Celebrate 50 years of British tunnelling
BEFORE THE BTS THE VICTORIA LINE
The Victoria Line, built in the 1960s and opened (to Victoria) in 1969, was the first deep railway to be built across Central London for sixty years, and the first new line since nationalisation of the network in 1948. It was the world’s first full-scale automatic railway, running 16.9km from Walthamstow in the north-east suburbs to Victoria Mainline Station, entirely underground and with every one of its twelve stations an interchange with either a mainline station, another Underground line or both. During the construction, an extension to Brixton was approved (adding four further stations), with this section opening just two years after the main section. Much of the construction of the twin
single-track running tunnels was mechanised by employing early tunnelling machines, developed just a few years earlier by Kinnear Moodie and Sir Robert McAlpine. These were purchased by London Underground and supplied free of charge to the contractors.
Ana Barbosa
Ferry Lane to Pretoria Avenue
Ferry Lane to Page Green Common One Kinnear Moodie & one McAlpine machine
Netherton Road to Page Green Common One Kinnear Moodie & one McAlpine machine
Finsbury Park to Netherton Road (experimental tunnel, 1961): Kinnear Moodie, using a Kinnear Moodie drum digger
Finsbury Park to King’s Cross: Kinnear Moodie (Andy Smith) using two McAlpine tunnelling machines
King’s Cross Station: Balfour Beatty (Andy Smith)
King’s Cross to Oxford Circus:
Eustonust Warren Streetr
Oxford Circus Station: Kinnear Moodie (Dave Foster)
Oxford Circus to Victoria: J Mowlem
Oxford Circus Kinnear Moodie drum digger Green Park Victoria
Victoria to Vauxhall including Pimlico Station: Balfour Beatty
Vauxhall Station (excluding platform tunnels): Kinnear Moodie
Vauxhall to Stockwell including Vauxhall platform tunnels: Mitchell Brothers
6 BRITISH TUNNELLING BRITISH TUNNELLING H TUNNELLING SOCIETY TUNNELLING SOCI UNNELLING S NNELLING S
Stockwell to Brixton including Stockwell and Brixton Stations: A Waddington & Son
Pimlico mli Vauxhall
VICTORIA TO BRIXTON 1966 to 1968 The 5.6km extension was excavated using the less mechanised ‘Greathead-type’ shields
Stockwell Brixton
en Park
Seven Sisters
Finsb ry ParkFinsbury P LONDON Highbury & Islingtongt Hig bu
One Kinnear Moodie & one McAlpine machine
Pretoria Avenue to Walthamstow Two McAlpine tunnelling machines
Tottenham Hale
m
Blackhorse Road
Blac B e
Walthamstow Central
lth
SHUTTER OIL AND POSTCARDS King’s Cross St. Pancras g’s Cro C oss St.
I spent my last two school summer holidays working for W & C French Ltd, for whom my uncle, Greville Bickerton, was a site agent. At that time they were engaged on tunnelling projects for the Metropolitan Water Board at Staines and in North London. The pit boss for French was Charlie Dowel, who had been a Royal Navy diver in the Second World War and had worked on Operation PLUTO (Pipe Line Under the Ocean, supplying fuel to the Allied forces in Europe, installed just a few days after D-Day). He had a serious limp due to the bends but was always very cheerful and friendly to me. I remember him once, while we were putting up a shutter together, rubbing a handful of shutter oil into his hair saying, ‘There you are, And.’ (He always called me ‘And’.) ‘Much cheaper than Brylcreem!’ Charlie was a regular at BTS meetings in his retirement and was always good for some reminiscing. Working on these jobs gave me a taste of tunnelling and I knew that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I attended Leeds University from 1960 to 1963 and obtained a Third Class Honours Degree in Civil Engineering, which I believe is known as a ‘Gentleman’s Degree’, and had a wonderful time getting it. During the two summer vacations, I again worked for my uncle in North London and then in Luton on a drainage scheme involving the use of compressed air. Tom Gibbs was general foreman. Following graduation, I decided that if I was to become chartered and work in contracting, I had better get the design experience out of the way first, so I joined JD & DM Watson at their Victoria Street office. I chose them (or maybe they chose me), because they were the consultants on the North London scheme. I worked with Horace Roy Oakley (HRO) and Jack Preston, who were both partners, on the design of various drainage schemes and investigation work for the Tyne Sea Outfall. I remember recording the results of sealed plastic envelopes containing a prepaid postcard and a penny coin for the finder, which had been dropped into the sea at the proposed outfall diffuser location. The idea was to find out where the discharge (largely untreated sewage) might end up! We had many postcards returned from all around the North Sea coast and even from Denmark and Holland. The scheme, however, never went ahead.
1 km m 0.5 McAlpine tunnelling machine
Andrew (Andy) Smith [Extract] Section Engineer, Kinnear Moodie & Co Now retired, formerly Construction Director, Joseph Gallagher Ltd
BEFORE THE BTS 7
‘This looks a bit odd,’ announced Miles Friedman, whose encyclopaedic knowledge and understanding of the myriad mysteries of the Racing Post ran a close second to his diligence and sound judgement as an ever jovial and sanguine geotech. After the passage of the westbound JLE 105 TBM,
HARD ROCK IN NORTH WALES PEN-Y-CLIP THE 1980s
OTHER UK PROJECTS
You wait for ages for a decent rock tunnel project and then two come along at once. At least, that’s what happened to me when I returned from abroad, having cut my teeth mining for copper in Africa. At the time rock tunnelling was definitely
in vogue, with major schemes recently completed, already underway or being planned, so it seemed a good career move, particularly since mining was rather in the doldrums.
Coming from the mining industry, having to expend
so much time and effort designing what initially appeared to be pretty straightforward tunnels was a bit of a shock. Both were in hard igneous rock and portalled at the surface, rather than a kilometre or so underground. But then I hadn’t reckoned on the ICE Fifth Edition form of contract, the civil service Client in the form of the Welsh Office together with the then Department of Transport, and the consultant, who was quite grandly, and properly, referred to as ‘The Engineer’. I began in 1979 as a junior engineer at Howard
Humphreys & Partners, the tunnelling and geotechnical subconsultant to Travers Morgan & Partners, the overall engineer for the A55 improvements along the North Wales coast, which also included an immersed tunnel crossing of the River Conwy estuary. In the 1920s Howard Humphreys had engineered the
upgrade of the original road built by Thomas Telford. That scheme included a 160m long tunnel at Penmaenbach and two very short tunnels at Pen-y-Clip, In the 1970s the geotechnical department was one of the foremost in the UK, headed by the senior partner, Dr John Newbery, and run by associate Dr Appadurai Siva Subramanian, who was known by everyone as Siva for obvious reasons. My job was to design the drill and blast rock portion of the 650m long Penmaenbach Tunnel, working under an Australian senior engineer called Cliff Matson. The ground investigations had recently been completed and work had begun on the investigations for the rather more formidable Pen-y-clip Tunnel, some 4.5km to the west.
16 BRITISH TUNNELLING SOCIETY
Opposite: Penmaenmawr mountain rising out of the Irish Sea, just west of Conwy. The road, constructed in the 1920s, can be seen with its two short tunnels a little way above the original railway.
This page: Construction of one of the short Pen-y-clip tunnels in the 1920s.
The plan was to construct a new westbound tunnel through both of the headlands, retaining the existing road as the eastbound carriageway but leaving enough room at Penmaenbach for a possible future second tunnel. The Penmaenbach
Impressive as the Pen- y-clip Tunnel is, it is easily matched by the spectacular anchored curtain wall that supports the massive scree slopes along the western approach.
Tunnel was to be constructed through the rhyolite headland that originally formed a volcanic neck and was covered by extensive scree slopes to the west and thick, wind-blown sand to the east. The Pen-y-Clip headland was mantled on all sides by thick natural scree and quarry debris from the opencast mining at the top of Penmaenmawr mountain, which was formed from a massive microdiorite intrusion. The late 1960s had seen the emergence of the New
Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) and Cliff Matson saw no reason why it couldn’t work here. I had heard about the method (or at least said that I had) and had worked a lot with rockbolts and even shotcrete in the mines, which is why I got the job in the first place. We set to work with great enthusiasm and optimism. NATM is essentially an observational method: you dig the hole and install the support in stages, observing how the ground reacts, before installing more support until the tunnel stabilises. Unfortunately, this approach did not square well with the ICE Fifth, which required a fully engineered design, with no way of specifying or pricing for design changes during construction. Much argument followed, especially with engineer’s representative George Teller, who was an associate at Travers Morgan and a brilliant engineer but belonged most definitely to the old school. What George didn’t know about the ICE Fifth and, more importantly, how the Client would view any deviation from its holy writ, wasn’t worth knowing. We suggested NATM be renamed ‘Not Acceptable by Travers Morgan’, but we had a cunning plan in mind.
THE 1980s 17
JUBILEE LINE
under and along the RT (Railtrack) viaduct running into London Bridge Station, the rate of settlement would normally slacken. This hadn’t happened. ‘It might be something or nothing,’ he added. Some days later, it was looking like something. Around one spot, by a roadway arch, settlement continued at an unabated rate, giving grounds for growing concern. Brendan Reilly, Tunnel SE, had found nothing out of order in the tunnelling reports, but he had wondered about the coincidence of it happening at Millstream Road. Anyhow, the weekend was coming up, so it was time for some determined back-grouting. Cue Jim Donald, our thoroughly knowledgeable, experienced and sturdy Orcadian senior inspector. Monday morning saw Donald standing bolt upright
EXTENSION
for one of his rare public appearances. A handpicked gang with plenty of grout had struggled to inject only a few cupfuls. As a parting shot, he had maxed out the pump to a pressure that made his audience wince. Nothing. Time to break cover. Either it would turn the corner (normal service is resumed) or we had a situation. Might cost a few bob, though. Best tell PEG (Project Executive Group) and hedge our bets with the insurers. PEG was a reclusive beast, approachable only via written submissions, mediated, in our case, by Construction Manager West Joe Stacey (the Rear Admiral) and his consigliere, the aptly named Tim Smart, who duly presented our proposed budget provision. Inevitably, the main antagonist would be the ASPRO
(Asset Protection) contingent from RT. Experience told us they doubled as the Asset Betterment Operator. Sure enough, their immediate demand was for a vast stretch of viaduct to be piled, requiring the unfortunate evacuation of railway arches occupied by many small businesses. That was an aspiration which, in one form or another, they would not relinquish lightly. Attention did shift to the viaduct. Reilly’s hunch about a millstream proved well founded, possibly more so than the structure itself. Extensive investigations and monitoring were commissioned. Friedman’s scrutiny of
12 BRITISH TUNNELLING SOCIETY
the data substantiated his log plot, predicting an inexorable slide requiring major intervention. His work established an indisputable time frame for whatever was to come. *[footnote] But what was going on? We played host to the finest geotechnical minds in the land, enthused by the prospect of such a cerebral challenge. Perplexed, they went a-pondering. Equally enthusiastic was Rupert Travis, the insurers’
loss adjuster, who, given his calling, had a most soothing bedside manner. The policy, he observed, only responded to a fortuitous event, one occurring by chance. Regrettably, however, it remained silent on the absence of damage. He met the suggestion of a ‘wait and see’ approach with politely raised eyebrows, musing, however, that extravagant action was probably best avoided. Exceptional localised settlement continued where the
viaduct was founded on an unusually thick layer of alluvium, coincident with the historic millstream. Informed by a wealth of new data, the geotechs coalesced around a theory that tunnelling had disrupted the existing soil structure equilibrium, thereby precipitating latent consolidation of the fluvial deposits. The clock was ticking. Already on site, joint venture
Aoki-Soletanche (AS), under Clif Kettle, promptly designed a remedial grouting scheme. Andy Tasker (Joseph Gallagher Ltd, JGL) responded with the need for a grout shaft. Well-honed external affairs teams swung into concerted action. All the stops were pulled out. Rupert popped by to advise that the policy would,
after all, speak to a claim for mitigating damage. So far so good, but storm clouds were gathering. Our blind budget provision was not just toast, it was crumbs when compared with the big bread now rapidly being consumed. This had not gone unnoticed. John McCarthy, a vastly experienced and meticulous gentle giant, was speedily tempted out of retirement to manage the finances. Crucially, he was also unflappable. While John’s draft provision revision might not have made the adjuster cough, it was guaranteed to make PEG splutter. Word came that Hugh Doherty, JLEP PD, was minutes away. We bundled into the car behind Jim (The Driver), who delighted in spotting any branch of the saucy sandwich shop ‘Prats a Manager’. No reflection on his front seat passenger, respectfully known as the Huge One. A deceptively taciturn but definitely not dour
Glaswegian tunneller, Doherty invariably already had a canny idea of the answer when asking any question. If you did your job and told it as it was, it mightn’t get you out of trouble but there was a fair chance you might get his backing. This was not a social call. We walked south through the gloomy Millstream
arch, an inclined drilling rig and crew silhouetted against the early afternoon glare, and out into the blinding sunlight amid a cacophony of construction clatter. Oh, my God! From every angle, a multitude of men and machines, motoring and manoeuvring: Gordon Battye, cooking on gas, Bermondsey’s bijou Bauma, at full chat. Seeing is believing. That’s why yer man had come. Starter for ten in the bag: John’s number, round it up,
no, double it. What’s it all going to cost? Back in the car, Jim waited for the go ahead. An echo
about expenditure authorisation bounced off the windscreen, a glance across to Reilly and a silent rattle through the possible contenders. Time for a one-word confession but answer came there none. Merely the slightest dip of the head and a flick of the wrist to Jim.]
JUBILEE LINE EXTENSION HEATHROW 13
... but storm clouds were gathering. Our blind budget provision was not just toast, it was crumbs, compared to the big bread now being consumed.
Above: Andy Smith and TBM crew at a breakthrough in Poole.
Left: One of three step-plate junctions north of King’s Cross.
SECTION 9 1ST LAYOUT
TALES FROM THE MILLSTREAM BANK 9.4.1
OUR SPONSORS
The ‘BTS at 50’ team and the BTS are extremely grateful to all our sponsors. Quite simply, without your help, producing a book such as this would have been uneconomic. The BTS could not have justified subsidising it to the sum necessary, and the price would have confined sales to a few copies only. This would not justify the mammoth effort of those involved in its production and the very large number of tunnellers who contributed.
Joseph Gallagher SPECIALIST CIVIL ENGINEERING CONTRACTORS
PLATINUM SPONSORS
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Available exclusively through the BTS website
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