Been a busy few days - went to talks this evening and yesterday evening. Considering that I normally work in the evenings, these nights out result in coming home and having to put in an extra hour or two before crashing.

Last night was a long planned wander over to the Post Office Archive for a talk about the infamous Post Office underground railway - more affectionately known as the Mail Rail. There was a showing of a 10 minute video made in 1987 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the railway - and then a talk about the Archive’s curator.

To be honest, he didn’t really say a lot I didn’t already know - but it was good to have a refresher course to remind me of what I knew.

However - he mentioned a report compiled in 1911 to promote the railway and it went into a lot of detail about the earlier pneumatic based post office railway. I didn’t know about that document and shall have to wander back to the Archive centre to have a read as it could be quite helpful for my own researches.

This evening though - I wandered along to the LSE in Holborn for an "in conversation" type talk with Cherie Blair, wife of our former Prime Minister. Cherie Blair is undeniably one of those people who elicit very strong reactions in most people. I certainly veer towards the "heads in hands in despair" opinion about her time when in 10 Downing St., but I have a lot of respect for her work as a lawyer and human rights campaigner.

Incidentally, I go to so many events where I am often one of the youngest people in the room, but this evening I was in a room where probably two-thirds of the people were younger than myself. Makes a change!

The first two thirds of the evening was basically Howard Davies of the LSE in chat with Cherie Blair and talking mainly about her life and anecdotes about being the wife of a national leader. In all, very amusing stuff and worth listening to - along with the odd bit of politics thrown in.

Who the heck voted Tony Blair as gay hunk of the week - although he was apparently quite flattered by the decision!

The final bit was questions from the audience, and we got a bit more human rights discussed, which was a very interesting to hear her views on. There was a book signing event afterwards, but to be honest, I doubt I would read the book if I had brought a copy, the reviews put me off a bit. I also prefer my political books to be by the politicians themselves.

Cherie Blair is one of those people who can command huge prices for public speaking - so it was a rare treat to be able to hear her opinions for free.

Despite some very tempting options, I’m going to try and avoid the lecture circuit tomorrow - I need a night off

Long term readers may recall that I am slowly researching the history of the Waterloo and Whitehall Railway - a short lived attempt to build a pneumatic railway in an iron tube running under the River Thames between Great Scotland Yard and Waterloo Station.

I haven’t been able to do much with the project frankly as I got somewhat diverted, but I haven’t completely forgotten it.

I was therefore quite excited to get an alert that a document had come onto the market, and one which is not in the National Archives - so I brought it and it arrived last week. The document is a short 4 side document which is the Authorisation by the Board of Trade to wind up the failed company in February 1871.

In addition to being a nice addition to my collection of relics from the railway - it also added a few extra notes which I was unsure of. Most notable was that while I knew that the construction of the iron tubes had started by the Samuda Brothers in Docklands, I was unable to get any further information - save a lithograph from an issue of Scientific American which confirmed that at least part of one tube was built.

I now know that one entire length (out of four) was indeed completed in full - with the brick linings etc., and a second length of tube was cast, but not assembled.

Due to the complete lack of any detailed information about the shipyard, I have been unable to find out what happened to the iron tubes once the firm was wound up - alas.

I still aim to do a write up one day - and the arrival of this document in the post has encouraged me to post off some letters (again) to various possible sources for information in the hope that a second letter might get answered.

Related postings:

Waterloo and Whitehall Pneumatic Railway

How the Bakerloo Line created a Water Jet in the Thames

Earlier this year I attended a breakfast lecture at the Building Centre on the topic of Crossrail, hosted by David Anderson, the Engineering Director of Crossrail.

You might be interested to know that they are hosting a second lecture - this time next month on Thur 6th Nov.

Having been before, I wont go a second time - but you might be interested in booking a free ticket if you want.

http://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/events/event_diary_details.asp?id=401

Last night I (and friend) had tickets to attend the opening evening of the Transport Museum’s latest exhibition - a history of posters on the London Underground.

It turns out that London Underground was probably the first transport network to commission posters from artists to promote the rail network, and the exhibition shows off some of the most famous and notable posters which the company commissioned.

There is also a display of posters designs which were rejected, including one by John Nash - which was deemed to be a bit too dull for use!

I was more interested in some of the older poster designs, and there were some comments about the difficulty of printing too many colours on early posters, so the artists had to be very careful when designing them to take those sorts of restrictions into account.

A few bits of the infamous fonts and styles - and at the entrance to the display is a newly commissioned poster by Sir Peter Blake - the iconic artist who is most famous for the Sergeant Pepper album cover - although he has done the odd other thing since then. He was the guest of honour last night and gave the opening speech, along with the curator of the exhibition.

I had my tickets as part of a recent fund raising auction for the museum, and the grandly titled Stakeholder Relations Manager, but very pleasant, Justine took us around some of the displays and showed us how to get up to one of the other displays which shows some of the printed posters which resulted from the art shown in the main display.

I also got a copy of the book accompanying the exhibition, signed by the two main editors (woo!) - and I have to say that based on a flick through it on the tube home, it is a very good book with absolutely loads of posters being shown inside. I don’t normally get excited about the books produced to accompany museum shows (usually being put together just to fleece visitors of cash), but this one is unusually good.

Towards the end of an evening spent wandering round with a glass of wine which was regularly and liberally topped up, I met the infamous Annie Mole who writes the Going Underground blog.

Rather a nice evening out.

The exhibition opens to the public today - details here: http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/136.aspx

The infamous (amongst tunnel/military aficionados) tunnels under Chancery Lane are to be put up for sale at last. I have been aware that BT were working on decommissioning them for some time, and was trying to find out who was handling the sale - only for them to put out a press release about the sale today.

I have a serious business idea for the tunnels - which do not (alas) involve turning them into a tourist attraction - but the current economic turmoil in the city makes that less viable, but not totally silly. Most of the deep level tunnels which were emptied out have been converted into secure document storage facilities, but my business plan was a bit more techie.

Anyhow - now that the tunnels have been cleared out of the secret stuff we can’t see, such as the claimed section occupied by the security services for a while, it will be interesting to see if BT let people go down for public tours during the disposal process.

Weblinks:

BT press release

Sub Brit report