Yesterday, I popped into one of the several hundred branches of Starbucks in Canary Wharf (that is only a slight exageration) for lunch and the lady was preparing a paper cup rather than the usual china mugs.

I squeeked a bit and reminded her that I was eating/drinking in - and she explained that they had managed to run out of mugs, so all customers were getting the take-away cups.

Not an issue frankly, but damn strange that they could “run out” of mugs on what was actually one of their quieter days.

Was checking for business news video clips for my day job and came across this clip from the Associated Press about how mirrors are being used to monitor building movements when tunneling under Amsterdam.

Thought it was mildly interesting - appologies for the strong American accent though

Some while ago I was half watching yet another documentary about the meteorite impact which caused significant problems for the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. One of the big scientific clues is the layer of iridium in the rocks, known as the K-T Boundary - which suggested that something had caused a planetary wide settlement of rock in a very short period of time (in geological terms).

So far - so normal.

Then I got thinking about mankind’s impact on the geological record.

In a very short timeframe, mankind has variously mined and dug up vast quantity of minerals and then spread them around the surface of the globe - in the form of manufactured goods. Also, we have paved over land and built whole cities from stone based materials (concrete etc) and minerals (steel, iron etc).

Let us presume that something terrestrial was to wipe out a large percentage of the animals on the planet - such as a pandemic virus or similar.

Give the planet a few million years, and there will be no obvious surface memory of the existence of humans at all - we will have ceased to exist. However, there will be a geological record - in the form of a thin layer of concentrated minerals and pulverized rocks which is spread almost over the entire planet.

At some time in the future, it is not inconceivable that a new species of animal would evolve and have cognitive abilities. Their scientists may look into the past by studying rocks - as humans do now and they will come to conclusions about the past thanks to the geological record.

What would they think about our period of history?

They might notice that there are fossils of a small creature which seemingly walked on two legs and had two arms with a head at the top of the body. Not actually that sensible a design, as the head is only loosely connected to the body and not well protected - but this small creature seemed to find the ability to exist in most parts of the planet, although regional variations are noticed.

Then suddenly, it seems as the whole species had just vanished - along with huge swathes of other species which inhabit the planet at the time. At around the same time this happened, the geological record shows a near planet wide thin covering in minerals and crushed rocks. They might also note from ice cores that there was a sharp spike in CO2 within the planets atmosphere at about the same time.

What are these future scientists to conclude from this?

An obvious conclusion to reach is that the planet was once inhabited by upright walking mammals who seemed to be predominantly vegetarian and probably lived in small herds. However, there was a titanic meteorite impact which covered the planet in a thick layer of minerals and shattered rocks - and the following “nuclear winter” would have killed plants and these rather odd little mammals could not have survived.

Our future scientist might ponder that had earth not been hit by a meteorite - would they have evolved into intelligent creatures?

Tomorrow (18th Dec) will be the birthday of the first commercially successful deep level electric railway - the City & South London Railway (C&SLR), which ran from Stockwell in South London to the City at King William Street via a tunnel under the Thames.

The railway was opened to the general public on 18th December 1890 - although the formal opening by the Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) was on the 4th Nov that same year.

Technically, it wasn’t the first deep level railway in London - as the Tower Subway had originally been a train service, albeit with just one carriage - and the Whitehall and Waterloo railway was part built as a mixture of tube and cut/cover tunneling. However, the W&W Railway never completed construction and the Tower Subway quickly abandoned its railway carriage and converted to a foot tunnel as more people could use it (and pay!) that way.

Like the Tower Subway, the C&SLR was due to use a cable based method of pulling trains along the tunnels. This is not surprising as the lead engineer on both projects was the same man - a James Greathead who had invented the tunneling shield used to manually dig the tunnels safely. However, late in the construction of the tunnel network, a decision was made to abandon the cable pull method in favour of the new modern electric locomotive. This was a separate engine unit which pulled carriages along behind it.

While this decision sounds wise - and indeed, did significantly increase the carrying capacity on the tube service - it had a fatal flaw. The tunnel approach to the terminus at King William Street was very curved and steep - which was not a problem for a cable pulling carriages along - but was almost too steep for the electric locomotive to climb up. Indeed, there are stories that sometimes a train would get part the way up the slope then have to slide back and make another run at it to build up enough momentum to get to the top.

Because of this - and due to expansions of the later tube network in general - the King William Street station was abandoned just ten years later when an extension was built up to Islington. In fact, the problems with the station had become apparent almost immediately, and plans to abandoned the station were proposed within a year of its opening, although it ended up taking 10 years to finally get rid of it.

I said earlier that this was the first “commercially successful” deep level electric railway - but it was barely profitable in fact. The extensions sapped the company of money to return to its investors and being a new form of tunneling lead to some wastage - such as the above mentioned King William Street station.

In the London Transport Museum is an exhibit of one of the original carriages for passengers - which were notable for not having any windows. The logic being quite sensible - you are in a tunnel so what is there to look at. However, we humans can be very odd creatures at times, and the carriages caused a claustrophobia and panic attacks in their passengers and small windows were later added. Having sat in the carriage, I can understand how oppressive it felt - although I think that modern bright lighting as opposed to the few tiny light bulbs used originally would significantly offset that problem.

The image below - taken from the Illustrated London News shows the carriages - and you can just about make out the tiny window slots which lined the top of the carriages but frankly offered no relief from the claustrophobic feeling of sitting inside the wooden box.

Anyhow - happy birthday to an original part of the “tube” network.

A (very large) image of the original tube layout can be found on my flickr account.

Earlier this week, I was invited to spend the night sleeping in the undercroft under the old London Bridge. The site itself is being cleared out and made good for a new theme exhibition and had been popping up in the news after dead bodies were found in the lower area - and hauntings reported by the workers.

Invited by M@ from The Londonist, myself and a group of fellow scribes were invited to spend the night in the site, all alone and - see what happened!

Met the group by the London Bridge itself and we went inside to what is still very much a building site - the owner then gave us a good tour around the site explaining how the exhibition and show will work.

It sounds very interesting - with the ground floor being devoted to the history of London Bridge, which is probably one of the more famous bridges in the world thanks to the “falling down” nursery rhyme. The lower level is then being given over to a horror show, which is being built by a team from America who have a lot of experience in creating horror shows. It seems that the nearby London Dungeon is a bit tame by comparison with what they are aiming for at London Bridge.

Another nice touch is that with the famous Borough Market literally just round the corner - rather than outsourcing the cafe facilities to one of the usual touristy cafe providers - the owner has found a local firm to provide good quality food/drinks, with much of the food coming from the market itself. Nice.

As mentioned above, the site is still very much a building site and they had some of the animatronic ghouls downstairs waiting to be installed in the theme show. Unfortunately, the previous owners had covered many of the walls in concrete, so that the brickwork is covered up, but the roof areas have been sympathetically cleaned up and restored.

It is downstairs that the skeletons were found - and are thought to be plague victims from around the 16th century. The bones are still in storage in the caverns - and some may be put on display (respectfully) in the exhibition later one.

The site is actually incredibly large - and will have a lot to entertain once it has been finished.

One freaky, and somewhat annoying thing is that my torch played up that night. It has been reliable for some years and I charged it up before leaving for the site - but the battery was failing after less than 10 minutes of use and we had to be careful with using it for the rest of the night. I have recharged it since I got home for the same amount of time, and it seems fine now. Very odd.

Our tour over - we were left in the site along for the night. Being nosey, we then spent several hours exploring all the corners of the site and taking photos. M@ made a map of the site to get his bearings. Later on in the evening, we did try a bit of spooky stuff and tried to contact the dead with an impromptu Ouija Board, which um - got some interesting results.

One amusing moment was in a far room where a clock could be heard ticking quietly, and it actually seemed to be coming from an empty corner. Quite spooky - but the mystery was solved when a wall clock was found hiding in a cardboard box in the room. The solid walls were refracting the sound around the room making it seem as if the sound was coming from somewhere else.

Finally crashing to sleep very early in the morning, apart from the cold of sleeping on a concrete floor, to be honest - didn’t have any problems with my sleep being disturbed by ghosts.

The next morning, we were let out of the site (and into fresh air!) and off home.

It was undeniably, a very odd and interesting experience - and I think it will be worth a visit back once the exhibition and theme show are finished, which will be next February. Many thanks to M@ for the invite and the owners of the site for allowing us to stay overnight in their building site.

The London Bridge Experience

My Photos

The Londonist

BBC News article about the haunting