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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 605631
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/605631
‘The Subway’, as it was called from its inception, was an ambitious railway project for its time, extending six and a half miles below the city streets in twin tunnels 11 ft diameter side by side. The gauge is 4 ft and the work was completed in 1896. It was modernised in the 1970s by Sir William Halcrow & Partners. The original engineers were Simpson & Wilson of Glasgow.
When the subway opened in 1896 trains were hauled by an endless cable running in sheaves between the rails. The train drivers controlled a device called ‘the gripper’ which could grab or release the cable as required. This method of traction was unique for a suburban railway of this size.
In 1935 Glasgow Corporation acquired the subway and electrified it. It was fully modernised in 1977. In tunnelling under Glasgow, the engineers and contractors encountered a wide variety of material, from sandstone rock and coal measures, to soft clays and silts. Many problems had to be overcome, not least when tunnelling under the Clyde, which is crossed in two places, at Custom House Quay to the east and between Govan and Partick to the west. At the former site the river broke in and flooded the workings on ten occasions. The completion of the river crossing by grouting behind the iron-ringed lining made them remarkably watertight, so much so that the sections under the river are among the driest parts of the whole system.
There are 15 stations, each with 10 ft wide island platforms located on summits with 1 in 20 flanking gradients to assist braking and acceleration. There are no surface stations, and removal of the train cars for servicing to the surface was then a complicated business involving lifting them bodily via a special access pit. Twin rail tunnels 11 ft diameter lined with cast-iron segments cross the river between Govan and Partick. In the past, even with their 1 in 18 gradient approaches, these tunnels were often used in preference to the ferries.
The works were carried out from 1891–96 by several contractors, including Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, and Charles Brand.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
