![]() ![]() ![]() The easiest way is to take the South East Rail train from London Bridge Station (platform 1 as of this writing) and alight at Abbey Wood. It takes some determination to reach Crossness from central London. If this richly decorated sewage pumping station was a stately home it would be among the most visited historic sites in Britain, it is that impressive. Even the front entrance, now half-hidden within a later extension, is worthy of a cathedral. It is hard to overstate just how impressive the engine house is the fully restored central section of the building is jaw-dropping. Video showing the Prince Consort beam engine under steam Your browser does not support the video tag. You can descend a narrow spiral stair to an underground chamber to see the boilers at work, and climb a larger spiral stair to the upper level of the engine house to see the huge beams and flywheels. The other beam engines are still undergoing restoration. The Prince Consort engine is fully restored and has been in steam regularly since 2002, driving a 47-ton beam with a 52-ton flywheel. These are all single-cylinder engines manufactured by the James Watt Company of Birmingham. The engines are named Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert-Edward and Alexandra. The Beam Engine House is home to four rotating-beam engines, each named after a member of Queen Victoria's royal family. Liquid waste was still dumped into the river but solid waste was carried in special Sludge Boats out to sea and dumped. In this 'settlement and separation' approach, sewage settled in two large channels which separated solid from liquid waste. The Princess Alice disaster prompted authorities to develop a new system of dealing with sewage. Around 650 people died, many of them from breathing in toxic sewage waste as they tried to survive in the filthy water. Within minutes of the collision the Princess Alice sank. The Princess Alice was carrying around 700 holidaymakers home from a day trip to the Kent seaside. On 3 September 1878 the pleasure steamer Princess Alice collided with a coal barge off Tripcock Point, west of Woolwich. It took a disaster to make authorities realise that dumping raw untreated sewage into the Thames was a bad idea. The sewage was stored in a covered reservoir before being released on the ebb tide of the River Thames, which would eventually carry the sewage out to sea. The sewers would pump raw sewage east, away from the city centre, at the same time allowing clean water into the river. ![]()
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