Camden Incline Winding Engine House

Overview

This winding engine house, now serving as railway vaults, was built in 1837 by Robert Stephenson for the London and Birmingham Railway. It represents a remarkable survival from the pioneering days of railway engineering.

Architecture and Structure

The engine house is built of brick to a symmetrical plan and consists of four parallel vaulted underground chambers beneath the railway track. Each chamber measures approximately 35 metres long by 4.5 metres wide and 7 metres high. A 2-metre wide central passage runs between the two inner vaults, with seven arched openings connecting to the main chambers, which feature groined vaulting.

At the north-west end, the parallel vaults connect to two transverse vaults. The larger of these, approximately 23 metres long by 9 metres wide and 5.5 metres high, housed the twin 60 horse power condensing engines and a 20-foot diameter drive wheel. Directly to the south-east, the smaller transverse vault originally contained parts of the winding mechanism consisting of two pulley wheels (of 20 and 12 foot diameter), with the drive rope emerging via the south-east vault and re-entering through the north-east.

The engine chamber is flanked by two boiler chambers with workshops attached to the south-east and the bases of demolished chimneys to the north-west. The boilers appear to have originally been housed in unvaulted pits—contemporary colliery boilers were often housed in the open for greater ventilation—surrounded on the surface by tall walls and either open to the sky or, possibly, with a flat roofed covering. The boiler chamber vaults probably date from the closure of the engine house, and the vault to the north-eastern boiler chamber has partially collapsed.

The two central parallel vaults housed the rope tightening mechanism. They have wells at the south-east end for the counterweights which kept the ropes taught, now filled with debris, and a line of four circular openings in the crown of each vault, possibly to provide ventilation when the vaults were sealed in 1849. The outer vaults contained chambered coal stores, which have ten cast-iron beams across the vault approximately 3 metres above floor level, and cast-iron brackets of unknown purpose fixed along the walls. All machinery has been removed.

Access and Features

The vaults were reached from track level by spiral stone stairs to the engine room, which have been damaged and infilled with rubble. These originally emerged in a small hut used by the operator who signalled for the engines to start on receipt of a pneumatic signal from Euston. There are also smaller extant spiral stairs to each boiler room. Coal was taken from the canal through a tunnel to the engine room, which was subsequently blocked off.

Historical Context

The London and Birmingham Railway was the first truly long distance passenger railway in the world, following the successful experiment of the shorter Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, on which locomotive traction for passenger and goods traffic was demonstrated to be feasible. Engineered by Robert Stephenson (1803-1859), the London and Birmingham Railway received its first Act in 1833 with a terminus at Camden station. Subsequently, a site became available in Euston Square, and the company obtained an additional Act in July 1835 to extend the railway to the New Road, with Camden Depot subsequently used for goods traffic, including livestock. The first section of railway was opened from Euston to Boxmoor, near Hemel Hempstead, on 20 July 1837 and in October that year it was operational as far as Tring. The whole line from London to Birmingham was opened on 17 September 1838, becoming the first main line trunk railway with a London terminus.

Hilly terrain to the north of London posed an obstacle, and major excavations were required to bring the line through it, especially Primrose Hill tunnel and Primrose Hill cutting. Despite these works, the last mile of the line had to descend to Euston on an average gradient of 1 in 85. There is debate about the reason for the construction of the steam-powered winding engine to haul trains up the incline. It was either thought necessary over fears that it was too severe a gradient for the railway's early locomotives to tackle, although they were used on similar gradients on the earlier Bolton and Leigh and Warrington and Newton railways, or alternatively it was due to opposition to locomotives from local interests.

Cable haulage using fixed engines had been used as early as 1803 on the otherwise horse-drawn Preston and Walton Tramway, prior to the invention of the locomotive. Subsequently, the majority of early steam railways used fixed-engine cable haulage for steep gradients including the Stockton and Darlington (1825); Springwell Colliery Railway (Bowes Railway - 1825); Canterbury to Whitstable (1830); at Edge Hill on the Liverpool and Manchester; and the Cromford and High Peak (1831). The alternative reason for the use of rope haulage at Camden was given by Peter Lecount, an assistant London and Birmingham Railway engineer, in his 'History of the Railway connecting London and Birmingham' (1839): "It is not because locomotives cannot draw a train of carriages up this incline that a fixed engine and endless rope are used, for they can and have done so, but because the Company are restricted, by their Act of Parliament, from running locomotive engines nearer London than Camden Town". The clause in the Act is thought to have been introduced by Lord Southampton, an important local landowner, who feared that smoke-belching locomotives would reduce property values. However, an accommodation was clearly soon reached as locomotives were in use on the incline from its opening in July 1837 until the winding engine came into operation in October of that year, and thereafter when the winding engine was out of action.

The Winding Engine System

The steam-powered winding engine apparatus, hauling an endless rope to draw trains out of Euston, was established at the top of the incline at Camden station, close to the Regent's Canal. The engines were placed underground in a barrel-vaulted chamber. These consisted of two 60 horse power engines and associated boilers and winding machinery, supplied by the firm of Maudsley's of Westminster Bridge Road. Two chimneys, over 132 feet (40 metres) tall, stood adjacent to the engine chambers, flanking the railway on either side. The rope was 3744 yards (3423.5 metres) long—claimed to be the longest unspliced rope on record—of 7 inches in circumference and weighing 11.5 tons. To keep it taught, it was passed round a pulley on a moveable counterweighted carriage before emerging on the surface between the rails. The engines were supplied with coal via a tunnel which ran from the vaults to a dock on the Regent's Canal. Trains of up to 12 carriages were hauled up from Euston to Camden station at a speed of between 15 and 20 miles per hour, where locomotives waited to take the trains onwards.

The construction of the London and Birmingham Railway was depicted by the artist John Cooke Bourne and published as lithographs in 1839. They include a view of the construction of the stationary engine house as it appeared in April 1837, with the walls partially completed and centering being erected for the vaults. This print has often been referred to as illustrative of the energy and large-scale enterprise of the early railway age.

Later History

The winding engine operation ceased in July 1844, after a debate in 1843 between the Company and Robert Stephenson as to their continuing viability. The Company decided that savings in time and money could be made by using larger locomotives on the incline, albeit with two locomotives usually required. Stephenson argued that the savings were minimal but he lost the argument, and in 1847 the winding engines were sold and removed with the chimneys being demolished in 1849. The vaulted chambers survive underneath the modern electrified railway trackbed.