The Subway Power House

[glasgowken]

The Subway Power House, used until 1935 to power the cable hauled Subway.
It's looking a bit grotty now (another apology for my duff photography). The Superintendent's house is on the left.





Yet another great example of Glasgow preserving it's past


The bit with the bush growing out is the tension run, that window is at the far end of this old photo.

[big/davie]

geez you learn something new every day is that still in the building?think thats just next to scotland st school,buildings are in total disrepair such a shame

[viceroy]

That's fascinating actually. I never realised that was the old Subway power house. In my mind it was always just part of James Howden's sprawling works which took up much of the terrain there at one time. This was a firm I used to visit in the 1980's when the shipping agency I worked for did a lot of business with them.

[glasgowken]

I was glad to see it's still there, from the OS map you can see what a long building it is. And the wee narrow Superintendent's house is just great.



I doubt this is still in there

[My Kitten]

OK i'll admit it Im actually an Underground Geek and love the idea of the old cables. I must get my videos onto DVD.

(Bang goes any credibility I had now!)

[HollowHorn]

Jesus, would you look at the speed o' thon big wheels

[McShad]

The power involved in tugging a cable around the whole of glasgow must be quite large..... the friction and the drag involved... and the increased drag as a train grabs the cable

[glasgowken]

Sometimes if the train gripper grabbed the cable incorrectly, it would whip into the air, must have given the passengers on the platform quite a start.
The ingenuity of Victorian builders is amazing, with electric motors & self contained engines everywhere now, it's easy to forget just how good they were at coming up with solutions to problems like this.

It's due to the cable hauling that some stations are built on a hump, to make stopping and starting much smoother.
The 'Gripman' would release the cable while coming into a station, and let the rise bring them almost to a halt before applying the brake. And then to start, he released the brake and let the train coast down the hump for a bit before grabbing the cable again.
Of course they had to be careful to stop the train just over the crest of the hump, or the coasting smooth start wouldn't work.

[viceroy]

I believe the cable also stretched over time and had to be replaced periodically. That must have been some job considering it went all the way round the system.......

[glasgowken]

The new cable was delivered (and the old one taken away) by rail, using the sidings used to deliver coal to the boilers.
Must have been quite an operation to witness first hand.




I was reading that Howden's did take over the buildings in 1940. So it would have been part of their plant when you visited them.

[Seamey]

so are all underground stations the same distance apart then?

[Vinny the Mackem]

I'm sure one of the other subway slapheads will correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont think they are!

I think the cable used to run on a continuous loop and that the gripper/brake car would have some device to grab the cable and get pulled round (like a bloke on a ski-lift) and to release the mechanism at the station. Meanwhile, the cable would keep on running!

Or a meringue?

[Pgcc93]

The question is: How much longer would the rope have been on the outer circle compared to the inner? Over to you Math heads

[viceroy]

I think the cable used to run on a continuous loop and that the gripper/brake car would have some device to grab the cable and get pulled round (like a bloke on a ski-lift) and to release the mechanism at the station. Meanwhile, the cable would keep on running!

That's exactly how it worked. You can see one of the gripper devices at the Transport Museum. The driver turned a wheel which gradually gripped the continuously moving cable. Or, if he was so inclined he could operate a lever which fully gripped the cable immediately, although I imagine the effect on his passengers' equilibrium would probably have been quite dramatic.

As for calculating the difference in cable length between inner and outer circle, I don't really think I want to get involved with that.

[McShad]

I'm sure you can read somewhere the exact length in metres of each tunnel.... take the value from the outer and minus the value of the inner....