Thank you for letting me join you on one of your adventures, Paul! It was great fun! Great story, and so interesting to see how the video turned out 😊

Very interesting research Paul, thank you. These transportation projects would have been a huge leap forward - they would have provided a fast, safe (no points or traffic from opposite direction on same line) and a very quiet ride. A trial run on the atmospheric railway between New Cross to Croydon on 22 August 1845 when the train reached 60mph and on a later trial achieved an unheard of (then) 70mph. No wonder there were others trying to get these systems to work. Faulty seals, difficult turning carriages around and an inclined section, high cost of creating the vacuum at three pumping station led to the early demise of the Croydon line just four months after opening. New materials, 175 years on, can provide a reliable seal and railways using this technology are now successfully operational. Examples run in Brasil and Indonesia under the name Aeromovel, I believe there may be others possibly in Germany (as a suspended railway) and maybe a new one in Japan. If any readers of this posting can add further info this could be very helpful!

Back in the 80's whilst staying near Exeter on a holiday from Portsmouth, my Dad being a History hunter, took Us to I think, the only remaining Pumping station for the Atmospheric railway on the West coastal route at Starcross near Dawlish....Its now a Yacht-club as alongside the Exe Estuary (that little pic you showed ) but was then, the home and small museum of a chap who explained the experiment on Brunels GWR and demonstrated on a little sit-on-model....was absolutely Facinating! It was a GREAT idea, but the Technology was Ahead of the Matrials available I think At the time. I now live near Exeter and pass the old pumping station and the track regularly.....LOVE your History vids Paul, Allways Superb!😢

Honestly didn't knew that ideas for Atmospheric Railway dated that far back. Very enjoyable video

Very interesting retelling of a mostly forgotten part of Railway History. I myself hadn't heard of the Atmospheric Railway, before the dear Jen had briefly talked about it in one episode when she was in Devon a few month ago. Very good video Paul. 👍 And nice seeing Sam. ❤

8:53 The wrong Dalkey 😪. The Atmospheric station was about half a mile to the north of the present day Dalkey station. Little remains except the final road overbridge and the cutting where the terminus was.

Great story, wish that kind of propulsion was still in use. Good to see Sam!

Didn't work well in NYC when they did it, but it did operate for a few years...

Look ma! A hyperloop tunnel!

I'd heard the name Samuda before. I took gad heard about the rats eating the leather. Good to have that cleared up. Another excellent video.

Nice video but I think you left out quite a few other problems. I read a bit about the London and Croydon Railway. In no particular order: Problem 1. Turning a train around at the terminus was awkward and slow. You needed to have a steam-powered shunting engine on hand every time you did this so it was inefficient. Problem 2. Junctions were impractical. Problem 3. Reversing the pipes would have been slow and inefficient making single line working impractical. Problem 4. You could only have one (or two with difficulty) trains in one section of pipe. A section was the pipe between two active pumping stations. If you want to have a more frequent service at peak times this was not possible without more pumping stations. Problem 5. If two consecutive pumping stations failed then everything stopped. The pumping stations were not powerful enough to create a vacuum in three sections. Some of these might have been overcome in time but in the end it did not seem worth it to the companies involved.

Very ingenious system. However, it seems to me that it would have been a LOT easier and cheaper to devise a cable system, above ground, with the cable being run through pulleys - something like today's cable cars.

Thank you for the walking trek this day. Always delve into the past with them. Always easy to interpret for the watchers. Appreciate your work on these fine trips! Hello to Rebecca and hopefully a grand Easter holiday. Enjoy the week ahead, and see you on the next! Cheers mates! ❤️❤️👍👍🙂🙂🇺🇸🇺🇸

Hi Paul, Very interesting story, I knew about Brunel but not the other systems. Great to see Sam at the end. I do enjoy this doing a walk whilst narrating a story, I think it works very well and you got a good photo of the inside of the tunnel. All the best!!

Hi Sam! Excellent video as usual, thanks I had no idea Atmospheric Railways existed! Cheers from New York.

I thought the atmospheric railways biggest flop was Elon Musks attempt.

This seems to be similar to the San Francisco cable cars (1876). Instead of atmospheric tubes under the train, the cable cars had steel cable located below street level. The cable was moved by a central power station. This cable ran at a steady speed (9.5 mph). The train was able to connect & disconnect with the moving with a lever controlled by the operator.

A friend of mine was asked to make a working model for the Newton Abbot museum which he did. Plastic pipe with a slot. AND YES THE FLAP Parcel tape... Same old problem, it worked superbly you just had to re apply the tape after each train passed along.

I just LOVE your enthusiasm , it's infectious. Another really interesting video. Thank you and thanks Sam for helping.😊

Love the double format of exploring one route whilst talking about another. Really interesting Paul - thanks 👍

An absolutely fascinating and informative documentary Oh those wonderful 18th and 19th Century Engineers building on each other and going forward. Visionary and never giving up making mistakes yes but moving on. Only if you do nothing do you NOT make mistakes. Just one slight quibble your touching faith in electricity and electric overhead lines. Even they can fail. Many years ago just as we left York Station an almighty Thunderstorm started. Our Train which had overhead electric lines was struck by an almighty bolt of lightening. We were stuck there for 5 hours! and the whole down line to London East Coast line was blocked for I do not know how long! So am afraid no system is 100% fool proof! However thank you a wonderful slice of railway history. Your enthusiasm is catching.

Thanks Paul ... as I die hard Brunel fan, I am really pleased to learn about the other engineers who gave him the idea - both George Medhurst and of course the Samudas. With the new materials available today an Atmospheric railway could have been much more successful except electric trains have overtaken the whole idea and for good reason. Your story telling is excellent - keep up the good work! 👍 🤣

Paul, it is only recently I've found your channel and have viewed many of your presentations. I'm highly impressed with your video techniques, your research and your professional presentation. As I live in the southwest, I appreciate your in-depth knowledge of the historical infrastructure of this area. Must buy you a pint sometime.

What an astonishing episode ! Pneumatic tube driven steam pumping station trains. Canals. Weirdly successful technology. Tunnels, Platforms. And then, as if by magic, 🎩, the men with tall stovepipe hats, IK Brunel himself, and his engineering gang. Excellent.

fab bit of history ..thanks Paul.......... great edit and production 👍

Putting the pressure source behind the train would have been more effective than using atmospheric pressure (approx 15lb/sq in) as a greater pressure difference could have been, even then, generated.

One of the pumping stations for the London -Croydon still exists in Croydon, dismantled and re erected as a waterworks pumping engine, waterworks yard off of Surrey street Croydon

There was a test I believe, an introduction and.. then something like: ' the fastest reverand in history.' (book by L.T.C Rolt..?)

I remember our local shop had a pneumatic tube system for communication between the front and the back of the building. It was really old and a novelty even then and I thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen. Watching a small cylinder go flying up and away was always exciting. Just a miniature version 😂

13:45 I'm glad someone finally said it. Rats are a myth. People always claim to have seen rats but we all know there are no rats in the real world. Sorry, it just kind of sounded like you were saying the rats themselves were a myth. Not just the rats eating the leather. Thanks for the interesting story.

great video again Paul and nice camera work Sam lol, , i so want to clean that platform up but my heath wont let me lol, well done and thank you 😊

Thanks Paul, very interesting. Like many I suspect, I had only associated Brunel with the atmospheric railway. Great backdrop as well, Chedworth is a fascinating and beautiful area.

Enjoyed this didn't know about the line in Ireland.Great to see you back up in the shire like you said Paul Foss Cross station is in the middle of nowhere worth the walk.

we did not move the engine from the train. They all have electric motors except tramways. But we did remove the fuel and it is supplied by wires along the track.

Great video about things I didn't know, many thanks again 👌

While the initial idea was not successful to move people and animals, the technology can still be found in hospitals, and large retail stores (Co-op) etc.. to transport small items papers, blood samples, reports, etc.. round a building. There are also commercially available cylinders which work on the original principals but only up to 2 meters stroke (limited by manufacturing and transport details)

Super cool video!! Thank you so much for bringing us this awesome technology of yesteryear...

You might like to look into another Brunel disaster in Bristol harbour, the SS Great Britain. I understand it wasn't entirely straightforward getting it to the sea from the floating-dock... there's a story to be told. Bonus, time it right and you'll also see a working steam railway and maybe even a steam crane over a century old that's still rated for it's original load 🙂

Chedworth tunnel was one of the first that I walked, back in the 1970s. It's crazy to think that all the technology was only about three longish lifetimes ago.

Fascinating piece of railway history. Not possible to place a preservation order on the Atmospheric railway now, but I wonder if it's possible to 'list' the historic Fosse Cross station building.

Interesting, I had not heard of the previous design work thank you. Love the old station. Lovely to see Sam, I just watched Darren and Hedley - are you guys all forming a collective?

That embankment at Chedworth has got to be the most impressive one I have ever seen, how they got it to stay stacked up soo tall is quite amazing.

A really interesting documentary there Paul. Almost like to the history of the railways has been re-written , hold on - it has. Thank you for making and sharing this truly fascinating video. I deleted an old KZfaq channel that wasn't "going anywhere" (pun intended), and started over with a brand new channel, and I have subscribed once again to your channel. 🙂

Thanks for the wonderful video. It highlights when multiple new and disruptive technologies come along, people bet on the future, but typically the most practical wins out. The people investing in steam steam engines won out in the end.

Here is an idea for another video. The train ferry that crossed the Tamar between 1844 and 1859. Should be interesting. As you say, there is a lot more to the Atmospheric story than covered by your video.

6pm release??? Someone forgot about the clocks going forward when booking the release of his latest video!

Thanks, interesting story and background!

Excellent video, Paul. I’ve been planning a return to Chedworth and Fosse Cross…..if it ever stops raining!

Very interesting thanks.🧐👍 Thanks for your hard work what must go into making your great video's.

the fact these ideas go back to 1799 is fascinating, i just open Medhurst's wikipedia page, i'll be cracking into that later. thanks for another good one Paul!

Cracking episode Paul. You should be on Terrestrial TV. With your energy and enthusiasm for history and the great British outdoors, I think it would go down a storm.

Great video Paul. The imagination, vision and ambition of out 19th century engineers never ceases to amaze me.

The atmospheric Inn, at Star Cross has a section of the pipe on the wall. A steam pump house is beside the railway there as well, now used as apartments. Lengths of the atmospheric main were used as a sewage outfall from Dawlish out into the sea. Now long replaced.

Brilliant video. Many thanks. The way we tend to lower our voices when in places of age and adoration and reverence is a wonderful human trait. Thank you.

It’s incredible how much wasted railway infrastructure there is in the uk

Lovely to be back on a railway Paul.

It's unimaginable that this system worked at all. Truly, you can do anything if you just burn enough coal.

A really interesting one. Funnily, I was in Starcross last week driving past the pumping station.

“I have a name for it. I call it the Hyperloop….” 😂

The sliding seal on a pressure / vacuum tube was eventually perfected on steam catapults on aircraft carriers - I wonder whether they investigated the atmospheric railway concepts when they were developing it?

Do love these videos. As someone who loves physics, it is always interesting to see how those before us attempted to advance our culture in new and interesting ways. Even now we've only really managed to fire a ping pong ball at supersonic speed at small scale due to some enquiring minds and a sense of fun. Ramping up to full scale would require some huge leaps in materials and technology, but who knows, one day it might be achieved. Great video as always. All the best and keep them coming.

That bricked up tunnel looks to be ideal for punishing a misbehaving sentient locomotive!

Good vid m8 enjoyed it well done 👏 subbed

Thanks Paul for a really great, concise review of all the background that led up to the story, one of the best I've heard. Brunel gets a lot of stick from his biographers about the money wasted on "the atmospheric caper" as it became known. It was A LOT of money! £32,000 doesn't sound like much, but it's equivalent to around SIX BILLION in today's money! To put it in perspective, as a money pit, it was about a tenth of what HS2 is today. But given the limitations of locomotive technology at the time it must have been very tempting to think of this as the future, especially given that there were a number of systems working albeit smaller. Brunel was always one to "think outside the box" and try new things, and lots of them didn't work but some did and those that worked, helped make his reputation (boosted always by his monumental ego, his boundless sense of self importance and his eagerness to take huge credit and bask in public acclaim wherever possible!). So I think we can forgive him in technical terms for being tempted to try this, and in the end he was brave enough to call a halt himself, recognising his own misjudgement and that is a VERY hard thing for any engineer to do, let alone the engineer with the biggest ego in history. He had the wisdom to see when something difficult was worth pursuing to get it done (like the Thames Tunnel that took him 30 years to complete) and things that were going nowhere, like this. On the other side, many investors were bankrupted by the venture, but Brunel always cared nothing for other people, and as he hadn't put his own money in, he wasn't bothered. I don't think Brunel was a very nice man to know, or to work for. But I remember a few years ago the BBC held a nationwide public vote to find "the greatest Briton of all time", they held heats and a vote-off and Brunel came second after Churchill. So he made his mark, and we still use so many of his structures to this day. In the end it was material technology that defeated the atmospheric. Not just the lack of a suitable material to make the flap work properly, but the growing availability of steel plate that made steam boilers stronger so they could work at higher pressures, delivering more power and using less coal and water so locomotive traction became more practical. I often wonder what would have happened if Brunel had overlapped with Magnus Volk, the inventor of the electric railway (his early electric railway still exists on Brighton seafront). I suspect the GWR would have been electrified from its inception! My understanding of the rat problem was not so much the rats eating the leather flap, but the rats licking at the whale oil being sucked into the tube under the vacuum and ending up in the pumps and gumming up the works with rat puree. But I don't know where I got that story from, I think it might have been in the atmospheric railway museum (sadly long gone) that was once in the only remaining pumping station, at Starcross. Marion

Fascinating history - Thank you.

fascinating video paul

Excellent very interesting really enjoyed it.

I think I recall an episode or two of Murdoch Mysteries that had the Atmospheric Railway as a plot device. The main issue I had with it was using fans to create a vacuum strong enough to kill, haha wait a minute there...

Got to the end and still waiting to hear what the disaster was! The leather wearing out and they decided not to replace it because it was too expensive? The word "disaster" is unfitting and possibly even click-bait! The Hindenburg, *that* was a disaster. This was merely an unfortunate end in which nobody got hurt (except maybe financially).

Great video!

Paul a vacuum is a pressure lower than atmospheric pressure. A full vacuum is 30in of Hg below atmospheric pressure. Vacuum brakes on all railways other than the GWR operated on a vacuum of 21in of Hg (IIRC the GWR used a vacuum of 24in of Hg).

I'm rather surprised it ever worked at all! A big leather tube with a slit in the top... how is that going to maintain a pressure difference over several miles?

I also believe condensation in the cast iron pipe caused issues, and you would get a bow wave of water in front of the piston

Marvellous history, thanks.

Interesting how at the beginning they abandoned the idea of the whole tunnel being the pressure vessel, with the passengers inside it. And a century and a half later some guy ressurected that idea, and all of tue attendant issues.

From memory of a book I read as a child, well over half a century ago, Brunel's vacuum train achieved 70 mph, and the 'failure' was caused by rats eating the leather straps that sealed the vacuum tube ahead and behind the bar that pulled the train. With other materials, it would have worked as intended.

Interesting story and well told😊

Well done! Thank you. 11:44 Wanted to see the old toilets.

I would have liked to have seen more details about the compressor stations. I bet that was neat stuff.

There is an intact pumping station at Starcross on the Exe estuary, which used to house a working model of the atmospheric railway, which you could ride on for a few yards. Using modern, synthetic materials instead of leather, I believe this idea may still be viable.

I was just wondering at what speed would the trains have been pulled along at?

Very interesting. Many thank. I am one of the many people who was wrong assumption that the Dalkey railway failed due to rats eating the leather. And BTW at the risk of being pedantic - Dalkey is pronounced similar to “door-key”. Keep up the good work. Mark K Dublin, Ireland.

That tube tunnel at around 6:00 someone should spray paint a steam train onto that wall as if the train was coming out of the tunnel

Fascinating. I wonder if modern materials could make it work. Thank you again.

superb as ever, love Foss cross

Had Brunel had the materials we have today there is evidance that the system was viable. A test run from Exeter actually proved quite amazing for the time. The huge problem to make it totally unviable was the inability to switch lines ie points.

I'd heard of Brunel, but I don't recall this type of railway. I bet I read some vague description that didn't work, so I didn't catch on to what it was. I wish I could have had places like those to explore...here, if you go wandering around on other people's property, you might get arrested or shot. Not to mention the disgusting habit people around here have of tearing old buildings down, not making any effort to protect historic or otherwise valuable places. Just a few blocks from here was an old YMCA, that had started life as just a house. It was a beautiful building, and I would have bought it and lived in it, if I'd had the chance...and they tore it all down just to have a vacant lot to put a baseball diamond on, and they tore down the mansion across the street, that was also a great building. It had been used as an apartment building for many decades, and should have stayed. But people around here are good at sneaking in destruction before anyone who cares finds out.

11:45 he’s in a tunnel whispering reverently to the past

Brilliant video sir, Brilliant.

Sounds like the predessors of Elin Musk's failed hyperloop

I live in Australia and had never heard of atmospheric railways prior to seeing this video - which I thoroughly enjoyed btw. Am I correct in assuming they were only ever built in England?

Brunel's "Iron Duke". One of the best Big Wheelers !

Many of the Brunel vacuum pumping houses still exist. There is even one on in Torquay on the line between Newton Abbot and Kingswear on the Dart Estuary. That end of the line would have never worked as an atmospheric line. Gradients are too steep.

Fascinating! 👍

Hi Paul, I've drawn that pumphouse.

The Dublin & Kingstown was already steam powered from Day 1; rather than horse. Possibly the first commuter railway as such. On the face of it, this makes the atmospheric extension seem very very odd, but I believe the incline was the reason for it. Can still travel on it with electric units or long-distance diesels.

The remains of one pumping station are at Starcross in Devon there it is stated that the salt Sea Air caused the Leather to split apart Brunels answer was to Grease the Leather Flaps unfortunately the Rats enjoyed the taste of the Grease and ate the Flaps.

"The weight, the adhesion, they were both solved by electric" Umm, the two are linked. For a locomotive to have adhesion, it needs mass. Also, while you place the power plant of the engine remotely with electric. You still need an engine, even if you would rather call it a motor when it's electric. You can solve adhesion when weight is low in one of two ways: Add more contact patches, such as more wheels. Using American notation here, 2-4-0 means two leading wheels, four driving wheels and zero trailing wheels on the locomotive. Some of the bigger ones were 4-8-8-4, meaning it had 4 leading, 8 driving PLUS 8 driving and 4 trailing wheels. The locomotive itself had a pivot to allow it to negotiate turns with that many wheels. It was all in the hunt for adhesion. Or, make every wheel on the whole train a driven wheel. This was also tried early on before electric trains. But that mainly only works on passenger trains. Freight trains don't have powered wagons because that would be prohibitively expensive. So, even modern electric locomotives made for freight are super heavy. They have to be to put as much pressure on the driving wheels as possible to increase adhesion.

Great video. But no atmosphere.

Question - During the making of a video, how many times do you reckon you set up the camera, film yourself walking away from it, then have to double back to collect it? Or do you always have someone else off-camera?