This weekend, a Victorian steam-fair returns to London for a couple of weeks as part of its Summer perambulations around the South-East of England, which reminded me of a news article I have from my collection of old newspapers.

This article, published in July 1858 concerns the marvel of a moving steam engine being used to pull goods from a factory by Waterloo Station to a riverside wharf roughly where the London Eye stands today.

Although steam powered railways existed by this time (Trevithick’s first example of 1804 long preceded the more famous George Stephenson’s Rocket of 1829), the idea of putting a steam engine onto the road was largely held up by punitive legislation that restricted a mechanised road vehicle to just 2 mph in towns and cities. Hence, while some attempts had been made to develop a steam engine for the road, there was little interest in the idea. That is until this experiment took place in London, and showed that the steam engine could be harnessed, not for speed, but for strength.

Anyhow: Here is the article and the accompanying drawing, taken from the Illustrated London News.

On Thursday, July 29, an experiment was made in the Westminster-road, and witnessed by thousands of spectators, who seemed much interested and astonished on seeing a steam-engine traversing the streets of London.

The machine was steered by a person who stood in front, and handled a wheel about the size and appearance of those used in river steam-boats, but made of metal. Two other men were at the end of the engine, one acting as stocker, and his companion assisting at a kind of break when it was necessary to turn. This was all the manual aid required for its progress.

Attached was a trunk, or platform, on wheels, loaded with heavy packages of several tons weight, and thus proceeded from the manufactory of Maudslay and Field, along the Westminster-road to their wharf close to Westminster-bridge, then entrance to which is in the Belvidere-road, and here it was guided round with the utmost ease, and without a moment’s delay.

The engine in the invention of a gentleman names Bray, who has obtained a patent. It is adapted to travel up hill or down, and its speed may be increased at pleasure. On this occasion it went through the throng of carriages and people at a walking , and it was several times stopped and then set in motion, showing it to be perfectly safe and under control.

The extent to which this new application of steam power may be made available cannot at present be determined, but, in the case of the engineers who have matured its construction, its use has been practically demonstrated. Those immense masses of ironwork produced in the workshops of Maudslay and Field, gigantic boilers and other machinery weighing many tons, when required to be removed being placed on trucks, had to be drawn by ten, twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen horses. Now, here is a motive force, occupying no more room than a van or common omnibus, performing the same work with an economy of space most desirable in crowded thoroughfares, and doubtless with a great saving, as between the animal and the machine.

The time may soon arrive when this invention many be used for carrying passengers in our streets, for drawing heavily-laden carts or wagons on the highway or dragging ploughs in the fields, and for performing other necessary and important services which no animal force could sustain or accomplish. Let us see, then, what result will follow the journey of the iron steed who did his task so well and so easily on the 29th of July 1858.

Today is St Patrick’s Day, where people who ordinarily would struggle to locate Ireland on a map suddenly realise that because some dim and distant relative may, possibly, once have had carnal knowledge of an Irish peasant, that they are de-facto Irish, at least, for the day.

Today, millions of people will gaze lovingly at the alter of the hand-pump as pints of Guinness are drawn out to gasps of delight from the drinkers.

However, it is the Guinness aspect of the whole shebang that puzzles me.

I find it curious – not that a specific beverage has become linked to the Irish culture as that is commonplace – but that it attracts such adoration. To say “I don’t like Guinness” is to attract pitying looks of disbelief as the heretical unbeliever is repeatedly exhorted to repent their sinful views and join the congregation in worship.

Can you imagine any other food or drink where it is presumed that the entire human population must like it? Not even chocolate can command such an abandonment of common sense. If I were to argue that everyone should, indeed MUST like chocolate with the fervour that I have received from the Guinness drinking classes, you’d all think I was going slightly la-la.

No Guinness doesn’t switch from vile to delightful when poured in a special way, and no, I am not going to keep trying something I don’t like on the random off-chance that I might “acquire” a taste for it.

Guinness is to the drinks industry, what Apple is to the computer industry as both command a degree of fervent loyalty that is religious in intensity and goes far beyond logical reason.

An apple computer owning Guinness drinker could possibly be the worst horror ever inflicted upon humanity.

So, tonight I will not be drinking a dark stout in celebration of my non-existent Irish genes. I won’t be racing around the place wearing a giant felt hat that was stitched together in a Vietnamese factory, and most importantly, I won’t be dancing badly to Irish folk music.

I might eat some potatoes though.

Like most industries, the web design industry is affected by fashions and trends. As soon as one website tries something and coincidentally happens to be successful, people instantly presume the design was the key factor and update their websites accordingly.

Google introduced the minimalist website at a time when most websites were cluttered and suddenly everyone wanted to pull in the Digital Feng Shui experts and de-clutter their websites.

Blogs looked like the future once, and big corporate websites not only needed blogs written in a casual way by the Managing Director Press Office, but this expanded to making the whole website look like a blog, and in some cases putting out key financial information in in blog postings rather than in the investors or financial news section.

Now there is a new trend – the analogue clock.

I am not sure where it started, but the first version of it I saw was on the relaunched UK Parliament website, which apart from being full of bugs had suddenly acquired an animated clock at the top of the page. Despite being fairly universally disliked in the comments section, the website designer was adamant that it would remain.

Recently,  the BBC website received one of its periodic evolutions and gained a clock at the top of the page. Semi-tolerable in that it is in the style of the BBC clock from about two-decades ago, so old people will like it, but I still wonder what functionality it adds to the website.

Recently I noted that the Chinese website, Xinhua had gained a clock – although it looks suspiciously like the BBC clock and even had the same animated seconds hand. The file name is different though, so they have at least tried to cover their tracks if plagiarism has occurred.

This morning, my attention was drawn to a website promoting a course about tea tasting (nice idea, ouch price tag) and it has a clock on the top of the website. Are people timing their tea making process by website clocks I wondered?

These are just the websites I could recall this morning – I’ve seen clocks sprouting up all over the place over the past couple of months.

The clocks are taking over!

As quite a fan of both the art and the science of Horology, and at one time had about a dozen different clocks in my living room, I love clocks – but not on websites.

If I want to see clocks, I’ll go here. I don’t need to be reminded of the time every time I visit a website though.

Please, let the fashion for putting analogue clocks on the tops of websites be a short-lived one.

Update:

It’s been drawn to my attention that the beta version of the new BBC website has dropped the clock. It seems the era of website clocks may indeed be a short-lived one. Hurruh!

Yesterday, along with several hundred other equally excited people during the day, I finally got a chance to walk along a bit of train tunnel – yes the infamous Brunel Thames Tunnel that had been the topic of much news reporting over the past couple of days.

Turning up to Rotherhithe Station with tickets in hand, there were four handwritten signs on the windows warning that the tours were sold out. It seemed that earlier in the morning, the BBC had said that tickets were available, leading to a flood of soon to be disappointed visitors arriving clutching bank notes in the hope of a peek.

Also thanks to the somewhat anger inducing ticketing website operated by the LT Museum, there were people who thought they had booked a tunnel tour, but had actually only got tickets for the Victorian Fair and were being politely, but firmly told they couldn’t go down the tunnel. Even after I booked my tickets, was wasn’t 100% sure I had got what I thought I had asked for until the tickets arrived in the post and I could relax a bit.

After the usual heath and safety warnings about trip hazards and what to do if the lights go out (stand still) or an evacuation was needed (stand still), or feeling ill (stand still), we were handed over to our guide for the evening. A jolly chap from Chicago who only started working for the museum earlier that week. Not a bad start to a new job – take the first walking tours though a tunnel in some 145 years.

I am sure most people know the history of the tunnel – or you can look it up – so I wont recount the obvious here.

Slowly going down the tunnel, though we passed from the preserved original brick work into the newer concrete shield that was applied over the bricks when the tunnels were last modernised, rather controversially in 1995. I have sympathies with both sides of the argument, and in an ideal world, the tunnels should have been restored – but then again, why spend a fortune on brick work that frankly only maintenance staff would ever see?

Well, apart from a couple of thousand people this weekend of course – but even that rarity doesn’t justify not only the cost, but the extended closure of the line for the restoration. Sad, but true.

So down the tunnel as it gently sloped under the river, punctuated with short breaks for a bit of history, and then slowly back up again to stand in the very center of Wapping station in a spot that would be most unwise at any other time.

There were strict rules about not stepping on the rails, so small “bridges” not only took us from the one side to the other, but also offer elevated platforms for photography.

As an aside, we walked northwards on what is actually the southbound rail track – and visa versa on the way back.

Slowly heading back, without stops and back up and out into the fresh air once again.

OK, all we did was walk along a concrete lined tunnel – but if you are going to walk down a concrete lined tunnel, then this was the one you would have wanted to walk down.

Afterwards to the recreation of the Victorian Fair next to the Brunel Museum, and a chance to clamber through a tiny gap to get inside Brunel’s Shaft.

The museum curator gave a long, and innuendo laden speech about the history of the tunnel and regularly reminded visitors that today was the first time in 145 years that anyone had been able to stand in the shaft itself. Apart presumably those of us who had a look inside last year?

Although walking tours are probably never going to happen again, they will be resuming the tunnel tours they used to run with London Underground. Basically, a guided tour around the two stations at either end, linked up by a slow train trip through the tunnel and they arrange to turn on the floodlights, so you can see from inside a carriage what some of us lucky few got to see by foot. I had done that tour a few years ago, and they are actually good fun, so worth a visit when the line reopens again.

Brunel’s shaft is currently being converted into an extension for the museum, which will roughly triple the amount of space they have for displays, hopefully turning small incidental museum into a serious destination in its own right.

Obviously, I took tons of photos, and this time experimented again with taking HDR photos, most of which came out fairly well. The aim being to capture all the detail without needing a flash so that the photos reflect the dim light down there, without being too dark to see anything. In theory.

Pretty much every London based blogger worth the title has booked a tour and their reports can be found at:

853 – Diamond Geezer – The Great Wen (ex Time Out Big Smoke) – Annie Mole.

Blogless photographers include:

LondonStuff – mykreeve – webponce & mctumshie (who has lots more photos of the fair than the tunnel).

It might sound like a rather obscure sort of event that just a few people would be interested in – yet Londoners have leapt at the chance to walk through the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe this weekend.

Tickets for the evening and Saturday visits were sold out almost as soon as they were announced – with the phone line and (decrepit) website suffering under the load of requests. People are now begging for tickets almost as if they are trying to attend a pop-concert.

Thames Tunnel Ticket Touts could make a fortune tonight!

This level of interest in our deep subterranean world shouldn’t really surprise people though – as most of us have a weird fascination with the hidden and mysterious. Even the most disinterested person is going to be mildly curious in seeing what lies beyond the dark voids they occasionally see in the tunnels on their daily commute.

I have a long habit of trying to get into subterranean locations – sometimes with success – and also do a little lobbying on trying to get places opened up where I genuinely think it is possible.

That latter part has been singularly the most disappointing though – as people cry that health and safety is a worry (rarely is) or that no one would be interested (oh, boy are they interested!).

It’s even worse when I don’t even get a reply though – as then I can’t be sure if an idea was evaluated and rejected – or simply thrown in the bin without consideration.

An example of the later would be an email I sent to the DLR last year when the Xmas closure of Bank station was announced. The proposal was simple. It is just about possible to walk onto the Bank line from a side road just before it dips into the tunnel, so why not open the tunnel up to the general public to walk down over the Xmas weekend before the engineering works started?

I just knew that hundreds, if not thousands of people would have leapt at such an opportunity. Not because the tunnel is historic, but because the opportunity is rare, and the walk would be a singularly unusual event to take part in.

No reply – not even a “don’t be stupid, don’t you realise there are a hundred and one reasons why that can’t be done!”

The Thames Tunnel tour will also include a recreation of the Funfair element, but that is a mere sideshow for most people who seem to be going down under the river. It is the tunnel that is the main event here, so other opportunities to open tunnels shouldn’t be reliant on being able to put on a big show. The tunnel is the show!

Maybe the huge demand for tickets to the Thames Tunnel will encourage more openings like this where possible?

I do appreciate the problems in opening subterranean venues though – the organisation, the volunteers needed, the inevitable worries about insurance and crowd control – not to mention ensuring there are no trains using the tunnel at the time!

For that reason, despite people expressing hopes that the Thames Tunnel tour will happen again, I suspect that repeats will be unlikely, simply because you are asking train passengers to lose a fairly important cross-river link. We shouldn’t forget in our desire to visit these places that they have a primary function, and being a tourist attraction isn’t it.

I wont mention details in case plans are being plotted, but I did get a “hmm, interesting” from a suitably connected person at London Underground a year ago for a proposal to open up a bit of abandoned station and a tunnel for a weekend in a way that got around most of the health and safety worries that come from having loads of people in sometimes constrained areas.

Fingers crossed that it happens, and even if it doesn’t, at least I know someone read the email and considered the proposal. That simple act is often worth the effort, even if nothing comes of it in the end.