The first - the VERY first?

The Beach Pneumatic Transit in NYC opened in Feb 1870, making it the words first underground tube railway. It was powered by air.

There is an article on it at the excellent nycsubway.org website
www.nycsubway.org/articles/beach.html

So this is not a train?

Similarly you need more than one camel to make a 'camel-train' or more than one thing to happen to have a 'train of events'.

Stephen, thanks for mentioning the Beach Pneumatic Tube, which amusingly was rediscovered while building part of the IRT.

Fascinating as it is to ponder on what is meant by the word 'train' The Tower Subway was first to use a tube tunnel to bore through the earth and obviously provided experience in tunnelling. ( It lasted a hundred years or more.)
The BR Rule Book of 1950 said "Exept where otherwise provided, the term Train includes Light Engine, ie Engine without a train, also Railcar, Rail Bus." ( 'Where otherwise provided' would include a Banking Engine detached from the train in Section and for which separate instructions were provided )

I cannot lay my hand on my LTE Rule Book but this was based on the BR edition and I feel sure would be similar.

PS - I can't see where a Multiple Unit train is covered !

Not forgetting shield tunnelling began with the Thames Tunnel the world's first bored subaqueous tunnel built between 1825 and 1843.

Sir Marc Brunel first concieved the idea of a tunnelling shield from observations of the action of shipworms boring through ship timbers in Chatham Dockyards in 1816.

Brunel's patent application in 1818 of a circular tunnel shield advanced by hydraulic ram thrust against tunnel lining was intended for a 22ft diameter tunnel in soft ground under the River Neva in St Petersburg. However, in designing the tunnelling shield for the Thames tunnel in 1824 he realised his original concept was ahead of current technical capabilities. Though still an enormous technical engineering feat he instead settled for a rectangular cast iron shield propelled by screw jacks against brickwork lining. Though the use of compressed air for underground excavation had been considered by Brunel in 1831 it was rejected by a combination of technical and financial difficulities.

The principle of a circular shield tunnel was taken forward by Henry Greathead for the construction of the Tower Subway of 1869 and greatly improved upon during his time as Chief Engineer of the CSLR.

CSLR replied
Unfortunately, the C&SLR no longer exists as a company and can therefore no longer claim anything. It is actually incorrect to say that a claim can never be made on its behalf. A claim of any sort could be made. It just happens that in the case of it being the first tube railway, that claim is true.
CSLR replied
This most certainly has not been shown. I have already gone into great detail as to why the Tower Subway was not a railway and I suggest that anyone who wishes to do so reads what I have said and challenges any of the points that I have made rather that just make a statement that this 'thing' was a railway.
I have tremendous admiration for what Greathead achieved in constructing the single tunnel that formed the Tower Subway. In terms of the advancement of engineering, it probably exceeded anything that he subsequently did (including the C&SLR). He then completely messed it up by putting a load of cheap, ill-conceived junk inside it. It should be said that he was not the first engineer to make this type of mistake and he certainly will not be the last. Greathead was first and foremost a mechanical engineer, he was not a railwayman.
What he did in the case of the Tower Subway, was to create something that worked (or did not work) less effectively than the primitive tramways that were operating on the surface. I have already shown how many of the claims that were made for this fairground ride are pure fantasy that have been legitimised in some peoples minds simply by continual repetition.
Greathead knew how to build tubes. OK, he made a few mistakes on the way, but unless you know where to look and what to look for, they are lost to sight. This is the real beauty of what Greathead did, and why he got away with so much. Unlike a builder of bridges, ships or buildings, much of his work is tucked away out of sight and is difficult to criticise.
It is only when you study the exact words that he spoke that you spot the cracks. And those cracks really do exist, being more noticeable the further away he gets from his core speciality (tube tunnel construction).
So, how do we study the exact words that he said? How do we listen to him analysing problems? How do we hear him answering questions and making decision? Easy. Transcripts exist of everything that he said when he was called as a witness before parliamentary committees that met to approve the construction of tube railways. Pages and pages, volumes and volumes recording exactly what he said - hesitations, corrections, it is all there. Over a period of years, I have read all of them. They are such an insight into his character, that you can almost hear him think. What is obvious is that he was a little bit of a 'blagger'. Once he moved away from the mechanics of tube construction - as was necessary in many aspects of assembling and overseeing a complete project - it is apparent that he was often out of his depth and appeared to be making things up on the spur of the moment. On many occasions he actually contradicted things that he had said shortly after he had said them. The problem then is, that if this is evidence to parliament in relation to a Bill that is before it, the statement of intent becomes a legal requirement and it is necessary to commit to actions the promises that you have made. This can cause untold problems for an engineer who does not know how he is going to achieve something, but has given an answer in order to obtain parliamentary approval.
It is often forgotten that the C&SLR was conceived by Greathead, (as the London (City) & Southwark Subway) but that it failed to gain funding, primarily because of the problems with the Tower Subway! It was then resurrected as the City of London & Southwark Subway (changing its name just before opening to the City & South London Railway).
Greathead drew the final project together as a means of employing himself as an engineer to oversee the construction of the tunnels. His two problems were, to raise capital and to find a means of locomotion that would not involve the emission of smoke or steam in the tunnels. Both of these problems were solved to his satisfaction when he made an agreement with the Patent Cable Tramway Corporation to get involved with the project. If Charles Grey Mott had not arrived on the scene and insisted on switching to electric traction, the C&SLR could have been as big a disaster for London as attempts to operate the Tower Subway had been; and it might have held back tube railway development in the London for years.
CSLR replied
Effort is the right word. This was a line constructed with the sole purpose of demonstrating the pneumatic system of propulsion. The entire line was less than 100 yards long - shorter than many station platforms.



A form of tunnelling shield was used in the construction and was rediscovered at the end of the tunnel in 1912.



The tunnel was lined with bricks except for a very small section that was lined with iron rings.



The iron lined section was on a short curve and was just 57 feet 6 inches long. The tunnel segments were similar to those used by Greathead but, were assembled asymmetrically (this might have been a mistake on the part of the builders), contained no key piece and show no signs of the use of grout.

A single 'station' existed in the basement of a building. The 'journey' was completed by the car being blow to the end of the tunnel then sucked back again. It appears that although the system did work, it was not completely successful.



The remains of the cars were rediscovered in 1912. The car to the rear is the original of 1870. Almost all descriptions of a ride on the line at that time are apocryphal and there are numerous reports of the system either breaking down or not operating at all during the visits of reporters and members of the public.
Visitors who turned up for a ride were invariably invited to walk through the gas-lit whitewashed tunnels instead of travelling on the car. Contemporary illustrations also show the gas lighting in the tunnel. With only 1½ inches clearance around the car, it seems unlikely that the gas lighting was in place at the same time as the car was operating. In addition, illustrations that show tunnel lights burning while a car appears to be preparing for a passenger run cannot possibly be accurate as the huge rush of air required to operate a pneumatic system would have extinguished the flame.
Another problem with the original car was that it did not have a chassis. The small wheels were connected directly to the bodywork which probably made it about as unstable as the Tower Subway monstrosity, even with the additional stability of the third 'braking' rail in the base of the tunnel.
By the end of 1871, another car had been introduced on the Beach Transit. This consisted of a chassis with larger, more practical wheels. A wooden platform had been built onto the chassis on which settees were placed for the passengers and there was a wooden sail at the end which served as a baffle for the air to push against. The remains of the second car can be seen in the foreground of the photograph above.
It appears that the second car was more practical than the first and was certainly superior to anything that was tried at the Tower Subway. This was now approaching something like a railway but remember, this was only a very short demonstration track that pushed visitors out of a station, less than 100 yards into a dead end tunnel and then sucked them back.
Note: A shaft is visible in the roof of the tunnel. This allowed air to escape when the fan pushed the car forward and air to enter when the car was sucked back.
The end of the tunnel can be seen through the far door of the car.
CSLR replied
I disagree. They do not meet all criteria.
The Tower Subway was a tube tunnel but was not a proper railway, on any of the occasions that it actually worked. Please read my previous posts on this subject - I am not going through that lot again.
The Beach Pneumatic Transit was not a proper tube (except for a short length of 57 feet 6 inches). It was only a demonstration tunnel and the only travelling you could do (when it worked at all) was a short distance along a tunnel and back again. It was a curiosity that was marketed to the public as a novelty. If you consider this to be a tube railway, then you must consider almost every mainline railway tunnel in the world to also be a tube railway.
If anyone argues that these two lines were the first tube railways, then they must condemn the Metropolitan to the same dustbin of history. By this argument, the Metropolitan Railway was not the first underground railway; it was simply a normal railway with a roof placed over bits of it. That would make the first mechanically powered underground railway the Penydarren Tramway in 1804 at the point where it passed beneath a road bridge (same construction as the Met!) This of course would be total nonsense.
CSLR replied
Anything that precedes anything else is a precursor. The dinosaurs were a precursor to the first transport cafes, but that does not make them the world's first teapots.
CSLR replied
In your opinion.
In my opinion these other claims are unfounded for the reasons that I have stated.
CSLR replied
Nope. Different people had done different things at different times.
It is the drawing together of a series of ideas and applying them in a workable way that makes a project innovative.

And not forgetting Brunel's Atmospheric Railway. This failed because in effect there had to be openings in the pipe for points and mainly because an effective means of sealing the tube could not be found. It was covered with leather, a flap of sorts, and a rod assembly mounted under the locomotves passed through the groove in the top of the tube to a 'piston'.

A very small length of the Atmospheric Tube Pipe is on display at the Didcot Railway Centre.... along with a info board detailing how it worked...

I do not have the exact dates to hand, but at a guess I'd say late 1840's to late 1850's

Even Beach preceded the Beach Transit with a 100 foot long mid-air passenger carrying tube (!) which he demonstrated at the American Institute Fair in 1867, but the Crystal Palace Pneumatic demonstration of 1864 preceded either of these.
There is a question about the London Pneumatic Despatch Co which opened its first tube at Euston in 1863 - one year before Crystal Palace. Although it was not intended to carry passengers, some might have travelled through it. People certainly rode in the cars in its slightly larger (4 foot diameter) tunnel when that opened in 1865 - one year after Crystal Palace.
Oh yes and then there was Rammell's 30 inch demonstration tube that was laid out on the surface in Battersea in 1861; that supposedly did give a few rides.

Having seen similar arguments ad infinitum about aviation, automobiles, and railways, I have decided that in the end you must state your case and let the 'jury' decide. Thank you for stating your case eloquently and succinctly with evidence. Plaudits are due for standing by your arguments and parrying the way that you did. I am sure you understand that this style of dialogue from both sides is not unknown and regrettably you may as I said have to leave it for others to come to their own conclusions based thereon. This discussion will no doubt be, as with whether Pluto should be a planet or a planetoid, raging for years to come!

It may console that I had a steaming, and I mean steaming, argument online in a US forum about the most significnt passenger car of all time. Our Yankee friends kept suggesting and insisting that it was the Model T Ford. They held out the fact that it pioneered mass production techniques, and it sold do many. 15 milluion buyers must be right. My counter iwas and is that Briton Frederick Lanchester of Lanchester car fame, et al, was years ahead of Henry Ford, and before Lanchester we can put forward Brunel with the Brunel/Maudslay block production, namely mass production that supplied wooden blocks for the Royal Navy. My argument is that Alec Issigonis's 1959 Mini was the most significant passenger car since it introduced mass-produced transverse drive, although Issigonis was not the first, and resulted in the largely universal adoption of the front-wheel drive/transverse engine layout. Obviously fwd was pioneered years before as well. Regrettably even armed with all the facts, there were those who insisted that their man had the prize. As it turned out one international 'poll' on the Car of the Century agreed with me and the other agreed with our Yankee friends. Never the mind that the Model T was a neanderthal and its only virtue was its cheapness and its production figures.

In the end it was I believe a one-all draw...I have claimed a moral and pyrhhic victory but ihe arguments sent my BP soaring and nowadays I'm trying to get it down. Please keep the education coming for this professional historian. Some excellent points for and against.

Sorry Oracle, but I think I can go a bit better in the "Utterly Misinformed" stakes. ;D

It was several years ago, but I came across an American based web site in which it was said that Henry Ford invented the motor car.

I felt compelled to point out the error but for some strange reason never got a response.

AGC I have indeed heard this totally accurate statement! Anyone who doubts this should be boiled in their own engine oil!

And for us, totally off-topic
www.nostalgiaroad.co.uk/sparks.htm

I'm not going to lock this thread because of the quality of the agrument, but can we be aware that we are now a LONG way off a topic for the 'Other LU Matters' board............

Trying to draw the thread back to some semblance of on-topicness (well, slightly less far off topic!), what was the most important development regarding electric railways? e.g was it. a development that lead to electrically powered trains, an electric locomoitve (overall, or one inovative bit of it, etc), the first system to use electrified rails, etc