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 theloss 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 vehicles
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
and Dover. The united stations of the railways
at London-bridge attract during the year not
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 ;
Regent-street, Pall-mall, and Piccadilly on the
West ; St. Martin's-lane, Oxford-street, Holborn,
and Tottenham-court-road on the north; and the
Strand, Fleet-street, and the City on the east ;
while the pier at Hungerford places the passengers
in direct communication with the steam-boats on
the Thames. The inhabitants of Greenwich, NeW-
cross, Lewisham, Blackheath, Woolwich, Graves-
end, and other places on the lines of the
Southern. and Bouth-Rastern Railways, will be
brought direetiiyililltearsidst of the clubs,
theatres, and al per tirnarto that and makes up the
celebrity and attractions of the West-end. As the
line will effect a junction with the South-Western
Railway, it will afford direct access to London-
bridge and the City for passengers for Richmond,
Putney, Wimbledon, Hampton, Windsor, and the
South-Western Railway.
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 area thus 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 up with brickwork
and cement for 20 or 30 feet, and the remainder of
the distance, up 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 slab of
granite, and on this rest the ends of the girdersd
which will support the road for the railway,
the side-paths for foot
These iron gir-
ders are the largest that have
any bridge, and they will have this peculiarity, that
passengers.be n
constructed
for
any
r
they will carry the whole roadway, instead of there
being a separate girder, as is usually the case,
for each pair of rails. Had this bridge been
attempted some years since, and before engineer-
ing science had attained to its present state 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
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,
worked by a small portable steam-engine, is em-
ployed to drill through these several plates, and
a hole is thus formed for the bolt with mathe-
matical accuracy. So closely does the bolt or pin
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 inchef3 in diameter, form