Drawings reveal Victorian proposal for London’s own Grand Central station | Heritage
New York’s Grand Central Station’s vaulted belts can be recognized even for those who have never boarded Big Elma. However, they could be a very easy landscape in the center of London.
The 172 -year -old architectural drawings made by Perceval Parsons show how the increasing number of lines from the city designed a new London railway connecting to a large main terminal by Thames.
The drawings of London’s Grand Central Station, which was first on sale to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first public passenger railway, shows a plan that will give a very different look to the capital of England today.
The station would be located in the Great Scotland Yard, which was close to the modern set tube station, and would have an ornamental facade of about 800FT (245 meters).
Multiple entrances “would lead to a large hall of approximately 300FT long, and confront them, there would be a series of payments with the names of each railway above, Parsons wrote in his plans in 1853. It would be for eight arrival platforms and eight departures.
He described the cost of the project as “a relatively small expense ..
The seven hectare (18 acres) region of the proposed station included “just a few huts and several careless values ve and“ covered with mud ”.
“To combine the term of various metropolis railways, a large description of a connection connection to combine the term and also have access to the heart of London has been accepted for a long time, Pars Parsons wrote,“ It will give a line that will affect it and at the same time a similar accommodation to the main Bankburbs, it will give it a greater importance ”.
The proposal was supported by Robert Stephenson, London and Birmingham railway chief engineer and George Stephenson, the father of the railways ,, but the Crimean war opened appetite for expensive projects and quietly forgotten.
Prospectus £ 1,450, including two large folded maps– It is one of the 200 elements in a new railway catalog compiled by Joshua Clayton. Jarndyce Ancient Bookstores This week will be available at the York Book Fair.
Other items for sale in the catalog include a letter from George Stephenson to his son in 1834, and another from Isambard Kingdom Brunel dated 1838, as well as travelers’ guides, timeline, original handwriting, documents from the first years of steam locomotives.
The 1840s saw an explosion in the construction of railways known as the British railway “Mani ,, but after the 1847 banking crisis, various temporary plans were thrown to connect the center of London.
In 1846, a Royal Commission proposed to avoid the construction of the terminals in the center of London, which ultimately led to the construction of the underground system in 1860.
Parsons proposed a London railway from Brentford in Western London to Hammersmith and a route from Kensington and Chelsea.
From there, the “Hungerford Bridge into the first pier and under the first belt of the Waterloo Bridge before passing, the end of the river between the North Bank and the Hungerford Bridge, which can be seen with low water, now covered with anything that can be covered with all these large plains, which can be covered with all these large plains.
Orum At this point, I offer to place the Grand Central Station, the site has been created by making a solid set of this wide area, ”he added.
Christian Wolmar, the author of Cathedrals of Steam, a book about London’s large railway stations, said, “In the 1840s, there were not many stations near the center.
“They were all in places outside Bishopsgate or nine Elms or the center, because it was very expensive to ride the center.”
The Stockton and Darlington railway officially opened on September 27, 1825, which made it the world’s first public vapor passenger railway.
The estimated 40,000 people pulled the No 1 opening train to the Bukomotive movement.
The new railway connected coal substances to the port in Stockton and proved the practicality of steam trains for long -distance transport.
