Tunnelling record

[roythebus]

Someone on a Facebook group has asked if anyone knows about a tunnelling record made whilst building the Victoria Line under Green Park. He says he remembers seeing an article about it somewhere but can't remember where or when. Maybe one of the learned people here can help?

[brigham]

It was on Blue Peter. I can't remember the details, though.

[roythebus]

Here is one we made earlier...

[kesmet]

Well, a quick Google search showed up a fascinating paper from 1969 on the engineering that went into the tunnelling of the Victoria Line. No mention of a record under Green Park, but there was a record set of just over a metre per hour when digging some experimental tunnels.

See www.geplus.co.uk/ground-engineering-march-1969/38260.issue; the paper is Excavating for London's New Victoria Line, and it's well worth a read.

[nidave]

If you have not seen it there is a great documentary on BBC iPlayer
"How they dug the Victoria Line"
First transmitted in 1969, this is the story of the construction of the world’s most advanced underground system where automated trains are driven along hand-finished tunnels.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00sc29t/how-they-dug-the-victoria-line

[banana99]

500 metres in one week was mentioned on the above programme

[profoblivion]

Aug 25, 2016 19:48:18 GMT nidave said:

If you have not seen it there is a great documentary on BBC iPlayer
"How they dug the Victoria Line"
First transmitted in 1969, this is the story of the construction of the world’s most advanced underground system where automated trains are driven along hand-finished tunnels.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00sc29t/how-they-dug-the-victoria-line

First post to the Board.  I watched the documentary and read the paper in Ground Engineering on the Vic civil engineering project.  While an engineering undergraduate in 1968, I went with three fellow students to look at the Vic workings at KX and Euston.  One of the three was the son of the then CME of LMR, who took us round (the holes were, after all, being dug under his station at Euston).  I seem to remember wandering down the tunnels as far as Oxford Circus.  The highlight was a visit to a step-plate junction at Euston where a conical chamber had been constructed around an existing tunnel.  As we arrived at the junction via the new tunnel we saw what looked like a massive sewer pipe at the other end of the step-plate chamber, but it wasn't a sewer, it was the Northern Line with trains running through it.  The construction crew must have broken through and re-laid the track a few weeks later during a bank holiday weekend, to move the Northern Line for cross-platform interchange with the Vic.

The GE article refers to both concrete and cast iron tunnel linings, but I seem to remember that at the point north of Oxford Circus where the NB Vic swings over the Bakerloo tunnels and ends up to the right of the SB Vic (so as to be in the right place for the Euston Vic/Northern interchange) there was minimal clearance between the Vic and the NB Bakerloo, such that (a) a packing material (cork?) was used to keep the tunnels physically separate, and (b) a short section of the Vic tunnel was lined with steel (not cast iron) so that it could flex as trains passed by.  Any more information on this would be much appreciated.