3147, The Chairman; The two tubes superposed are from B to where? ---
B to D. At D they branch out, two turning up to the north and joining at E, the line that is used by the Midland and Great Northern down to Smithfield; and from the other branch of D you come to F, where it joins up with the same line. I will now take the southern one; we will call this G. From G to H there are two tubes, which join up with the South Eastern and Chatham at a point just north of the old Snow Hill Station. I ought to have said that at J there is a branch on this tube, and two tubes proceed in a northerly direction, joining up with the Midland Railway again at K.
Now for the eastern tube. There is another map showing the line running into Bishopsgate Station. (Map produced.) The line is quite straight from here onwards to where it joins up at the northern side of the existing Bishopsgate Station. The line rises here on a gradient of 1 in 60; I will call that L to M.
I would like to explain how I propose to deal with the incoming and outgoing trains. Suppose a train from the North arrives at E, it will proceed on this blue track up to D and B, into the Clearing House. At B it can take either of the blue tracks. Those two blue tracks lead to the 20 tracks in the Clearing; so that we get the trains from the North into any track in the Clearing House, if it is intended to turn it round to the North again, it will come in on this side, it will be unloaded and reloaded and pass out again, still on the blue track, on the Midland Railway, and do on. By that means no disconnecting of the locomotive will be necessary. I am satisfied that the arrangements that Mr. Gattie proposes would enable trains to be unloaded and reloaded again in the space of perhaps 5 or 10 minutes; so that the same locomotive could take the train out as brought in. If you have two trains following one another very closely, do closely that they could not convinently dealt with in this tube, though such a contingency, I admit, is very unlikely, then it would continue down the Midland Railway and into the Clearing House on this red tube, and leave again by the north. The idea of having these two tubes of different levels is to enable a train to enter the Clearing House from any direction, or to leave it from any track simultaneously. That is to say, there is no stymieing of one train with another.
There is no crossing tracks on the one level. Coming to the south tubes from G to H, a train arriving from the South Eastern system, or the South Western, or the Brighton line, would proceed into the Clearing House on this side, or alternatively, it could keep on the Midland Railway up through here, and enter the Clearing House on the north. It would always leave on the opposite side, that is to say, practically always, unless it was more convenient to return it the same way; I think it would be better to keep the direction of the trains always constant. There is an exception in the case of the eastern tube. Here you have a train from the Great Eastern system arriving at M. It will then come into the Clearing House, arriving at L; and the north, it would require to have another engine attached to it, to draw it out again, to take it away. There is no difficulty about that, because the number of trains coming from the east is much lower than from the north. If my memory serves me rightly, it is one in every 11 1/2 minutes.
Comments
Post a Comment