Queensway Tunnel Tour
 

By Nicholas Thorley ICE NW Communications Officer

On the 17th November, ICE Merseyside and the North West Graduates and Students group joined together for a visit of the Queensway Tunnel in Liverpoool led by Gerry and Sue of Mersey Travel.

Liverpool, already leading the way in tunnel construction with the Mersey railway tunnel in 1885, had already shown that many of the difficulties of such a work could be overcome.  The railway tunnel not only proved the concept as a viable solution but also provided valuable information for the construction of Britain’s first tunnel for the new fangled motor vehicle. 

The Mersey had by the 1930s become congested in traffic and the only ways to cross the river were either by boat – or by a tortuous journey down to the Widnes-Runcorn transporter bridge which was busy with goods traffic and not suitable for a commuter, living in Birkenhead and working in the city.

Shunting the famous ferry across the Mersey out of business, the new tunnel fording the waters was not just a functional commuter's dream but a tourist’s destination; people travelled from all over the world to witness man's triumph over nature.

Some numbers : the tunnel is 2 miles and 230 yards in length, carrying 4 lanes of traffic and 11 million vehicles a year, in a 13m diameter bore 45m below high water level at its deepest point.

One of the guests wondered why a bridge wasn’t built instead. Gerry explained that the idea of a bridge was scrapped due to its cost and vulnerability to attack during war. So a tunnel it was, digging commenced in 1925 and the first car drove through the tunnel in 1934.

The tunnel required six ventilation shafts to maintain air quality and one of its Liverpool side ventilation buildings was where the tour began. Georges Dock Building (see left) stands next to the Liver Building and with the archaeological discoveries of Tutankhamen fresh in the architects’ mind it is in a fantastical Egyptian themed Art Deco.

Stepping through the elaborate Art Deco mouth, we were led down its trachea, a series of stairways and air locked doors, to its lungs: the room that houses the fans that pump the exhaust fumes out and the clean air in. Here we watched the back-up fan start up and begin removing foul air from below (see photo below). Gerry boasted that the air is cleaner in the tunnel than on the street above. Venturing deeper still we reached the roadway and popped our heads out to see the traffic passing through. The last stop was the lower tier, known as the avenue (see last photo), where there had once been plans to run a tramway but was now home to telecommunications, electricity cables and the new emergency refuges.  The refuges were installed during a recent upgrade prompted by an incident in the Mont Blanc tunnel where a lorry carrying flour and margarine caught fire resulting in 39 deaths due to inadequate emergency exits.  There are seven refuges in total evenly spaced throughout the tunnel giving access from the road deck to the safe haven of the avenue - they are hoped to be the “biggest waste of money ever”. Turning round, we climbed the hundred odd stairs back to the surface.



Further reading:
A far better description can be found on the CBRD website and a contemporary paper written about the tunnel can be found in the ICE Virtual Library.




Photo captions and credits (top to bottom):
The completed tunnel, Anderson, D., The Construction of the Mersey Tunnel, Journal of the ICE, Volume 2, Issue 6, pages 473 –516
Georges Dock Building, source: Wikipedia
The tour group watching the fan, credit N. Thorley
The avenue, source: Anderson, D., The Construction of the Mersey Tunnel, Journal of the ICE, Volume 2, Issue 6, pages 473 –516
 

Construction Challenge 2011
 

On the 27th October 2011, 24 teams of graduates and students participated in the trickiest Construction Challenge to run so far. The evening began with the terrible news that one of the stands that formed part of the Olympic Stadium had collapsed. With only nine months until the games began the teams had to work fast to complete a new stand on time.

This year’s event was held simultaneously at venues in Manchester and Liverpool. The evening started off with a buffet before the challenge was introduced. In just 90 minutes, each team was competing to build the stand which could hold the most people. However materials were limited, each team only being allowed to purchase as much as they could afford. Additional money was awarded throughout the evening, based on teams correctly answering engineering themed quiz questions. The challenge brought to attention many of the issues that are faced when delivering real life projects.

Despite one or two failures on the night, the majority of teams managed to construct a stand that complied with the initial brief and took account of all the regulatory changes that occurred throughout the evening. Most stands remained standing when loaded with people. The overall winning team from Manchester (left) managed to hold 13,000 people in their stand.

Some creative solutions to the problem were thought up and the standard of many of the designs is a true testament to the quality of young engineers in the country today. Congratulations go to all those who completed the competition.

For more information on the ICE NW Graduate & Student Committee or to get involved, see our webpage at http://www.ice.org.uk/nwgs.

The ICE NW Graduates & Students Committee are already considering plans for next year’s event, and are hoping to build on our success to date by promoting the concept in other UK regions. If anyone would like to get further involved or would be willing to offer corporate sponsorship please contact icecube@ice.org.uk.

We hope everyone who competed enjoyed the competition and we look forward to welcoming you again at Construction Challenge 2012.

Chris Wood, ICE North West G&S Vice Chair
Photo credit: Claire Kearney

Liverpool Engineering Walk

The event, hosted by the Merseyside branch, sponsored by the University of Liverpool and supplied with PPE by Morrisroe, attracted a crowd of sixty people on a sunny Saturday afternoon early in October.  A large group of students new to the city were joined by graduates and professionals from across the North West. Splitting into smaller groups the tour guides started the walk at Brownlow Hill and headed first to Liverpool City Centre.
 

The scripted tour began at the site of the long gone Liverpool Castle, which was constructed in the 13th century and featured all of the fortification accoutrements of its time: mud walls, turrets, towers and moats.  

From here it quickly became clear that Liverpool was a city of many engineering firsts. Heading down Castle Street and taking a right down Cook Street we looked up at the façade to the Oriel Chambers - the world's first metal framed glass curtain walled building. The building led the way for future skyscrapers and must have been highly desirable office space in 1864. Crossing the road, bewildered shoppers diverged around us as we craned our necks up to the sky once more to look at a monolithic mass of stone. In the centre of the affluent business district this tall, steel-framed structure clad in a bright Portland stone is one of six ventilation buildings for the Queensway Tunnel. Prior to the tunnel, which is designed to carry motor vehicles, another underwater river crossing, the Mersey Estuary railway tunnel, was once the longest in the world.

Reaching the river Mersey, the wind picked up and the tour guides had to shout to us. We were told about the sewer system begun by James Newlands in 1848, ten years before Joseph Bazalgette began work on sewers in London, and another railway. This time running overhead, affectionately known as the “Dockers Umbrella’ it took the title of Britain’s first electric railway.

We then arrived at Albert Dock, Jesse Hartley’s distribution hub, where docked ships could have their goods quickly warehoused before setting sail again. An innovation in logistics that is undeniably more charming than a modern container port. The pale red cast iron columns that support the jack brick arches and provide a sheltered walkway around the dock marked the end of the tour.

We and the other weary wanderers then gathered at the Ship & Mitre pub and scoffed a bowl of scouse before heading home.









The crowd gathered before the tour, at the University of Liverpool
Photo credit: Terry McCormick

The Graduates and Students group will be hosting an engineering walk in Manchester in the spring.

The full tour can be found online at: http://bit.ly/tIhcYH

Nicholas Thorley, ICE NW G&S Communications Officer