The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Brighton on Saturday the 19th. May 1906 to:
Miss Roberts,
'Westcroft',
Warlingham,
Surrey.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Lil,
Am staying at Brighton
with Emmie Mason for a
fortnight, & am enjoying
myself immensely.
It is very quiet & not a bit
like Brighton as one
imagines it.
I left home last Thursday.
There is a delightful, large
stretch of sea, and the
water is very clear & blue.
If a wet day comes along
there will be plenty to see
& do in the town.
Love from I."
St. John the Baptist's Church, Brighton
St. John the Baptist's Church is a Roman Catholic church in the Kemptown area of the English city of Brighton and Hove. It was the first Roman Catholic church built in Brighton after the process of Catholic Emancipation in the early 19th. century removed restrictions on Catholic worship.
Located on Bristol Road, a main road east of the city centre, it is one of 11 Catholic churches in Brighton and Hove. The Classical-style building, which was funded by Maria Fitzherbert and completed in 1835, has been listed at Grade II* by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance.
William Hallett, the architect, is not known to have been responsible for any other buildings in Brighton or elsewhere. He based the design of the church very closely on that of St. Mary Moorfields in London, completed in 1820.
In particular, the southern frontage – which faces Bristol Road – is almost identical to that of St Mary's. The church is Classical in style, with a stuccoed exterior and a large pediment above the entrance. The shallow roof is made of slate.
The entrance porch is flanked by two columns with accompanying pilasters, and there are two more pilasters at the corner of the building. Blind doorways between the two sets of pilasters have small pediments and two deep-set windows above them.
Below the main pediment and dentil cornice is a Latin inscription: DEO SUB INVOC. S. JOANNIS BAPT. ("To God, under the invocation of St. John the Baptist.") There is a side entrance in the western face, again with a pediment above it.
The church has been listed at Grade II* since the 13th. October 1952. As of February 2001, it was one of 70 Grade II*-listed buildings and structures, and 1,218 listed buildings of all grades, in the city of Brighton and Hove.
The Simplon Tunnel
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 19th. May 1906, the east tube of the Simplon Tunnel opened for traffic.
The Simplon Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the Simplon railway that connects Brig, Switzerland and Domodossola, Italy, through the Alps, providing a shortcut under the Simplon Pass route.
It is straight except for short curves at either end. It consists of two single-track tunnels built nearly 15 years apart.
The first to be opened (east tunnel) is 19,803 m (64,970 ft) long; the second is 19,824 m (65,039 ft) long, making it the longest railway tunnel in the world for most of the twentieth century until 1982, when the Daishimizu Tunnel opened.
Culminating at a height of only 705 m (2,313 ft) above sea level, the Simplon Tunnel was also the lowest direct Alpine crossing for 110 years, until the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in 2016.
The tunnel has a maximum rock overlay of approximately 2,150 m (7,050 ft), also a world record at the time. Temperatures up to 56 °C (133 °F) have been measured inside the tunnel.
Work on the first tube of the Simplon Tunnel commenced in 1898. Work on the second tube of the tunnel started in 1912, and it was opened in 1921.
In the 1957 novel 'From Russia, With Love' by Ian Fleming, James Bond fights his enemy, SMERSH agent Donovan Grant, eventually killing him, while passing through the Simplon Tunnel on the Orient Express.
History of the Simplon Tunnel
Shortly after the opening of the first railway in Switzerland, each region began to favour a separate north–south link through the Alps towards Italy. Eastern Switzerland supported a line through the Splügen Pass or the Lukmanier Pass, Central Switzerland and Zürich favoured the Gotthard Pass, and Western Switzerland supported the Simplon route.
In 1871 the first line was completed through the Alps, connecting Italy and France with the Fréjus Rail Tunnel.
The Compagnie de la Ligne d'Italie was founded in 1856 to build a connection between Romandy and Italy through the Canton of Valais and the Simplon. On the 1st. June 1874, it was taken over by the Simplon Company which was created to promote the project.
This merged in 1881 with the company Western Swiss Railways to create the Western Switzerland–Simplon Company. The French financiers of the SOS were able to secure finance for the tunnel in 1886.
The company considered 31 proposals, and selected one that involved the construction of a tunnel from Glis to Gondo, which would have been fully in Switzerland. From Gondo it would have continued on a ramp through the Divedro valley down to Domodossola.
At a Swiss-Italian conference held in July 1889, it was agreed, however, to build a nearly 20-kilometre long (12 mi) base tunnel through the territory of both states. In order to secure credit for the tunnel, the SOS joined with the Jura–Bern–Luzern Railway to create the Jura–Simplon Railway.
The participation of the Swiss government led to the signing of a treaty with Italy on the 25th. November 1895 for the construction and operation of a railway through the Simplon from Brig to Domodossola by the Jura–Simplon Railway.
The route of the tunnel was determined by military considerations so that the state border between the two countries was in the middle of the tunnel, allowing either country to block the tunnel in the event of war.
On the 1st. May 1903, the Jura-Simplon Railway was nationalized and integrated into the network of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), which completed the construction of the tunnel.
Construction of the Simplon Tunnel
The construction of the tunnel was carried out by the Hamburg engineering company Brandt & Brandau. On average, 3,000 people a day worked on the site. They were mostly Italians, who suffered very poor working conditions: 67 workers were killed in accidents; many others died later of diseases. During the work, there were strikes, which led to the intervention of vigilantes and the Swiss army.
With up to 2,150 m (7,054 ft) of rock over the tunnel, temperatures of up to 42 °C (108 °F) were expected, and a new building method was developed. In addition to the single-line main tunnel, a parallel tunnel was built, with the tunnel centres separated by 17 m (56 ft), through which pipes supplied fresh air to the builders in the main tunnel.
It was envisaged that the parallel tunnel could be upgraded to a second running tunnel when required. The first Simplon Tunnel was built almost straight, with only short curves at the two tunnel portals.
On the 24th. February 1905, the two halves of the tunnel came together. They were out of alignment by only 202 mm (8 in) horizontally and 87 mm (3.4 in) vertically. Construction time was 7½ years, rather than 5½ years, due to problems such as water inflows and strikes.
Electrification and Operation
Operations commenced through the tunnel on the 19th. May 1906. Because of its length, it was operated with electric traction rather than steam from the beginning. The official decision to use electricity was made only half a year before its opening.
Brown, Boveri & Cie were commissioned to carry out the electrification. They decided in 1904 to use the three-phase system being introduced in Italy, with a three-phase power supply of 3,400 volts at 15.8 Hz using two overhead wires with the track acting as the third conductor.
BBC had no electric locomotives, and initially acquired three locomotives built for the Ferrovia della Valtellina. These three locomotives hauled all traffic through the tunnel until 1908.
On the 2nd. March 1930, the Simplon tunnel was converted to 15 kV, 16.7 Hz AC (single-phase).
Expansion of the Simplon Tunnel
Between 1912 and 1921, the 19,823-metre long (65,036 ft.) second tube, known as Simplon II, was built. On the 7th. January 1922, the northern section from the north portal to the 500-metre long (1,640 ft) passing loop in the middle of the tunnel was brought into operation, followed on the 16th. October 1922 by the southern section from the passing loop to the south portal.
The Simplon Tunnel in WWII
During the Second World War, on both sides of the border, preparations were made for the possible detonation of the tunnels. The explosives attached to the tunnel on the Swiss section were not removed until 2001.
In Italy, the German army planned, as part of its 1945 withdrawal, to blow up the tunnel, but was thwarted by Italian partisans with the help of two Swiss officials and Austrian deserters.
Car-Carrying Shuttle Trains
There is a car-carrying shuttle between Brig and Iselle di Trasquera, which provides a 20-minute train journey as an alternative to driving over the Simplon Pass. The service began on the 1st. December 1959.
As roads over the Simplon Pass steadily improved throughout the 1970's and 1980's the tunnel's shuttle schedule was cut back, then ended altogether on the 3rd. January 1993. Almost twelve years later, on the 12th. December 2004, the car shuttle service began again, and now runs about every 90 minutes.
Piggyback Transport
In the early 1990's, a project to implement the rolling highway system of piggyback operations for transalpine freight on the Lötschberg–Simplon axis was implemented.
Such operations were possible under the previous profile of the Simplon Tunnel, but capacity would have been heavily restricted because its height was too low to carry trucks at the permitted maximum corner height of four metres (13 ft 1½ in).
The clearance in the tunnel was therefore increased by lowering the rail trackbed. This work began in 1995 and lasted eight years. At the same time, the tunnel vault was rehabilitated, while the drainage tunnel was rebuilt. A total of 200,000 m3 (260,000 cu yd) of rock was removed with pneumatic breakers.
In addition, a new railway electrification system was installed using an overhead electric rail instead of the tensioned cable normally used for overhead electrification so that the required height clearance could be achieved.
In the late 1980's, a one kilometre (0.62 mi) long overhead electric rail had been tested at 160 km/h (99 mph). Before this experiment, trains running under overhead electric rails in Switzerland had been limited to 110 km/h (68 mph).
Restricted rail operations were maintained during the entire construction period.
The 2011 Fire
On the 9th. June 2011, a 300 m (984 ft) section of the Simplon II tunnel's roof was seriously damaged when a northbound BLS freight train caught fire and stopped 3 km (1.9 mi) into the tunnel.
The temperature exceeded 800 °C (1,470 °F) and took more than two weeks to cool back to normal. The other tunnel remained in service.
Repair work was completed in November 2011.
