There is a mini-museum at Thames Barrier Park that shows how the mechanism works. It is interesting to compare these models to the display of lifting machinery at the late Victorian Tower Bridge.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Foresight, political will, the common good
On my prime meridian walk across England I visited the Thames Barrier near Greenwich. Here is a photo (that's the Millennium Dome in the background) of a few of the eleven futuristic pods strung across the river. In the face of a storm surge from the North Sea, huge gates rise up from the river floor between the pods to hold back the tide. Like the Dutch, the English made a decision to protect a great city from storm surges and followed through, in what turned out to be a great feat of civil engineering.
There is a mini-museum at Thames Barrier Park that shows how the mechanism works. It is interesting to compare these models to the display of lifting machinery at the late Victorian Tower Bridge.
There is a mini-museum at Thames Barrier Park that shows how the mechanism works. It is interesting to compare these models to the display of lifting machinery at the late Victorian Tower Bridge.
