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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 6, 2015 17:30:21 GMT
Where would the southern floodgates have been? I know it might be fairly obvious but I met a retired controller who said that there would have been lot more protection provided. He went on about extra gates on the District but it did not seem to make sense well not to me.
Originally the line was to terminate at Victoria and that was it but having the gates at Green Park had that been the case what about shafts south of Green Park if water entered then it would have affected the District & Circle lines at Victoria.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 7, 2015 3:54:21 GMT
Southern floodgates? AFAIAA, gates 49 & 50 at Green Park were the last floodgates installed circa 1968. One might've expected floodgates to have been installed at Vauxhall when the extension was built but I am not aware of any south of the river and I have no idea if any new floodgates were installed with JLE but I would not be surprised if they were. Of course floodgates have been out of commission for at least 25 years, floodgate telephones removed and gate control cables cut back during various station modernisations and other projects since the 1980s so it would seem odd to have installed new floodgates anywhere without recommissioning the existing ones!
Floodgates were originally installed for fear of German bombs dropping into the Thames breaching the tube tunnels and flooding them as did indeed happen at Embankment. There was no such protection for cut and cover tunnels and lack of floodgates south of Victoria would make no difference to the District from that point of view, presumably the tube from Green Park southward being allowed to flood the line to the end of the tunnels.
I have seen Victoria station interchange subway nearly flooded during heavy rainfall, floodgates could not prevent it just as they were no use at Bank circa 1978 when flooding occurred and took out the relay room at the bottom of the escalators from Monument, these both being floods from street level IIRC caused by the sheer numbers of passengers entering the stations dripping wet.
It doesn't take much to flood an area, I once flooded the southbound platform at Lambeth North by drilling the plaster work in a cross passage with a number 10 drill bit (about 5mm diameter) and in 35 minutes there wasn't a dry spot anywhere. I had hit a flooded void above the platform and it took nearly an hour to empty.
Tooting Broadway inverts used to flood to the top before the pumps began pumping, there was a small gap between segments just inside the headwall and the water from a void outside the tunnel would trickle in almost unnoticed, run down into the ballast thence into the suicide pit which had a small crack in the corner and it used to take about 3 to 4 hours to fill the invert after I had it pumped out.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 7, 2015 14:52:35 GMT
RT,
You are right the gates 49 & 50 were the last ones to be installed and like I said with the original line ending at Victoria the four sidings were all connected but at the end of the two middle ones there were watertight doors for sealing the tunnels. I know I said about the shaft from the sub station but have looked it up and problem solved.
I would have expected gates to be provided somewhere close to the river but nothing although at Vauxhall station when it opened had doors which sealed the station from the street, Pimlico coming after the opening to Brixton has nothing which is a surprise as if you look on the Environment Agency website it shows Pimlico completely covered if there was a flood. Victoria all the entrance’s had a sort of barrier which closed by gravity so all the stairwells would have been closed.
All the stations along the Thames or close to it had a basic form of protection and I remember reading somewhere about Victoria station pumping out quite a bit of water during normal times, so I suspect most of the stations are similar. The later gates were provided due to the increased devastation which could have been caused. The flooding you mention at Embankment was the old Charing Cross loop which was hit but had already been protected.
The retired controller told me that there were a lot of things that was not done and that they actually planned to have gates between Pimlico and the river and south of Vauxhall and close to Stockwell, on the District they also planned for additional gates at Victoria.
I know of several times when people were carrying out work and would drill into what they thought was solid structure but only for it to start to seep through, it was thought there had been a burst water main somewhere and water always finds the quickest route due to gravity.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 7, 2015 15:30:32 GMT
There are many voids in the London clay, north of Chalk Farm on the Northern we saw plenty of water ingress when resignalling to Golders Green in the late 1970s. We had to remove segment bolts to hang the new 4 way cable brackets and sometimes it was like turning on a tap and watching the four foot flood within a few minutes before the void discharged fully. Many of the voids are the result of subsidence for many reasons including enemy bombing in the blitz and what fills them generally is naturally draining water from the streets above which is not directed into the drains. Elsewhere water ingress is due to a rising water table as a result of many building projects over decades and insufficient drainage. Of course a water pocket usually flows out under pressure rather than gravity, when released, due to its sheer weight
I have always assumed that the heavy doors in cut and cover areas such as those at Baker Street circulating area under platforms 1-4, in the subways at Leicester Square etc were installed as blast doors but might also have mitigated flooding from street level to some extent although I bet none of those doors have been closed in decades and would be difficult to close now without some decent maintenance.
It does seem really odd that there are no gates south of the river on the Victoria line because there is a chance that a flood on the Vic would obviate the gates on the Northern at Kennington and allow the tunnels south to flood.
When it comes to flooding some stations are possibly more prone to it because they have stagnant pools such as the Bakerloo inverts at Picc Circus, the condemned disused Northern line lift area at Moorgate or underground waterways such as beneath the platforms at Belsize Park. At some stations it is difficult to pump water out so the pumps simply move it to another place such as at Liverpool Street LMCs where water from the sumps is automatically pumped into the platform inverts, a truly frightening experience if you happen to be in the invert at the time and are unaware of the way the drainage works as happened to me one night when I was jointing a cable and saw a large wave rushing towards me. I was trapped as the water rose to about three feet between me and the point of egress and I then had to wait for the invert pumps to kick in before the flood disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 7, 2015 19:56:26 GMT
RT,
Yes there are many areas that some people would just not believe. I remember at St Paul's at the bottom of the old lift shaft it seemed that it was covered in dirt which it was but the dirt moved and had been laying on stagnant water the moving dirt was thousand's of insects.
Those doors you mention none are blast doors but I suppose the grey colour gave that impression although some have been painted in quite a few different colours. It all depends where they are/were on what they were for and what years they were installed. On the Northern line platforms at Elephant if you went though a small hatch way then there was a metal door same thing due to the shaft that was further along.
You are right though on if there was no southern gates then if there was a problem and it got to Stockwell and further the gates at Kennington would be useless.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 8, 2015 0:46:12 GMT
RT, Yes there are many areas that some people would just not believe. I remember at St Paul's at the bottom of the old lift shaft it seemed that it was covered in dirt which it was but the dirt moved and had been laying on stagnant water the moving dirt was thousand's of insects. Those doors you mention none are blast doors but I suppose the grey colour gave that impression although some have been painted in quite a few different colours. It all depends where they are/were on what they were for and what years they were installed. On the Northern line platforms at Elephant if you went though a small hatch way then there was a metal door same thing due to the shaft that was further along. You are right though on if there was no southern gates then if there was a problem and it got to Stockwell and further the gates at Kennington would be useless. One of my last jobs for comms before moving to Picc line engineering was a one night job at St. Pauls relocating PA loudspeakers in the disused lift area as part of CLPT enabling works. I well remember descending the little staircase in the lift pit to what was once the wartime home of the electricity board. Unfortunately I was unable to explore the area as it was flooded to at least three feet at the time almost up to the painted black line that separated the corridor paintwork. I recall entering a small hatch on one of the platforms at Elephant and climbing the shaft behind it to see where it went, it turned out to be the cable shaft to the substation but I didn't really know that until I had climbed to the very top of the ladder in almost pitch darkness to see the cable duct sealing plate as the only light I had on me was a very cheap pocket torch with two AA cells ! I have been to so many such places locating long forgotten cable routes, lost telephone link boxes and other equipment because until the building of the original Jubilee line comms kit was shoved into any available nooks and crannies. It was not until the Vic line was built that CERs appeared but they were only cupboards and were filled to capacity and then some as more and more kit was installed through the years without recovering anything that became redundant. If you recall the original Vic Line passenger info points (PIPs) I recovered most of that kit at most of the sites circa 1990ish even though it had been redundant for years, the original 8 track cartridges were still in the players, in order to make some room in the CERs and one of the electrical switchrooms which had been used to mount a large sealed relay rack as there had been no room in the CER when the line was fitted out for comms.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 9, 2015 14:56:08 GMT
RT,
It really is surprising how many places there are and where some of them come up I remember coming up in some real strange places considering I had climbed a ladder from track level.
I remember one place and there was a button that said ring for station staff and being a bit daring I did ring but no one came.
At the Elephant at the north end of the SB platform you had some rooms that were in the old CSLR tunnel the old signal box was supposed to be in the area but never found it.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 12, 2015 3:38:13 GMT
RT, It really is surprising how many places there are and where some of them come up I remember coming up in some real strange places considering I had climbed a ladder from track level. I remember one place and there was a button that said ring for station staff and being a bit daring I did ring but no one came. At the Elephant at the north end of the SB platform you had some rooms that were in the old CSLR tunnel the old signal box was supposed to be in the area but never found it. Most of my work at Elephant was on the Bakerloo and the offices above although I did some work on the station radio on the Northern side and some temporary ticket office comms installation during the UTS installation programme in the 1980s, other than that I tapped a few telephone lines through the station from the old Leicester Square exchange circa 1980/1. IIRC It was while checking out station radio that I came across the shaft to the substation. For a brief period prior to devolution of engineering to lines but after the great downsizing of engineering installation sections I was engaged on T/T night maintenance on all lines. We used to do the Northern mobhanded knocking off multiple current sections each night and testing/readjusting to spec all circuits and equipment as we played leapfrog along the line. Elephant T/T room was bad news to visit at night with its entrance in the subway under the roundabout. I used to escort my staff there after one was attacked by the drug addicts frequenting the subway. One night I was on my own chasing a T/T fault and luckily there was no-one in the subway when I got there, it was never a pleasant experience even when accompanied with one or more staff. Of course the substation testers had been working nights doing substation maintenance as pairs for years as they had, had lone staff attacked at various sites. Usually there were 2 pairs of testers on duty but if one man was off sick then the remaining three would work together, no such luck on comms, quite often there would be just two of us chasing T/T faults and that meant one at each end of the circuit. I would have liked to have spent more time exploring Elephant but the opportunity never presented itself unlike the three Claphams, Kennington and Stockwell. I entered the Northern tunnels from Clapham Common south side sub when recovering current gap telephones, not for the fainthearted with the vent fan running and all the tunnel dust swirling about in the vent subway. At Stockwell I followed the cable route up the shaft to the substation yard and was surprised at how relatively clean it was. Of course at the three Claphams I saw all the cavernous inverts as the old main telephone cables ran through them and all the original CCTV and PA switching kit was fitted in them. I remember seeing the long defunct slate feeder board that once fed power to the WW2 government shelter and the very end of one of those inverts which seemed to be quite a bit longer than the platforms presumably because of the crossover(s) that used to exist beyond the platforms. Apologies for the thread drift, I forgot this was in the Victoria line section !
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 14, 2015 15:48:31 GMT
RT,
I am almost sure there was something about the substation at Elephant being provided inside but can't remember exactly what, as for the people in the subways yes there was and may still be undesirables making it unsafe if alone.
I remember at Lambeth going past the lifts at lower level and climbing down and coming out on the Northern line, exploring was always on depending what was going on at the time.
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Post by railtechnician on Jun 15, 2015 2:58:33 GMT
RT, I am almost sure there was something about the substation at Elephant being provided inside but can't remember exactly what, as for the people in the subways yes there was and may still be undesirables making it unsafe if alone. I remember at Lambeth going past the lifts at lower level and climbing down and coming out on the Northern line, exploring was always on depending what was going on at the time. I never did get to explore all of Lambeth North but of course with the substation next door to the station there would be a cable shaft down to track level. Of course there was AFAIR an intermediate level between ticket hall and platforms which once housed the Operating Training School and at one time the RCIs were based there although I don't know if in that particular area or offices above the ticket hall. Over the years I climbed many shafts either up from the track or down from various entrances both on and off stations, some deep and some relatively shallow and there were several that I worked in that had no ladders or staging, predominantly ventilation shafts. Euston was/is a very interesting site which I explored pretty fully when looking for cable routes to certain locations. In the old exit subway to the Northern line lifts area is a ladder going up through the roof of the tunnel which exits into an escalator chamber at intermediate level between ticket LU hall and platforms and at the top is little more than crawl space to exit the chamber via a small 2' or 3' hatch to the intermediate concourse. I would never have known that if I had not climbed up the ladder and struggled to exit into the chamber as the ladder was also the route of a feeder cable (probably 3 phase 415v) which fouled the cramped space at the top of the ladder. I had many jobs there over the years including sumps and pumps cabling, station radio faulting in the NR ticket hall area and lots of telephone jobs.
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Post by hellocontrol on Jun 20, 2015 6:24:05 GMT
RT, I am almost sure there was something about the substation at Elephant being provided inside but can't remember exactly what, as for the people in the subways yes there was and may still be undesirables making it unsafe if alone. I remember at Lambeth going past the lifts at lower level and climbing down and coming out on the Northern line, exploring was always on depending what was going on at the time. I never did get to explore all of Lambeth North but of course with the substation next door to the station there would be a cable shaft down to track level. Of course there was AFAIR an intermediate level between ticket hall and platforms which once housed the Operating Training School and at one time the RCIs were based there although I don't know if in that particular area or offices above the ticket hall. Over the years I climbed many shafts either up from the track or down from various entrances both on and off stations, some deep and some relatively shallow and there were several that I worked in that had no ladders or staging, predominantly ventilation shafts. Euston was/is a very interesting site which I explored pretty fully when looking for cable routes to certain locations. In the old exit subway to the Northern line lifts area is a ladder going up through the roof of the tunnel which exits into an escalator chamber at intermediate level between ticket LU hall and platforms and at the top is little more than crawl space to exit the chamber via a small 2' or 3' hatch to the intermediate concourse. I would never have known that if I had not climbed up the ladder and struggled to exit into the chamber as the ladder was also the route of a feeder cable (probably 3 phase 415v) which fouled the cramped space at the top of the ladder. I had many jobs there over the years including sumps and pumps cabling, station radio faulting in the NR ticket hall area and lots of telephone jobs. As you come out of the lifts on the lower landing turn to the left and you see what looks like a stairway had they been provided and it went down to the Northern line and a station could have been provided if needed. The old training school and later BTP offices both under and upstairs then the TTI's moved in they always seemed to be leaning to one side after working somewhere, the last residents I remember were operational standards.
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