The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-09 00:00:00

TEE NEW RAILWAY BRIDGE AT

HUNGERFORD MARKET.

The railway which is in course of construction
from the South-Eastern station at London-bridge,
to Charing-cross, with a branch leaving it near
Union-street, in the Borough, and crossing the
river to the back of the Mansion-house, will form
one of the most important public works which
have been carried out for some years past in the
metropolis. It will relieve the already over-
crowded thoroughfares of all that portion of the
traffic which passes from the West-end to the
South-Eastern, London and Brighton, North Kent,
and Crystal Palace Railways. The streets of that
portion of the metropolis which lie between Temple-
bar and London-bridge are now at certain periods
of the day all but impassable, and the time occu-
pied by an omnibus or cab in going over this short
distance is not unfrequently as great as that
which is occupied in performing the whole journey
from London to Brighton. A short time since an.
estimate was made on the:loss sustained by brewers,
wharfingers, carriers, and proprietors of public
conveyances by these stoppages in the streets, and
it_was found to be up wards of £1,000,000 per an-
num. Such is the value of the time lost by vehicle
in passing through the City. Add to this the amount
of annoyance sustained by persons anxious to arrive
at a railway station by a particular time, who
find all their efforts have been unavailing. Of
the amount of traffic which requires to be accom-
modated by some other route than that of the
crowded thoroughfares of the City, some idea may
be formed from the facts which were given in
evidence before the Committee of the House of
Commons during the inquiry into the merits of the
proposed Charing- cross Railway. It was then
stated, from reliable returns obtained by the
South-Eastern Railway
.Company and the police,
that out of 4,190 cabs which left the station there
were but 807 the destination of which was in the
City. The rest, with the exception of 579, which
went to the south of the Thames, and which, to a
great extent, were on the line of the proposed rail-
way, went westward, and passed through most of
the crowded thoroughfares which we have men-
tioned. There were 418 cabs and 845 passengers
for the Blackfriars district, 780 cabs and 695 pas •
sengers for the Waterloo district, 1,029 cabs and
897 persons for Charing-cross and its neighbourhood,
265 cabs and 275 passengers for Westminster, and
249 cabs and 185 passengers for Pimlico and Chel-
sea. These returns, however, by no means exhaust
the traffic between the West-end and the London-
bridge stations. The omnibuses which ply between
these two points make not less than 2,000 journeys
daily, or 600,000 in the year. To these vehicles is
mainly due the stoppage of the thoroughfares,
and the delays in making the journey which so con-
stantly take place. The journey from Charing-cross to
London-bridge almost invariably occupies more time
than would be required to get over half the distance
to Brighton, or one-third of that between London
at London-bridge attract during
the year not
of the railways
and Dover. The united stations
less than thirteen millions and a half of passengers,
and any plan which will divert one-half of that
living stream into other and less crowded channels
cannot but be regarded as a great and much-
needed public improvement. Charing-cross is of all
places in London that best adapted for a railway
station. It is to the West-end what the Bank and
London-bridge are to the East—the great centre of
the traffic. There are Whitehall, the Houses of
Parliament, and Westminster on the south-west ;
Rer ''
.y on the
Holborn,
an, and the
St.

the east ;
)assengers
1-boats on
'jell, New-
h, Graves-
%s of the
0, will be
.he clubs,
:es up the
As the
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London-
Richmond,
Ir, and the

The most important works connected with those
lines are the two bridges which it is proposed to
erect across the Thames. One of these, viz.,
that for the Cannon-street extension, has
not yet been designed, but considerable progress
has been made with the bridge which is to cross
the river at Hungerford. The present Suspension
bridge, with its piers, was purchased by the Charing
Cross Railway Company for £168,000, and it will
continue open to the public, as at present, until the
new railway bridge, which will have side footpaths
for passengers, is sufficiently advanced to afford the
necessary accommodation. The new bridge will
have four pairs of rails; it will be the widest rail-
way bridge in the world, and is to be supported by
the two brick piers that now earry the towers
for the chains of the Suspension-bridge, and by five
pairs of iron columns sunk into the bed of the river.
These columns are 10 ft. in diameter, and have their
foundations resting on the London clay, 40ft. below
the bed of the river. These columns are built up
without resort to the old mode of construction by
coffer-dams, which so greatly increase the expense
and delay of bridge building. A coffer-dam consists
of two or more rows of piles driven around the area
on which the pier is to be constructed, the space be-
tween the piles is filled in with clay, and when the
water is pumped out of the areathus enclosed, the
workmen are enabled to carry on their work
without inconvenience from the water, except
from such as may arise from leakage or land
springs. The coffer-dam is removed when the
piers are brought up to the required height ; they
form no part of the bridge, and are merely em-
ployed for the purpose of assisting in its construc-
tion. In the case of the new Hungerford-bridge,
no piers were required to be erected, and no coffer-
dams have been or will be employed. The iron
columns are built up in sections of about 12 feet in
length. One of these lowered into the river until
reaches the bottom ; then a second piece is added to
it, and so on. When raised above high-water mark,
the water is pumped out of these iron cylinders, and
the workmen descend and excavate the earth at the
bottom; and as this is removed from beneath, the
weight of the cylinders forces them lower. The work
of excavation is continued until a suitable foundation

is reached, and that, in the present case, is found to
be in the London clay, or forty feet below the bed of
the river. Enormous weights, amounting to several
hundred tons of iron, are placed upon the top of the
cylinders in columns, in order to force them down
as low as possible. When the columns have reached
the foundations the hollow is filled np with brickwork
and cement for 20 or 30 feet, and the remainder of
the distance, np to within three feet of the top of
the column, is filled up with concrete. Upon the
top of this concrete is placed an immense slabf
granite, and on this rest the ends of the gi.r o
girders
which will support the road for the
ese railway, and
gir-
ders are the largest that have the side-paths for foot passengebren
s
any bridge, and they will have
they will carry the whole roadway,instead of there
being a separate girder, as
is
useally the case,
peculiarity,
These
nstructe iron
dthfoart
this
for each pair of rails. Had this bridge been
sinctee, aitnsdpenbreesforet t
engineer-
ing of
perfection, there would have been five girders re-
quired to carry the four pairs of lines of railway.
These girders are put together upon the timber
some
had years attained
staging erected for the purpose, and they are made
up entirely of plates of iron, varying from three to
eleven feet in length. The greatest accuracy is re-
quired in drilling the various rivet holes, and this
essential is ensured by the simple and ingenious
' mode by which the drawings for all the plates are
made, and by which the exact position of every
hole is determined to the minutest fraction of an
inch. The sections of eleven feet and the diagonal
braces which give strength and rigidity to the
girders, are secured by
a pin or bolt of four inches
in diameter which passes through a number of
plates laid side by side. In order that these
bolts should fit with precision, a drilling machine,
abtoieleal is
accuracy. thus formed
se
worked by a small portable steam-engine, is em-
ployed to drill through these several plates, and
a closely
el
y the
a.
eboltsthe
w it
bolth mo
ra t
pinhe-
fit into this opening that not even a ray of light
can find its way through between the two surfaces.
These steel bolts, of four inches is diameter, form

the keys which holds the girders together, and
when all are united, the timber staying is removed
forward, and the girder rests with its two ends
upon the supports of the pier or column. Three of
the girders are already finished, a fourth is on
the eve of completion, and the distance between
the Surrey side and the first brick pier is spanned
by two lengths of girders • the centre, or widest
portion will be spanned by four girders; and from
the second brick pier to the Middlesex, the space
will be covered by two more girders, making to-
gether eight of these gigantic iron girders for
each side of the bridge. There will be ten of the
iron columns, and the two brick piers, to carry the
bridge. There will be, of course, none of the
chains which at present make the graceful cate-
nary curve across the river, nor the towers
which are such conspicuously ugly object in the
centre of the stream. The original estimates
for the bridge were £160,000, but the cost had
been increased by making it wide enough for four
pairs of rails, instead of two, as first suggested.
The station at Charing-cross, including the cost of
Hungerford-market, was estimated at .£320,000 ;
the viadict between the Waterloo-road and the
south bank of the Thames, at £126,000 ' • and the
works between London-bridge and the Waterloo
station, at £464,ooo—making the total cost
£1,070,000. Towards the expense of making the
line, the South-Eastern Company subscribe a sum
of £600,000, and they also have the power to
subscribe £350,000 towards the cost of the City
extension to Cannon-street. Between Charing-
cross and the point at which this branch will leave
the main line, there will be a third pair of rails in
the viaduct, to be used exclusively by the trains from
the City, which will start every five minutes, and
perform the journey in that time, the trains being
kept constantly oscillating, as it were, backwards
and forwards during the day.

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