I wandered along to St Margaret’s Church in Lee - just by Blackheath in South London today. This was a rather plain Church when built, but then completly redecorated in a Pugin inspired Gothic Revivalist mode by James Brooks.

There is an exhibition there at the moment detailing the history of the Gothic movement and the characters behind the decoration in the Church. It’s a very impresive Church and the exhibition gives a quite good overview of the movement. I guess allow half an hour to read the displays and then look around the Church.

On the opposite side of the road is the old graveyard - where Sir Edmund Halley - discoverer of Halley’s Comet is burried.

I also used the opportunity to experiment with HDR photography “in the field” for the first time, and even though I didn’t take a tripod with me, I am quite pleased with the end results. HDR really is the only way to decently photograph stained glass windows frankly.

More at my Flickr page

This week’s New Media Age magazine has an article about a revamp at the UK satellite TV station, Sky News which will include the launch a new program which sounds suspiciously similar to the BBC News 24’s own “Your News”, where they run a commentary on which news articles people are reading on their own webstie.

The interesting snippet though was that part of the half hour slot (7:30pm from Oct 2nd) will include discussions of the top stories appearing on social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Reddit and Technorati.

So, now if a website hits the front page of those sites, not only is there the high profile link and blog-chatter driving traffic to the site - it could also appear on a fairly major TV news program as well.

The NMA website requires a log-in to read the whole article, which is why I blogged about it for Digg (etc.) as opposed to linking directly to the news article.

The other key difference is that the Sky News version will run every day - while the BBC version seems to be a weekly show. Sky News is majority controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

I was doing a bit more research into the pneumatic railway that I have working on for a while, and came across this totally unrelated image, but it got me thinking.

This is of a pneumatic railway concept which would be built above a main road - and as I looked at it, I couldn’t help but think what a fantastic idea it would be for Oxford Street - not for a railway, but to put busses on the upper level and give shoppers a wide shopping “arcade” below.

Not only would it make shopping on Oxford St., much more pleasent, but also the busses would be able to travel faster as there would be fewer pedestrian crossings delaying the transit of the bus from one end to the other of Oxford Street.

I guess some “ground floor” roads would still cross Oxford St., and the covered arcade wouldn’t be air conditioned - just covered over to protect the shoppers from the worst of the weather - not unlike maybe the Victorian shopping market at Leadenhall Market.

I guess that Oxford Circus would also be covered over as it would be a pain to bring the busses back down to the juntion - and buses would drop down to road level via side roads leading off from Oxford St.

It would not be unique in concept - just in scale. The shopping center at Hammersmith has a bus station built above it.

Oh well, we can but dream
The photo is from the City of London archives and is a view of the trunk viaduct of the London Union Railway. A proposal by James Clephan for an elevated pneumatic railway linking London’s main termini.

Anyone familiar with flying will be aware that Heathrow is suffering considerable congestion - not just at the terminals themselves, but more seriously in the air as well. Problems ground-side will hopefully subside somewhat when Terminal 5 opens next year - but what about the congestion in the skies?

There have been discussions about a 3rd runway at Heathrow - being based to the north of the A4 road. This is controversial, not just with the usual anti-airline lobby groups but also with local residents who object to having their homes demolished. It seems that a 3rd runway is undoubtably needed, but it is politically difficult - and any attempt to build one will not only be hugely expensive, but also would be delayed by years of planning enquiries and appeals.

Is there an alternative?

Well, some people say increasing capacity at other London airports is an option, but that ignore the “hub” benefits that Heathrow offers and also ignores the air congestion over the South-East of the UK.

In conventional terms, a person wanting to travel to London - or use Heathrow as a transfer hub would object quite strongly to being forced to use an airport in another part of the country - such as Birmingham airport.

What if Birmingham and Heathrow could be somehow brought closer together?

That might not be as crazy an idea as it sounds. At a basic level, London and Birmingham are roughly 120 miles apart - so could we find a way of connecting the two airports in super-fast time? Yes as it happens - we can.

Maglev railways are a super-fast railway service of which the German built version typically achieve speeds of 280 miles per hour and are already in use in China. A train linking the two airports would result in a transfer time of around 35 minutes. A direct link from the center of Birmingham Airport to the center of Heathrow would be frankly, comparable with a slow transfer between Terminal 1 and Terminal 4 at the moment.

The Shanghai Maglev has in fact managed a top speed of 310 mph - which would push a transfer time down to about 25 minutes!

This proposal has quite considerable benefits over building a 3rd runway at Heathrow itself. Firstly, the biggest advantage is political - as a 3rd runway at the West of London is hugely controversial. Any attempt to build one would be sunk in years of protests and planning appeals, which apart from the time delay is also very expensive to deal with.

There is also an air congestion problem over the South-East of the UK, and by moving some traffic away from “Heathrow South” to the new Northern Terminal, you can get the double benefit of increasing landing capacity while also reducing congestion over the South East.

Birmingham currently has one main runway - and over time, it is probable that building a second runway at Birmingham is probably going to be easier than doing the same at Heathrow - so the long term capacity increases are likely to be more viable.

Cost

Isn’t a Maglev railway expensive? Well, it certainly isn’t cheap - the Shanghai Maglev railway cost around £650 million for a 20 mile stretch. For a Heathrow-Birmingham railway, we can cost in a presumed bill of around £4 billion. I am presuming that while property/labour costs will be higher in the UK than in China, technology developments and the sheer size of the project will allow bulk buying to lower the costs as well.

Ouch - that sounds a lot. Well - maybe not when you consider that Terminal 5 is slated to have cost around the same by the time it is finished. So, for roughly the same cost of a new runway/terminal at Heathrow airport, you could build a sexy high speed railway link between Heathrow and Birmingham and use that as the new “Heathrow North” airport.

I am sure that extensions from Heathrow to London and Birmingham Airport to the city would be possible as well, further increasing traffic and paying customers. I would not expect transfer traffic between the terminals would be paying customers frankly, so long as they are swapping between flights.

Sexy

Finally, you cannot deny the sheer sex-appeal of a Maglev railway. I would confidently say that a proposal to land at Birmingham and transfer to Heathrow via one of the world’s fastest railways would generally not be met with dismay by customers - but indeed be a very attractive proposition.

Conclusion

The construction of a Maglev railway linking Heathrow South to the new Heathrow North would be price-comparable to building a 3rd runway and terminal at Heathrow right now. It would almost certainly be much faster to build than the huge delays a 3rd runway at Heathrow would face. It moves some traffic away from the congested airspace over the South-East, bringing considerable benefits to travellers and business. And finally - a Maglev railway is a lot more exciting that another terminal building - regardless of how exalted the architect is who designs it.

There are bound to be holes in my proposal - as it is just a “back of the napkin” concept and vastly more detailed research is needed to see if the idea is viable.

Last weekend was fun - trawling around places which are normally closed to see what they look like.

Haven’t had a chance to upload all my photos - but below are the two sets which are probably most interesting:

The Brunswick Center - an iconic 1960’s development which is “nice” on the outside, but shows a stunning concrete structure in the private residential area

Stratford International Station - the view of the new Eurostar station before it is fitted out by the train operating companies.

On the events side of things, there is a charity auction coming up next month for some interesting “behind the scene” tours around the country, and I shall be damaging my credit card to try and win a few of them.