Vicki Explores ... Starcross Atmospheric Railway
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video Vicki takes the Exmouth to Starcross ferry in search of Brunel's atmospheric railway.
Find out more about the atmospheric railway here: www.ikbrunel.or...
Find out more about the Exmouth to Starcross ferry here: www.exe-estuar...
Thanks to ‘Vicki Explores’ Patreon supporters;
Aaron Springs, Alan Lumsden, Alastair Baker, Alexander Espéret, Alfie O'Flaherty, Alobear, Amelia Davidson, Amy Banner, Andrea & Elizabeth Clayton Vail, Andrew Gray, Andrew Holloway, Andrew Rodgers, Andrew Watson, Andrew Wilkinson, Andy Francis, Anne Stellingwerf, Arthur, Arwel Parry, Bailey Bogle, Barry Stanton, Ben Barron, Brian Bell, Brian Wright, Bryan Longmuir, Chris Allen, Chris Allison, Chris Hooker, Chris Robertson, Chris Wilkes, Craig Williams, D.A. Patterson, Dan Spence, Dan The Train, Dave Kirwin, Dave Matterface, Dave Treadwell, David, David Carpenter-Lomax, David Collison, David Durant, David Miller, Dr Andy Hill, David Rook, David Smith, David Stacey, David Walsh, Dennis Lassiter, Diana Patterson, Douglas Jacobs, Emma Smith, Erik Petrich, Ethan James Whitford, Every Disused Station, Fiona Mulvey, Fred Gough, Gary Hunt, Geoff Wilson, Graham Lavers, Graham O'Mara, Graham Reed, Gregory Beecroft, Hazel Nicholson, ieee1396, Jack Wingate, James Carroll, James Marshall, James Thomson, Jason Turner, Jenny Campbell, Jeremy Rawlings, Jeremy Samuels, JeremyR22, Jim Steeley, John Crook, John Mason, John R Moore, John Simpson, John Winebarger, Jonathan Isip, Kai Michael Poppe, Karl Black, Karl Florczak, Kelly Taylor, Kenneth Rains, Kevin Gage, Kevin Porter, Lachlan Ellis, Lawrence Chan, Lee Fergusson, Leeky, Leo Starrenburg, Lewis Gill, Lisa Grimm, liv3d, Marc Waters, Mark Cooper, Mark Harper, Mark Kavanagh, Mart McDonald, Martin Clitheroe, Martin Jolly, Matthew, Matthew McKinnon, Matthew Michael, Michael Coates, Michael Doherty, Michael Harris, Michael James, Michael Monn, Michael Schmidt, Michiel Kreuze, Mr Michael Ward, Mr Andy TF, Niall Porter, Partha Mazumdar, Patrick, Patrick Quinn-Graham, Paul Taylor, Peter Sheil, Pierre Blandin, Ray Turro, Raymond Calloway, Robert Brailsford, Robert Brown, Robert Cole, Robert Deering, Sandy Quick, Simon Webb, Sophie Robson, Soren Kristensen, Stephen Lawton, Stuart Harrison, Stuart Summers, Thomas Mann, Thomas Williams, Tom Carlos, Tony Swaine, Trevor Sweatman, Tyler Dickey, Wade A Nelson, Warren Pilkington, Wendy Harper, Wouter Hoek.
About Vicki Explores:
Twitter: / vickiexplores
Instagram: / vickiexplores
BOOKS
The Railway Adventures: www.septemberp...
Great British Railways: 50 Things to See and Do: www.septemberp...
[insert humorous statement about Vicki Pipe walking along Victoria Road and talking about pipes all in the same video here]
what no tube?
she made a brilliant trio.
Victorian pipes at that
Basically it was just a pipe dream
Baboom tish!
Baboom tish!😁
Your comment set me on a rabbit hole of searching on etymologies on a number of idioms.
For 'pipe dream' -- this seems to be a common consensus - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pipe_dream
The one on 'steal my thunder' was among my favorites - www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/steal-ones-thunder.html
I did laugh.
And I thought an atmospheric railway had well appointed salon cars with leather seats, heavy curtains and Hercule Poiriot.
that's an ambience railway, almost the same XD
Nooooo, that’s one with trains that take sick and injured people to hospital ... ;-)
Are you thinking of the Orient Express?
Great video! I love the updated theme tune with "All the castles" in the lyrics!!
Nice video about the Starcross ferry but the facts about how the atmospheric system worked are incorrect. The pumping stations evacuated air causing a vacuum not pumping air into it.
Even utilising modern materials to avoid the problems associated with rats eating the leather flap seals the pure olfistics of points etc make it a system bound to fail
There are sections at Didcot and also at Brunel uni where you can see in situ track
For details on these trains, check out "Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Vacuum Powered Railway" on YT
One could say that the Atmospheric Railway used a Victoria(n) Pipe!
yes it did.
So if you guys really like it there, are you Starcross lovers?
Thanks, I'll see myself out.
A Better Beaching Report: Vicki explores the beach and spots a train
Great video, Vicki. The pumping houses created a vacuum in the pipe, (insert pun, sorry Vicki), ahead of the train, so the effect was for the piston in the tube was sucked along.
The problem was, as Vicki explained, the open flaps along the top of the tube, to allow the piston connection to the train, leaked. I believe Mr I.K.B. used leather for these.
Today we have far better materials to work with, but the principal was good. Note: This was the broad gauge of 7'.
Hope I don't sound like a 'know it all', Vicki, but I'm a big fan of Mr I.k. Brunel. Love your new "Vicki Explores" series. Thanks.
Les Remmington-Allum thanks Les - great have to more details. It’s difficult to understand how it all worked, so great to get up to speed (pun intended).
The piston was pushed along by atmospheric pressure. The clue is in the name!
@@cardigan7726 Absolutely. I'm astounded so many people have no concept of basic physics. Like 'vacuum brakes' only one atmosphere of pressure is possible to use for 'work', as opposed to a pressurized system, where many multiples of atmospheric pressure can be used to perform work. The strength requirements for the mechanism would also climb with the pressure though.
@@VickiPipe A very interesting place for another "Explore", is West Wycombe Mausoleum, and the St Lawrence church with it's famous golden ball, plus underneath the hill is the West Wycombe (Hellfire) caves... by Sir Francis Dashwood. A lot of history there, for you. West Wycombe is located on the A40, obviously west of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.
I have to agree with "engineerjim" on the workings of an atmospheric railway, your explanation is confused and plain wrong, five minutes research could have made this a much better clip.
You havent pointed out how it was wrong Mr big bollocks
No need to, engineerjim does that admirably.
"all the castles" in the ending music!
There are the remains of three pumping houses in the area.. Starcross, Totnes (near to the station), and Torquay.. (behind the Lidl near to the hospital). If you had taken the train to Starcross, you would have seen a small square shaped pond on the riverside of the track, between Exeter and Starcross. This was connected to the atmospheric railway and was a water storage facility, for the pumping house..
This is a very beautiful and scenic area... I can vouch for this because I live a few miles away at Teignmouth!
The atmospheric railway lives on in a very different, much shorter, and trackless form of transport. I refer to the steam catapults on aircraft carriers equipped with them. You Brits invented it for the advent of jet powered fighters aboard your carriers but we Americans still use it. I suspect Brunel was the inspiration.
I should mention however that the pressure you mention was in fact the atmosphere itself. You see the pumping station was not pressurizing the pipe, it was evacuating it ahead of the train. This was necessary because of the sealing system that Brunel had devised. It needed that vacuum for the seals to remain tight until the train reached each one in turn. Yes the train was pushed by normal 14 lbs per square inch pressure from the open end behind the driving cart but those seals along the top slit had to hold back the atmosphere ahead of it. Unfortunately leather was all that Brunel had as an elastic seal material. Rats enjoyed it and ate it ragged. Winter stiffening did it no favors either. So why does it work on aircraft carriers?
Steam at much greater pressure and more modern sealing methods help, but the shortness of the trip is the biggest factor. Rockets had been tried, Hydraulic ram rope pulled launchers had worked for propeller driven aircraft on battleships and cruisers and some unusual carrier launches. One famous American carrier launched crossways out the side of the hanger deck a few times before giving that idea up. That one was the U.S.S Hornet that picked up the three Apollo 11 astronauts. As it is now a museum, I had the fortune to notice that the track for that launch ability is still there.
It sounds cliché but I’m from Exmouth and it looks like you got lucky with the weather
Leather flaps were used as seals along the pipe and these were eaten by rats thereby reducing the air pressure.
The rats ate the animal fat used to seel the leather.
And the pipes were evacuated, not pressurized. The term "atmospheric" came from the atmospheric pressure pushing the piston along the pipe into the evacuated section.
There must have been a lot of self-inflated rats.
@@roberthindle5146 If those pipes actually worked with a vacuum, I would expect the rats to get sucked inside and suffocate.
Great video about a little known piece of railway history. Pleased to support you Vicki!
The London and Croydon Railway used atmospheric traction 1845-46. Similarly short-lived. Another problem was one of points and crossings - very difficult to engineer with this technology. One of the pumping houses from Croydon was relocated and reused for water supply purposes, and can still be seen in Surrey Street, Croydon.
I was wondering about the equivalent of points. I assumed they just went backwards and forwards on the same length of track so didn't need them.
@@caw25sha Yes I think so too, but somewhere like the London and Croydon, that simply wasn't going to work as soon as any new lines were built branching off the original. I think the London-Croydon shared the route with an ordinary railway, and in order for one to cross the other at the main junction near where Selhurst depot now stands, a flying junction had to be built, in the form of a viaduct that allowed one form of line to cross the other without interfering with it. There are drawings of this I have seen, and it was a big structure, simply to keep the two lines separate.
The Croydon museum has a piece of the original vacuum tube on display.
Hello Vicki, this was truly lovely. I am pleased you have managed to capture the slightly wacky but thoroughly delightful Vicki we see when you are interacting with Geoff. Much harder to do when solo. Well done indeed! FIVE+ STARS
Equivalent with modern technology: the Hyperloop - probably just as ineffective because the small numbers of passengers per train being proposed.
I’ve been to Starcross but didn’t know about the atmospheric railway. The village also has a French postbox.
Is that where one deposits French letters?
@@InfernalMachinePict Oui
French ! Disgraceful .
I was born there, is it is a cack-hole!
Here in New York before we had the subway system, someone tried to make “pneumatic rail” a thing. The car was a tube on wheels with a seal that held against the tunnel walls., Large fans pushed air into the tunnel and the train moved. It was only a demonstration line though, so they had to reverse the fans and suck the train back into the station. Feasibility over a larger system, and loss of funding killed the idea. They actually found the remnants of this when they were digging for the City Hall station on the Broadway side. Too bad they destroyed it after only saving the tunneling shield.
...which someone ended up loosing...
In a way it's a similar principle to modern electric traction.
A stationary plant generating power which is then distributed distributed along the railway for a train or locomotive to use for traction. In many cases the primary energy source is still steam. The method of distribution has changed, it's now 3rd rail or overhead wires.
Loving the nose stud. The content of the video being great goes without saying, so I won't mention it.
Sorry to correct you Vicki, but the Atmospheric Railway used a vacuum to suck the train along with atmospheric pressure (14 psi) pushing from behind on a piston that coupled to the driving wagon. Also the tube was a standard diameter, definitely not different diameters depending on whether you were going up or down a hill. The piston was coupled to the driving wagon by a vertical bar that pushed two leather flaps out of the way as the piston travelled down the pipe.
The problem with the system was the leather seals that closed the slot along the top of the pipe, as rats ate the leather, causing the vacuum in front of the piston and the atmosphere behind piston to fail.
It worked by using a vacuum.
Vicki Pipe talks about Pipes! :D All the pipes!
I didn’t know about the atmospheric railway until now. Very educational, Vicki
Wow that brings back memories!Back in the 80's I stayed in Starcross for two days en route to Paignton.Back then there was a proper little museum in the pumping station and the pub was just called The Railway. They actually had genuine Brunel artefacts including a section of the pipe.The village wasn't as busy then either. Thanks for reminding me of a lovely little holiday 👍
We went to the museum when I was a kid, about 1984 I think. I didn't know it had closed and I was wondering why Vicki didn't go in.
@@caw25sha I think it was either 84 or 85 when I went,I remember the guy who ran it giving a demonstration of dowsing as well.
My wife and I took my parents to the museum when we lived in Exeter in the late 80s/early 90s. The proprietor used a length of pipe and two vacuum cleaners to demonstrate the principle and would check the barometer every day - the higher the pressure the bigger the person who could ride on the trolly...
@@GeoffSaint I don't remember the vacuum cleaners but I do remember the barometer.
There is an operational atmospheric railway in Portugal for an airport connection people mover
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Alegre_Metro
The Starcross atmospheric railway ran at negative pressure - i.e. a partial vacuum. The trains were sucked along the line.
For those curious as to how the train attached to the pipe, there was a slot in the top of the pipe with a flexible leather flap that allowed a piston to be inserted into the pipe. That piston was attached to the underside of the train, and thus the atmosphere in the pipe pulls or pushes (depending upon whether the pipe is at positive or negative pressure relative to the outside atmosphere) the train along.
The reason for the failure of the technology at the time was that leather is not a long term solution to the flexible seal problem. It dries out in hot conditions (Devon can get lovely hot summers!), and freezes in cold (Devon winters can equally be very wet and cold). Perhaps a modern materials scientist could suggest a more durable alternative to leather?
Ben Ketteridge Thanks Ben! It’s difficult to understand all the technicalities so good to have more details!
Nice video and it's a lovely area but as some have pointed out, the explanation of how the system worked was incorrect!
This could be considered the precursor to the electric railway. Bear with me - the power was supplied remotely, from a steam engine creating a vaccum i.e. a "pressure potential" to "transmit" the power to where it was needed. The engine was the "generator" and the pipe was the "power cable". Now, the potential is electrical (voltage difference rather than air pressure difference), and is also generated remote from where it is needed. I can't think of another form of remote power supply used for railways until electric trains were introduced. The only other form of remote power supply that comes to mind was the hydraulic supply system used in London to provide power centrally for sites with lifts and cranes, but never used for railways, for practical reasons.
wealdenpete Glasgow Underground, opened as a cable operated railway with a steam engine both pulling the cable through the railway and also tensioning it.
@@ianbuchanan2461 Good point.
What a lovely couple Vicki and Geoff are. 2 good humans
Very enjoyable video.
I was expecting you might try to answer your question at the end.
I don't have any expertise, but I understand leather was used quite a lot, which rats enjoyed gnawing (thus affecting pressure), so I would have thought there are better materials available now which rats aren't so partial to.
Keep up the very good work.
5:02 We could make a mechanically viable atmospheric railway with modern technology.
The way the railway works is that inside the pipe is a plug that gets pushed and pulled by the pressure in the pipe. The plug is connected to the train so that as one moves so does the other.
The reason that it was hard to maintain pressure is that connecting the plug to the train was a metal truss meaning that the pipe needed a resealable gap running along the whole top.
With modern magnets you could link the plug and train without having a hole in the pipe. Whether that's cheaper than a modern electric trains is another matter
You've got it! The reason the Victorians came up with cumbersome systems like this is because electric power distribution had not been worked out. That was always going to be the most effective and economical alternative to prime movers attached to the trains.
There are modern atmospheric railways in use in several places. A company called Aeromovel makes them.
'Spect I'm not the only person to point out that it's Atmospheric pressure that propels the train. The pipe provides vacuum. The clue is in the name.
Atmospheric railways did evolve into the Pneumatic Tube, a system for moving paper messages or small parts, but the problem when its scaled up to move a train, is the amount of energy required to keep the system constantly charged costs more than a self contained train. Scale the system up to be several block or kilometers long, and the costs to operate are excessive.
Do Vicky explores... Dartmouth
There’s a section of the original pipe recovered from here on display at the Didcot Railway Centre.
Oh yes, how apt .... 0:35 Victoria Road :-)
If they had a hovercraft (using air pressure) on the ferry route that sandbar wouldn’t be an issue!
Hovercrafts cost more to run and maintain.
I used to work in Starcross. Such a fun commute!
You'd definitely be interested in this, then, it's in the US, just a couple of miles south of Ukiah, up here in Mendocino County in rural Northwest California, I live in Redwood Valley, about 10 miles north. www.wired.com/story/flight-rail-vectorr-atmospheric-railway-train/
His work is directly inspired by the Atmospheric Railways.
Great video, Vickie, love your guy's stuff!
Vicki, Train Beach, Train Beach.
Tommy Cooper, Train Beach, Beach Train, Beach Train, Train Beach..
Alfred Eli Beach, perhaps the closest thing the 19th Century US had to the Brunnels also experimented with an air driven train, those his system was more a pneumatic railroad. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit
His ran a bit longer but also was constructed in secret in what was already a very densely populated area of New York City. It was lost and forgotten till around 1918 when building the, NY's BMT Broadway line the tunnel, car, and shield used for the construction were all discovered. Little if any of the tunnel remains its thought a small section might lurk under a manhole in lower Manhattan but if urban explorers have found it they keep it to themselves.
It used a partial vacuum to create the propulsion, air pressure on a piston attached to the train pushed it along. There are several sections of the original pipework on display at Didcot Railway Centre:
didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/article.php/20/broad-gauge-railway
By Dawlish Warren I remember seeing an old GWR cast iron sign from the 19th Century threatening anyone taking shingle from the railway/beach embankment with "Transportation to the penal Colony' (Australia).
Great video.
Hey! We have improved a bit over here since that time. Cheers from Brisbane! PS. I loved the video Vicki
Vicki, you did not have to go all the way to Devon to explore long-gone atmospheric railways. There was one much closer to South London. The London and Croydon Railway tried it from Forest Hill to West Croydon in 1845-1847. See:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway#London_and_Croydon_Railway
I am glad you went anyway - South Devon is a bit more scenic :-)
Finally decided to look for vids on Atmospheric Railways - and immediately hit a good one! "Crazy idea that was never going to work?" ehh ... maybe. The vacuum idea was sound and problems with the stationary steam engines that ran the pumps to evacuate the air would have been solved but the fundamental issue was that *the train was outside the pipe*. Because of this, you needed to have a connection between the piston in the pipe and the train (or at least the piston car) and that meant you needed some sort of slot in the pipe. And if you have a slot in the pipe, how do you maintain vacuum? Well, you put a leather flap on it that is opened as the piston car passes and reseals after. I think you can immediately begin to see the problem. Miles and miles of leather flap. So ... yeah. The other big technical problem was points (track switches or turnouts depending where you live). There were apparently some in use on at least one of the 4 railways that were in commercial service (the two in England and one each in Ireland and France) but there don't appear to be any surviving drawings or descriptions of how they worked. The list of things that didn't really work (moving trains in terminals, changing ends, etc) kept getting longer. And then ...
The main reason atmospheric railways were promoted was that their promoters said that they could run up steeper grades ("banks") than existing steam locomotives so they would be cheaper to build ... except that in just about every example built, there were already steam locomotives that could, and did, use the same tracks without issue. In fact, when problems arose with the pipe or the valve or the stationary engine houses, contemporary steam locomotives would replace the piston cars.
TH-cam is weird about links in comments so I'll just say that Joe Brennan of Columbia U in NYC has a whole series of articles on the Atmospheric Railways on his employer's site entitled "The Atmospheric Road" - that should be enough for google to send you to the right place. Fascinating story even though the idea was doomed. 🙂
Of course, many railways in Britain and on the continent use "stationary engines" with power transmitted to the trains but instead of pumps, it's generators that send electricity to the trains through a wire over the track ...
Atmospheric railways made sense at the time, because steam engines are big and heavy. At the time of the atmospheric railway, steam engines were also not very powerful. That's why many early railways followed canal paths - the engines weren't powerful enough to go up hills. (And you had a proven traffic flow to/from destinations, which was also handy.)
The idea behind atmospheric railways was therefore very simple - move the big heavy power generator (steam engine) off the train. The train becomes lighter, and you can have a much larger more powerful steam engine. Create a vacuum with it, pull the train, and your life is simpler and happier.
Atmospheric railways failed because of two key problems. Firstly, steam engines rapidly became much more powerful - removing the atmospheric railway's advantage. Secondly - you can only have one train per section (between each vacuum pumping station). That wasn't an issue in those early days, or for many more rural lines in modern times. But imagine the stretch of line between Forest Hill and Norwood Junction in London having only one train in each direction on it during rush hour... Or between Manchester Piccadilly and Stockport, if you prefer. It's a ridiculous limitation.
In a way, we have kind of perfected the idea with modern electrified trains though. We don't generate the power on the train - we use a power station, far away. We just pick up the power and move the train with motors. Granted, this adds motors - but then you had to add the plug to the carriages on each of of an atmospheric train to convert the vacuum into motive force. It's the same model, but electric trains are far more flexible and reliable. (Although admittedly less romantic than steam engines.) So I'd argue that the modern atmospheric railway is the electric railway. Same operating model, just a different power transmission medium...
The Atmospheric Railway did work for a very short while. The top of the pipe needs a seal, which was leather. The seal needed constant maintenance, using lard, to preserve it. This caused the problem of rats eating the seal.
There is a length of pipe, from the atmospheric railway, in the Didcot Railway Centre.
So, Vicki ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway#Aeromovel
So, there is one system that definitely works written about there. :)
great video
Essentially a pneumatic system is an inefficient was of transferring energy of relatively long distances. You could do it better today and make it work, but it still wouldn't make sense to do so.
The modern equivalent that does solve the problems is probably Maglev. A highly efficient way of remotely powering/moving trains via a contained system, but also requiring an extremely complex and expensive infrastructure.
"If people tried to do it today, would it work?", not too far removed from the steam catapult on aircraft carriers
No, it still wouldn't work.
Another very interesting video! There used to be a Brunell Museum in the old pump house where they had a miniature atmospheric railway powered by a vacuum cleaner! There's a section of atmospheric railway at Didcot Railway Centre!
I have lived in both Starcross and Exmouth so this was quite an odd video to watch, seeing such familiar places. Did the Atmospheric Railway Inn still have the featherless Parrot?
I live just down from the Atmo pub and use to catch the train too Teignmouth for college. It’s a beautiful journey down the estuary and along the coast. Always a bit hairy when the storms hit though and waves are splashing over the carriage 😂😂😂
Definitely worth my support on Patreon! Thank you, Vicki! Great visuals and interesting tidbit of history! I can't wait for the next one:)
If you look at the design of an atmospheric railway abstractly, it can be and indeed is a success with modern technology. Many trains do run based on power generated by a static source at a remote location which is then transmitted to the train. However, instead of pumphouses and air pressure differentials in pipes making and transmitting power, it's electricity generating stations and catenary wires sending power to trains.
The technology at the time did not provide reliable running. Leather seals failed. Even now it would be difficult. It should have been trialled on a small scale first. At the time, it was virtually the only railway in the country losing money.
For details on these trains, check out "Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Vacuum Powered Railway" on YT
There's a podcast called "there's your problem" about the atmospheric railway. One of the keywords: Rat viscera.
Great video! I noticed you guys didn't heed Mr De Burgh's advice not to pay the ferryman 'til he got you to the other side, though...☺Nice title pic, btw...
Boats 'Parked"! - Love it Vicki, my expression too.
Obviously a 'Navy Lark' fan.
"Ship parked Sir!"
Surely the plaque stated it was built between 1845 and 1846, rather then as implied by Vikki it only operated for that period?
If she came to any conclusion about whether that system would work today with better technology, I missed it. Did she?
The music says "All the castles" 😍😍 this is gonna be a good series
DocWho 2002 powderham castle is near starcross - there is Hope!
Mr Tesla wants to bring them back .. India I think will be first.. Technology has now caught up!!
Hello to everyone else coming from the WTYP episode.
Lovely to see that some of the pumping stations still exist!
Her train/beach recitation puts me in mind of the Father Ted bit about cows- small/far away.
We love Vicki too much to quibble when she says pressure in the pipes, we'll just say she means negative pressure..
I think I remember a moquette the same pattern as your top, Vicki. Anyway, great video.
to you question about a moden version look at this wired article www.wired.com/story/flight-rail-vectorr-atmospheric-railway-train/
It's always train beach in dawlish, especially when it collapses time after time XD
Interesting history about atmospheric railway
Did you get smoochy while in Starcross just so you could make a joke about Starcross lovers?
There is another building which provided pumps for vacuum at Totnes.
At 4:30 you imply what exactly? News to me! Please explain (with evidence!)
Lots of clever folks here but I just liked Vicki talking about trains!
Great video Vicki Pipe, I really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work.
Nice vid but I have to point out that boats aren't parked. They are moored or docked or anchored but not parked.
How do you tap into the tube? I don't get it? Thanks for the beautiful video, though
ct2034 the tube had a slot along its entire length with a series of continuous hinged flaps. Inside was a large tight fitting piston with an extension that stood up through one flap and coupled to the leading car on a train of rolling stock. Differential pressure drove the piston forward drawing each train along pushing flaps open and closed as it moved along. This was before vulcanised rubber had been invented so the sealing was done by leather sections that deteriorated very rapidly and was often gnawed at by rats and mice.
@@TheUphillracer amazing! Thanks
you made me laugh when you said boats parked. ☺
It seemed a little windy on that boat, but not as windy as other boat/ferry trips...
Well done Vicki. It was nice to watch that without a certain person butting in
I have been led to believe it was a vacuum not a pressure in the pipe, the problem was forming an effective seal, the rubber and leather used became hardened in a short time and broke the seal, hence atmospheric.
If there was only one pumping station then they would have used pressure in one direction and a vacuum the other direction.
@@caw25sha There were many pumping stations along the line. There was one at Dawlsh too, and one at the 'Turf' in the Exeter direction. Many others also along the line. More info here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Devon_Railway_engine_houses
@@caw25sha The pressure would have been normal air pressure, 30 in hg or approx 15 psi
Would this be the same principle as the catapult on an aircraft carrier?
Nice video Vicki. I'm sure you know, but you didn't need to go to Exmouth and Starcross. There was another (short lived) atmospheric railway in Anerley somewhere, which I believe isn't far from where you and Geoff live? There is an almost certainly apocryphal story that a short section of tunnel with 'the carriage' still inside it, lies hidden somewhere beneath Anerley Hill, up near the site of the old Crystal Place. A nice thought, but a bit unlikely.
The main problem with atmospheric railways was the technology and perhaps modern technology could fix it - maybe. The principle revolved around evacuating the tube between the rails (by means of the pumping station) and a piston attached to the underside of the train would run in it. To 'start' the train, ordinary air at one atmosphere would be allowed to bleed into the tube behind the piston and thus the train would be pulled toward to pumping house. (Technically, it would be pushed by normal air pressure - nominally 1 Bar or 14.7 psi.)
The big problem was the leather seals that had to hold the vacuum until the piston went by and then reseal again after it had passed. Apparently rats would chew the leather and destroy the seal. The pumping stations expended so much effort pulling a vacuum over many miles through leaky seals, that it could never be economic.
The train bricked into a tunnel is a classic urban myth, isn't it?
Apart from the pump house does anything remain? Was the current line built on the same site?
Also - isn't this just pneumatic tubes? I've used them at work and they are sealed capsules blown along a tube to their destination. Atmospheric railways just a bigger version?
Or maybe sucked, I dunno!
Great video. There is a guy in America trying to get atmospheric railways going again. It uses magnet to get around the whole leaky pipes and rats problem. I think David Jason visited on he's plane train and automobile show. It looked really good running around a vine yard.
Great video about it here: th-cam.com/video/KniP3T_PPB4/w-d-xo.html
5:49 Vicki Minaj
Vicki does railway history. Yea! More please.
Love these vidoes. Keep it up
It created a vacuum not a pressure. It failed because it sucked
Even with modern materials and compressors I doubt that an atmospheric railway would be as efficient as an electrified railway.
Your right. Because the train is propelled by atmospheric pressure
as loads increase the energy demand increases exponentially.
There's an explanation of it on a Video 125 DVD.
"You would create air pressure through the pipes" so one can say, it runs on "it is really windy"
The pumps actually created a vacuum, in front of the piston and used the atmosphere behind to push the piston carriage along.
what a brilliant presentation. I have embedded it onto The Starcross History Society's blog
and shared with Starcross News Facebook page
The atmospheric railway was, as mentioned in the video, ahead of its time. The reason it failed is because rats kept eating the rubber tubing that sealed the tube off, thus breaking the vacuum and therefore not working.
With modern technologies, though, the line has been proven to work very well and efficiently, although, instead, it now uses a magnet inside the tube that does not physically connect to the train, therefore there is no need to have a rubber seal and the tube can be unbroken and un-eatable by rats.