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Mammoth "Metal Moles" Tunnel Deep Beneath London
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that the first of eight highly specialized Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM), each weighing nearly 1,000 tonnes, is being positioned at Royal Oak in west London where it will begin its slow journey east. It will carve out a new east-west underground link that will eventually run 73 miles from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. Described as 'voracious worms nibbling their way under London,' the 150-meter long machines will operate 24 hours a day and move through the earth at a rate of about 100m per week, taking three years to build a network of tunnels beneath the city's streets. Behind a 6.2-meter cutter head is a hydraulic arm. Massive chunks of earth are fed via a narrow-gauge railway along the interior of the machine, which is itself on wheels, as the machines are monitored from a surface control room which tracks their positions using GPS. Hydraulic rams at the front keep them within millimeters of their designated routes. 'It's not so much a machine as a mobile factory,' says Roy Slocombe, adding that the machine is staffed by a 20-strong 'tunnel gang' and comes with its own kitchen and toilet. Meanwhile, critics complain that the project is a peculiarly British example of how not to get big infrastructure schemes off the ground, because almost 30 years will have elapsed from its political conception in 1989 to its current projected completion date of 2018."
....as anyone who's seen the beginning of "Reign of Fire could tell you.....
GPS?? Underground? Cool, so my scuba GPS is just around the corner too then.
From the summary:
the 150-meter long machines...
From the article:
The 140 metre long, fully assembled tunnel boring machine...
At 140 metres, each TBM would just fit just inside the boundaries of a cricket oval.
Was 140 meters not impressive enough, so the submitter had to add 10 meters?
It's older than any other subway system.... Which would make them the original leader, eh?
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Call me when they can load one up on a big green supersonic aircraft and deploy it anywhere in the world on a moment's notice.
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It has more gaps than any other system - you have to constantly mind them.
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There's nothing peculiarly British about partisan politics resulting in funding taking years to be approved and plenty of NIMBYs protesting the plans!
" . . . well, instead of a Mammoth Metal Mole, we could build this Giant Wooden Rabbit . . . "
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
London's system appears to be conveniently bi-directional.
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It has more gaps than any other system - you have to constantly mind them.
That's why I prefer the Moscow Metro. Because there, the gap minds you.
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You can't count the life of a project from the date someone first thought of it. By that measure, the Apollo moon landing project took at least 100 years. You should start counting from the date significant funding began, which in this case is 2010. Not bad, compared to, say, Boston's Big Dig.
Sorry, but no, it's in Cumbria, in the North of England. http://g.co/maps/4f64r
And I lost one mod point for you...
They had to add the stop because the Alternate Thursday Rule, when applied in conjunction with the Left-Hand Turns Only Method, caused too many people to end up in the middle of the Thames.
Well, it isn't going to do anything, because they don't want the tunnels collapsing...
This isn't like pumping water, gas or oil out from under the ground - the tunnels need to be servicable and usable after the fact, otherwise there isn't any point in making them, so they get lined with concrete or some other material which keeps them rigid and bearing the weight of the ground above them.
Bear in mind that they've been doing this in London for 200 years or more, what with the London Underground, service tunnels, Royal Mail tunnels, BT telecommunications tunnels etc etc etc. London is criscrossed with tunnels already, 99% of them not having any issue on the surface at all. They've got experience in this.
Whitechapel already has a station with 3 lines.
In fact, you know that things are strange in Whitechapel, because the underground trains run overground, and the overground trains run underground.
The first London subway line opened in 1863, so it's not a new thing. In terms of milage, it's the second largest metro system in the world (ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems) And 45% of its 249 miles are underground. There are some facts and figures here: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/modesoftransport/londonunderground/1608.aspx
About 10 years ago I was commuting via the bus for a while, and was curious about the true efficiency. So I took the total amount of fuel that the bus system was reported to use in a year, and divided by the number of passengers and total miles driven (all part of their annual report). My conclusion was that the bus system got about 12 passenger miles per gallon averaged over all their routes and schedules. Unfortunately for most people the real price of taking the bus, besided the bus fare, was the loss of time. My commute took over an hour each way, and could be driven even in bad traffic in about 25 minutes. At the time I was only making $15/hour, so the opportunity cost to me of taking the bus was very conservatively over an hour per day or $15 per day (not even counting the time to walk out to and wait for the bus, and the restriction on my work schedule - the last bus home went by at about 6:30 PM) - enough to buy a very nice car if I wanted to.
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That's sort of debatable. The tunnels are too small for it to work as a heavy rail link as defined in European rail standards (as was pointed out at a presentation I was at recently, they could get a European standard-sized heavy rail locomotive through the tunnel but not operate it through the tunnel because there's no room for safe electrical separations). But there's a policy decision for it not to be a metro system, which would allow smaller units. So it's actually neither one nor the other; a heavy rail system that is too light to be a heavy rail system. Say one thing for the British: we can compromise.
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In fairness, there are genuine improvements coming down the line. (Sorry...) These are at least partly driven by a desire not to look like idiots when a few million extra people are around for the Olympics later this year.
New trains with air-conditioning and a walk-through design, as used in underground networks such as those in Paris and Rome, have been rolling out for a year or so. They are replacing one line at a time and due to cover 40% of the network by 2015.
Also, a deal was announced just last week for Virgin Media to provide WiFi access on the London Underground during the 2012 Olympics, though it only covers station areas and not the trains themselves while they are in the tunnels. Its stated goal is to allow travellers to respond more quickly to disruption and avoid the busiest areas (which are almost certainly going to be flooded far beyond capacity at peak times during the Olympics, whatever happens).
The system is still nowhere near the level of, for example, the other European capitals I mentioned, though, and won't get there any time soon.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That's sincerely reassuring then, and I thank you. I hadn't thought they could successfully reinforce tunnels a tenth of a kilometer wide.
Um, what?
The tunnel diameter is 6.2 metres, i.e. a bit bigger than the cross section of a train + emergency walkway. The new, underground station platforms will be 250 metres long (wow!) but still only ~18m diameter (my guess from the mock-up video). Presumably they've planned for enough space for most of the "some 1,500 passengers ... carried in each train at peak periods" to get off at a single station.
Tunnelling can cause problems though. For example, London's local Quake II level (see picture) required some special work to avoid the Houses of Parliament collapsing.
They are actually retrofitting AC systems into the newer rolling stock. It's just difficult due to the size of the tunnels, which places quite strict limits on the size of the train but more importantly, the ability to dump all that waste heat - you can't just pump it into the tunnels as it's already quite warm down there.
You need to be able to use heat exchangers that are very efficient, or cycle the heat out of a transfer medium when the train comes up above ground (as they all tend to do outside of the centre).
No. London's predates New York's by about 41 years. (1863 vs 1904). Glasgow's is dated to 1896, so even the Scots beat the Yanks to this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems
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You have heard of the Channel Tunnel haven't you?
They dug from both ends and met in the middle, under much deeper water than the Thames, and were only a centimetre out.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
London's Underground is what is usually considered its "subway" system. It's the oldest in the world, and one of the most comprehensive.
This, however, is something else. This is a mainline railway route which is going under central London. Tube trains (on the London Underground) are small vehicles with an odd cross-section, so that they can go through smaller tunnels, and are powered by "four rail electrification". This new Crossrail line is designed for full-sized intercity trains, with normal overhead-wire electrification. This is part of why it's such a big project.