bridges that have stood there since the late 1830s remain and are visible in plain sight. My new pamphlet charts the history of Iron Bridge, a very familiar landmark close to Ealing where I grew up. Of all of my publishing ventures this is probably the most self-indulgent. I could have submitted it to a magazine but nothing obvious was appropriate. Anyway, I think it makes a good story and although there is nothing previously unknown in the account, it does draw together several threads and further increases my admiration of I K Brunel.  On this side of the pond we watched with mounting disbelief as the American people voted to give a convicted misogynist felon complete control of the presidency and both houses of congress. This is the man who instigated a mass assault on the centre of government attempting to overthrow the result of the previous election. Furthermore, he implied violent disorder if he didn’t win this election and declares that he will pardon the January 6 rioters when he assumes office.
Could it get any worse? It just has. The sitting president has pardoned his son from a series of gun and tax-fraud charges that would almost certainly have seen him serve time in prison. The fact that he said many times that he would not do this just reveals himself to his enemies as a self-proclaimed liar. Biden justifies his actions by reading directly from Trump’s playbook—the pursuit of Hunter Biden through the courts was, he says, a ‘political act’ intended only to harm him, i.e. Joe Biden. The Bidens, of course, have nothing to lose by this decision and both will now fade into obscurity. But if Trump needed an excuse to pardon the rioters—and others—Biden has just handed it to him on a plate. It’s difficult to see how the essential separation of the executive from the judiciary, once sundered, can ever be restored. At some point in the remote past I acquired Introduction to Astronomy, by Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin. She was subsequently a professor at Harvard, and the book is derived from a series of popular lectures she gave to the undergraduate students there. It is a most unlikely textbook, beautifully written, clear and concise, but also quite a work of art. There are quotations from literature on most pages illustrative of the depth and breadth of her learning. Cecelia Payne was born in England in 1900, and educated at Cambridge where she attended lectures from Rutherford. It was a talk by Sir Arthur Eddington on the 1919 expedition to photograph stars during a total eclipse of the sun and verify General Relativity, that engendered in her a fascination with astronomy.
In the early 1920s it was impossible for a woman to pursue a career in astronomy in the UK, and the new director of the Harvard Observatory, Harlow Shapley, offered ‘Miss Payne’ a position at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her job title was ‘computer’, one of a number of women working on the classification of astronomical data, mainly stellar spectra. By applying physics to the interpretation of stellar spectra, Cecelia Payne was able to overturn the current theory that the stars are composed of similar elements, and in similar concentrations, as are found on Earth. She showed that the various spectral types differed mainly in surface temperature, and that the stars overwhelmingly consist of hydrogen and helium. This was so revolutionary and contrary to the current received wisdom, that she was obliged in her doctoral thesis to say that the conclusion—regarding stellar composition—was unlikely. Nevertheless, her thesis was very highly thought of, and gradually the great and the good in the astronomical establishment came to accept her findings. With all of that, Shapley kept her on a derisory salary, she was constantly passed over for promotion, and only very much later was elevated to a professorship. Enthused by reading a new biography of Dr Payne-Gaposchkin, I was looking at a list of telescopes at the Harvard Observatory and saw that one of them had the name ‘Ealing’ appended to it. Investigation showed that the telescope mirror had been purchased from the estate of a noted British amateur astronomer, Andrew Ainslie Common, who died in 1903, and lived at Eaton Rise, Ealing, West London. I grew up in Ealing, and I know Eaton Rise well; what on Earth was an amateur astronomer in Ealing doing with anything that would interest Harvard Observatory? Apparently he had two 36 inch mirrors made by George Calver an ‘East-Anglian telescope maker’, whose premises were in Widford, a small village adjacent to Chelmsford barely a mile from where I currently live... To anyone wanting a general introduction to astronomy, Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin’s book is hard to beat. It dates from the mid 1950s, so the photographs are from that era and modern developments in astronomy and astrophysics are absent. But there is a sort of hands-on authenticity about her account. In that pre-digital, pre-space age, observations were made by astronomers spending hours in freezing-cold observatories staring into telescope eyepieces. Photographs were made on wet-developed glass plates, and computations were done using slide-rules and logarithm tables. There was no knowledge of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, Fred Hoyle had only just coined the term ‘Big Bang’, and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation was ten years in the future. Nevertheless, the basics of the subject as it was then are unchanged now, and the wealth of literary references make the book a positive pleasure to read. A trip to Vienna in July to celebrate a special anniversary, revealed wonders not previously seen.
The exhibition of ‘New Objectivity’, German art in the Weimar Republic, (1918 – 1933), at the Leopold Museum was the most disturbing. To quote from the catalogue: “The physical and psychological injuries and abysmal experiences of World War I, which claimed the lives of more than nine million people and left over twenty million wounded, called for new depictions of reality in art.” Some of these ‘new depictions' really were quite unsettling. Far less disquieting but fascinating nevertheless—in the top floor of the Vienna Museum—was another art exhibition, this was of the Successionists. They were the new art movement dating from around 1900 in Germany and Austria, which numbered Gustav Klimt as a central figure. For the most part these were somewhat more naturalistic than the art from the time of the Weimar Republic, but immensely compelling. The Vienna Museum charts the history of the city over the ages, and most interesting is how it deals with the dark period, 1938 – 1945. There were ghastly antisemitic posters—apparently even the NAZIs were surprised at the vehemence of the Austrians against their own Jews. There were photographs of Hitler addressing the masses after his troops marched into Austria in 1938. And then a glass-topped case caught my eye. It seemed to be haphazardly piled with junk; there was a framed picture leaning over against something almost hidden—it was a bust of Hitler, on its back, heaved into a cupboard as it were and forgotten. An excellent way of dealing with a very painful period of history. Then there was the Museum of Music, original home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with a small cinema showing repeats of the New Year’s Day concerts at the Musikverein, as well as the open-air summer concerts from Schönbrunn. Each of the main Viennese composers had a room with memorabilia and artefacts. My favourites were Beethoven, Schubert, and Gustav Mahler. After that we visited Sigmund Freud’s house which we have seen before but which has had a recent major makeover. Much fascinating material was on display but most poignant was Freud’s family tree. Freud left for England in 1938, but his four elderly sisters stayed in Vienna. One died in the Theresienstadt Ghetto and the other three, in their late seventies and early eighties, were murdered by the NAZIs at Treblinka. Walking to the Vienna Museum, my wife spotted that we were in Bösendorferstrasse, and there we came across the showrooms of that famous Viennese piano maker. Looking at some of the wonderful grand pianos on show, it became clear that each one is a work of art in itself. From the magnificent cast-iron frame, left for six months to fully anneal, finished to perfection, and strung with golden strings, to the beautiful polished wood case, and the tiers of wooden levers and hammers forming the action. Of the latter there was a model on show, and I spent ages pressing the key and trying to understand how it all worked. The action of a grand piano is a minor miracle of mechanical engineering, albeit mostly in wood and felt. An amplifying linkage of several levers from the piano key causes the hammer to strike the strings and immediately fall back to avoid damping, while being able to repeat the note around ten times per second. The low inertia of the wooden linkages allows this high speed. While all of this is going on, other linkages operate the dampers, either from the individual key being pressed, or from the foot pedals. And these structures are replicated, side by side, eighty-eight times in a modern grand... There are many diagrams and explanations online, but the best animation I have seen is here: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steinway-sons-grand-piano-action-model-a1637020eeea4033a5ec611b50cbf045 This was a most stimulating visit to the old imperial capital of Austria-Hungary and the catalogues of those two art exhibitions provide much to study and ponder. The memory is somewhat overshadowed though by knowledge of the fate of Sigmund Freud’s sisters. I will never understand how any political philosophy can be satisfied by the cold-blooded State murder of several harmless and respectable elderly ladies. This year has been an exceptional Prom season, and it is not over yet. I have attended four concerts so far—one more to go—and each one has been better than the one before. The last-but-one, where a very frail Daniel Barenboim conducted the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra doing Schubert’s great C-major ninth symphony, I thought was the apotheosis of the series. Barenboim is a Jewish Israeli citizen, but he also has Palestinian citizenship. The Divan orchestra was set up by him and the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said twenty-five years ago, and comprises musicians from Israel and many of the surrounding Muslim countries, although it also includes other nationalities. This was a magnificent performance of a wonderful piece that had never been performed in Schubert’s lifetime, made so much more poignant by the on-going appalling Middle-East conflict between the countries whose nationals were playing in the orchestra. I wondered for a second why the Promenaders applauded the orchestra when its members came on stage, but of course it was recognition that friendship and brotherly love through art transcend all other considerations.
But it was the Prom last Wednesday, whose climactic theme was friendship and brotherly love, that eclipsed even Schubert, Barenboim, and the Divan Orchestra. Nicholas Collon was conducting the Aurora Orchestra, the National Youth Choir, and the BBC Singers in a performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony from memory... Where to start? This year is the 200th anniversary of its first performance in Vienna. Beethoven was so deaf, that a member of the orchestra had to turn him around to face the audience so that he could see their rapturous applause. Wednesday’s Prom started with a staged re-enactment by actors, some of whom were deaf themselves, of ‘conversations’ the composer had via his notebooks. He was so deaf that he had to converse via written messages. Then, the conductor deconstructed the symphony by having the orchestra play bits of it and describing how they came about and all fitted together. The climax though was in the second half when they played the symphony through. There was no printed music on stage, so all the musicians, except the cellists and possibly the double bassists, were standing, unconstrained, and able to move as the music took them. Furthermore, not all of the players were on stage all of the time—they came and went as their musical parts required. And when the fourth movement started, I lent to my daughter-in-law who was with me and whispered “There’s something I don’t understand... Where’s the choir?” Only the orchestra were present. Then they silently walked on stage just before the singing started, and now commenced pure magic. For the fourth movement of his ninth symphony Beethoven set Schiller’s poem, An die Freude – Ode to Joy, to music. Ode to Joy is a paean to brotherly love, which God knows we need in the world today. The choral movement includes four soloists, and they moved around the stage, at one point making way for a marching band! Part of the fourth movement sounds just like a German marching band and there they were, strutting along, being led by a musician playing a side drum. And just when it seemed there could be no more, the choir started to ‘sign’ some of the words they sang using sign language. I was quite overcome by the end and quickly wiped my eyes so that my daughter-in-law could not see the tears and thus ruin my studied cynical persona. When the final crescendo was over the entire audience at a packed Albert Hall immediately rose in a spontaneous standing ovation. It was an experience I shall never forget. My first Prom of the season last night. The start was not auspicious when the Royal Albert Hall refused me entry because I had a glass or so of white wine in a flask in my bag left over from a picnic dinner on the Albert Memorial steps. And I was more than a little miffed later to have to pay £4 for a small bottle of water during the interval, which had been the intended occasion for finishing the wine. However the evidence was quickly disposed of in a not unpleasant way and I was admitted.
The programme was first class. It started with the usual ‘difficult’ contemporary piece at the Proms which turned out to be not difficult at all. The unlikely named Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Aditus, which means entrance or approach in Estonian, was noisy, raucous, and very entertaining. Next was a real treat. After the Prommer’s traditional “Heave!” from the auditorium, to be answered by “Ho!” from the gallery as the piano lid was raised, and applause as the leader played the ‘A’ to allow the orchestra to tune, we heard Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto. The last time I heard the Emperor at the Proms, many moons ago, the playing was so strident that I wondered that the Chinese pianist didn’t damage the Steinway during the performance. This time a young Korean, Yunchan Lim, absolutely wowed the audience—and me—with his sensitivity. I have never heard this Beethoven piece played with such love and tenderness. He rightly received enormous applause. The Bruckner, his first symphony, I was not familiar with although the style was unmistakably his. I’ll admit to some trepidation, and I noticed a few seats had emptied at the interval—two girls clutching their iPhones even left after the first movement... But it was good. Plenty of repetitive crescendos, what the Prommers love, and it felt comfortable; traditional Proms fare. All in all a very enjoyable evening notwithstanding the faltering start. Furthermore I found myself sitting next to a well-known—to the Albert Hall—Italian gentleman who has attended around 1,800 Proms. My extremely rusty and halting Italian got a real workout. The Law of Unexpected Consequences frequently works to frustrate human endeavour, but it might just have worked for the public good. Much has been made of the fact that the Labour Party polled fewer votes in last Thursday’s General Election than in 2019 when Corbyn was in charge. He was campaigning against Johnson who subsequently won an 80-seat majority. That result was skewed by several factors. Corbyn and Johnson were both divisive in their different ways, voters either loving them or hating them. Johnson’s showy cosmetic charm and bonhomie endeared him to many voters and revolted others. Likewise Corbyn’s agitprop socialism generated adoration and loathing. Crucially though, Farage’s B****t party refrained from standing in seats where Conservatives were likely to win. This time, notwithstanding Starmer’s total rebuild of the Labour Party, ‘Fag-Ash’ Farage took the gloves off and was undoubtedly responsible for the Tories’ rout. This was an election lost by the Conservative Party, and only won by Labour by default.
However what do we see? Outgoing Sunak and Hunt have dubbed Starmer a ‘decent and honourable man’ as if that were an unusual trait in a Prime Minister! The new health secretary is sitting down next week with the junior doctors to try and resolve their dispute—scandalous that the Tories cynically allowed it to drag on for so long. The disgraceful Rwanda scheme goes into the dustbin of history, and Starmer is doing the rounds of the Union to cement his inclusive attitude to the four nations. Make no mistake the new government have some very difficult challenges: the health service, community care, the cost of living crisis, housing, prisons, and of course immigration, all with very little financial room to manoeuvre. If they can make some progress that people can actually see over the next few years, then Fag-Ash’s declared aim for a take-over in the 2029 election will wither on the vine. He gambled in 2024 and achieved his immediate objective. But he also allowed decent people into government whose efforts, if they succeed, may well condemn him and his band of bigoted, xenophobic, nationalist cronies to join the Rwanda scheme where they all belong. As an addendum to these thoughts I listened to a very interesting discussion on the BBC this morning. It was to the effect that the Europe of now is very different from the Europe that this country voted to leave in 2016. There is a definite surge to the right in a number of countries—anti-EU, anti-immigration, equivocation on Ukraine etc. Interesting times. For the record, last week I formally applied for citizenship of Austria. I’ll do a modified ‘Vicar of Bray’ for as long as they’ll let me and keep a foot in both camps.  “...And the skies over England were dark with lame ducks—the streets were clogged with chickens coming home to roost...”
(An unfortunate juxtaposition with the title of the previous post which I have only just noticed... I'm sure my reader will be suitably amused.) |
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April 2025
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