test please delete

[n5gooner]

oh migration

thanks!

[DS23]

only 174 to go

[n5gooner]

Maj Gell told BBC Radio Five Live: "It would be wrong to say incidents like this will not have an effect and morale from soldiers will, of course, take a knock.

[Moscow Mule]

Any requests for wikipedia pages to be re-gurgitated?

[n5gooner]

only 174 to go

mmm who's going to hit it though!

[Moscow Mule]

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) (IPA: [ˈɪzəmbɑ(ɹ)d ˈkɪŋdəm brʊˈnɛl]), was a British engineer. He is best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges.

Though Brunel's projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. During his short career, Brunel achieved many engineering "firsts," including assisting in the building of the first tunnel under a navigable river and development of SS Great Britain, the first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship, which was at the time also the largest ship ever built.[1]

Brunel suffered several years of ill health, with kidney problems, before succumbing to a stroke at the age of 53. Brunel was said to smoke up to 40 cigars a day and to sleep as few as four hours each night.

In 2006, a major programme of events celebrated his life and work on the bicentenary of his birth under the name Brunel 200.

[n5gooner]

think FG should as he has the highest post count here.

[Moscow Mule]

Early life

The son of engineer Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and Sophia (née Kingdom) Brunel (d. 1854), Isambard Kingdom Brunel was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, on 9 April 1806.[3] His father was working there on block-making machinery for the Portsmouth Block Mills.

At 14 he was sent to France to be educated at the Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris and the University of Caen in Normandy.[4] Brunel rose to prominence when, aged 20, he was appointed chief assistant engineer of his father's greatest achievement, the Thames Tunnel, which runs beneath the river between Rotherhithe and Wapping.

The first major sub-river tunnel, it succeeded where other attempts had failed, thanks to Marc Brunel's ingenious tunnelling shield — the human-powered forerunner of today's mighty tunnelling machines — which protected workers from cave-in by placing them within a protective casing. Marc Brunel had been inspired to create the shield after observing the habits and anatomy of the shipworm, Teredo navalis.

Most modern tunnels are cut in this way, notably the Channel Tunnel between England and France.[5]

Brunel established his design offices at 17–18 Duke Street, London, and he lived with his family in the rooms above.[6]

On 5 July 1836, Brunel married Mary Elizabeth Horsley (b. 1813), the eldest daughter of composer and organist William Horsley, who came from an accomplished musical and artistic family.

R.P. Brereton, who became his chief assistant in 1845, was in charge of the office in Brunel's absence, and also took direct responsibility for major projects such as the Royal Albert Bridge as Brunel's health declined.

[Moscow Mule]

Thames Tunnel
The Thames Tunnel in 2005, now part of the London Underground East London Line between Rotherhithe and Wapping.
The Thames Tunnel in 2005, now part of the London Underground East London Line between Rotherhithe and Wapping.

Main article: Thames Tunnel

Brunel worked for nearly two years to create a tunnel under London's River Thames, with tunnellers driving a horizontal shaft from one side of the river to the other under the most difficult and dangerous conditions.

Brunel's father, Marc, was the chief engineer, and the project was funded by the Thames Tunnel Company. The composition of the Thames river bed at Rotherhithe was often little more than waterlogged sediment and loose gravel, and although the extreme conditions proved the ingenuity of Brunel's tunnelling machine, the work was hard and hazardous.[7]

The tunnel was often in imminent danger of collapse due to the instability of the river bed, yet the management decided to allow spectators to be lowered down to observe the diggings at a shilling a time.

For the workers the building of the tunnel was particularly unpleasant because the Thames at that time was still little better than an open sewer, so the tunnel was usually awash with foul-smelling, contaminated water.

Two severe incidents of flooding halted work for long periods, killing several workers and badly injuring the younger Brunel. The later incident, in 1828, killed the two most senior miners, Collins and Ball, and Brunel himself narrowly escaped death; a water break-in hurled him from a tunnelling platform, knocking him unconscious, and he was washed up to the other end of the tunnel by the surge.

As the water rose, by luck he was carried up a service stairway, where he was plucked from almost certain death by an assistant moments before the surge receded. Brunel was seriously hurt (and never fully recovered from his injuries), and the event ended work on the tunnel for several years.[4]

Nonetheless, the first underwater tunnel had been built, and is still in operation on the London Underground East London Line between Rotherhithe and Wapping.[8]

The building that contained the pumps to keep the Thames Tunnel dry was saved from demolition in the 1970s by volunteers and made a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It now houses the Brunel Museum, which documents not just the Thames Tunnel but also the two Brunels' other achievements.

[Moscow Mule]

Bridges
The Maidenhead Railway Bridge, at the time the largest span for a brick arch bridge.
The Maidenhead Railway Bridge, at the time the largest span for a brick arch bridge.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge spans the Avon Gorge, linking Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods in North Somerset.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge spans the Avon Gorge, linking Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods in North Somerset.
The Royal Albert Bridge, seen from Saltash railway station.
The Royal Albert Bridge, seen from Saltash railway station.

Brunel's solo engineering feats started with bridges — the Royal Albert Bridge spanning the River Tamar at Saltash near Plymouth, and an unusual timber-framed bridge near Bridgwater.[9]

Built in 1838, the Maidenhead Railway Bridge over the Thames in Berkshire was the flattest, widest brick arch bridge in the world and is still carrying main line trains to the west. There are two arches, with each span totalling 128 ft (39 m), having a rise of only 24 ft (7 m), and a width that carries four tracks. The rather flat arches reduce the difficulty railway engines have with steep gradients (especially on hump back bridges) and today's trains are about 10 times as heavy as Brunel ever imagined[10].

In 1845 Hungerford Bridge, a suspension footbridge across the Thames, near Charing Cross Station in London, was opened only to be replaced by a new railway bridge in 1859.

The Royal Albert Bridge was designed in 1855 for the Cornwall Railway Company, after Parliament rejected his original plan for a train ferry across the Hamoaze — the estuary of the tidal Tamar, Tavy and Lynher. The bridge (of bowstring girder or tied arch construction) consists of two main spans of 455 ft (139 m), 100 ft (30 m) above mean high spring tide, plus 17 much shorter approach spans. Opened by Prince Albert on 2 May 1859, it was completed in the year of Brunel's death.

However, Brunel is perhaps best remembered for the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. Spanning over 700 ft (213 m), and nominally 200 ft (61 m) above the River Avon, it had the longest span of any bridge in the world at the time of construction. Brunel submitted four designs to a committee headed by Thomas Telford and gained approval to commence with the project. Afterwards, Brunel wrote to his brother-in-law, the politician Benjamin Hawes: "Of all the wonderful feats I have performed, since I have been in this part of the world, I think yesterday I performed the most wonderful. I produced unanimity among 15 men who were all quarrelling about that most ticklish subject — taste." He did not live to see it built, although his colleagues and admirers at the Institution of Civil Engineers felt the bridge would be a fitting memorial, and started to raise new funds and to amend the design. Work started in 1862 and was complete in 1864, five years after Brunel's death.[11]

In 2006, there is the possibility that several of Brunel's bridges over the Great Western Railway might be demolished because the line is planned to be electrified, and there is inadequate clearance for the overhead wires. Buckinghamshire County Council is petitioning to have further options pursued, in order that all nine of the historic remaining bridges on the line can remain.[12][13]