Unbuilt Britain

CaptainCalvert

El Pip said:
I know Edwin Chadwick who was heavily involved in Public Health at the time proposed a 'separate system' scheme. But I've never seen any plans for it, in large part I think because he wasn't an engineer or anything similar so had no ability to design such a scheme.

The details I have seen do point to his non-engineering background. He wanted the system to consist of glazed pipes with a carefully balanced constant flow of sewage through them so they were self cleaning. This require a ridiculous system of carefully graded pipes and also meant it was all but impossible to add new connections to the system without ruining that balance. Indeed if too many people in one part of town had children or otherwise expanded their household that would also unbalance the system.

Ignoring all that a two pipe system is always going to be about twice as expensive as your are duplicating everything. Any small savings you get from sharing the same excavations will be lost in the fact that two small pipes are far less efficient than one large pipe. So even if the 'separate system' had been proposed on a more rational basis it would lose out on cost.
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Yep. In short it was best value for money at the time.

Waste and stormwater are usually gravity systems so need to slope downwards. That usually means they get deeper [1] as they move from the collection poont. But that also means as flows combine the line needs to get bigger, so the biggest pipes are usually deepest - hence more expensive and harder to build in the days before widely available excavation plant.
Then there's a lot of variation in sewage flows as people don't all flush at the same time (though they could in theory), and a lot more in stormwater since rainfall isn't particularly consistent.
Also, in the days before proper treatment, waste went into the stream or river or sea, so combined systems weren't a big deal. The smarter more cost effective approach at the time [2] was build one system that could cope with both big and small flows. That leads into the brilliance of egg shaped sewers which allow a more or less constant flow velocity however full. But that's getting into far too much detail so I'll stop there.


[1] Not always, as ground level could also decrese along the route.
[2] but not now we have effective treatment and know better.
 

Carl Schwamberger

CaptainCalvert said:
Yep. In short it was best value for money at the time.

Waste and stormwater are usually gravity systems so need to slope downwards. That usually means they get deeper [1] as they move from the collection poont. But that also means as flows combine the line needs to get bigger, so the biggest pipes are usually deepest - hence more expensive and harder to build in the days before widely available excavation plant.
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Locally its been necessary to build a couple lift stations, and snake additional capacity around existing structures. Power and communications cables, building foundations, water supply occupy much of the same underground optimal for the sewers. In the longer run the city infrastructure is going to 'move' southwards in the 21st Century and probably the 22d Cent.
 

Hayatgheibi

Has anyone considered what metro systems would look like for Birmingham and Manchester if they were built in the early/mid 20th centuries?
 

Mike D

Hayatgheibi said:
Has anyone considered what metro systems would look like for Birmingham and Manchester if they were built in the early/mid 20th centuries?
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Presumably similar to Merseyrail on Merseyside? Three or four stations around the main city centres (I don't know either well enough to say exactly where) with others out into the local suburbs for commuting into the city centre?
 

Hayatgheibi

The planned rail map with new underground stations
An illustration in the Birmingham Post, showing what a proposed underground tunnel network could have looked like.

Did some research and there were indeed plans for underground railways in Manchester and Birmingham in the 1970s.
 
Giant Man Eating Rabbits

Giant Man Eating Rabbits

Banned
I don't know if this counts as it's my own idea and completely hypothetical, never planned and even discussed

So how about cutting a trench across the top of the Thames U-Bend in 1900 and then filling in the U-Bend creating more land to build on and increasing the flow of the river?

Although you'd have to move some of the docks that are at the bottom of the U to along the shore of the new cutting.


istockphoto-545269620-612x612.jpg
 

focus9912

Giant Man Eating Rabbits said:
I don't know if this counts as it's my own idea and completely hypothetical, never planned and even discussed

So how about cutting a trench across the top of the Thames U-Bend in 1900 and then filling in the U-Bend creating more land to build on and increasing the flow of the river?

Although you'd have to move some of the docks that are at the bottom of the U to along the shore of the new cutting.


View attachment 883622
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Eh...it has been discussed before....
Masked Grizzly said:
A 1796 plan to straighten the River Thames with about four proposed routes. - https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2015/10/04/unbuilt-london-straightening-the-river-thames/
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The picture in the post are broken, but the pictures is from the aforementioned article...
 

BlueTrousers

PMN1 said:
Re-appeared in 1930 or so
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The 'Central Station' is notable by being entirely useless to the vast majority of the country, but convenient for those living in the south-east of England, thereby neatly summing up the priorities of those behind the scheme.

There's also an uncomfortable similarity to proposals for another European capital....
456px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_146III-373%2C_Modell_der_Neugestaltung_Berlins_%28%22Germania%22%29.jpg
 

The History Man

Mike D said:
Presumably similar to Merseyrail on Merseyside? Three or four stations around the main city centres (I don't know either well enough to say exactly where) with others out into the local suburbs for commuting into the city centre?
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In 1956, Birmingham considered the possibility of building a Rapid Transit line from Rubery to Pype Hayes that would have used a combination of central reservation and subway track. However, it was not proceeded with after a cost analysis indicated that the proposed line would make operational losses.
 
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