Science & Engineering

The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.

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Wapping: ride through the Thames Tunnel

Brunel's tunnel of 1843 is a working railway: the Overground runs through it from Wapping to Rotherhithe, and the original brick arches are visible from the platforms.

Engineering landmarksGo inside

Photo by Robin Stott, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Thames Tunnel that Marc Brunel began in 1825 and his son Isambard nearly drowned in was the first under a navigable river anywhere, and after its years as a fairground and a thieves' den it became a railway in 1869; the East London line still uses it, so for the price of a single fare you can ride through the oldest section of tunnel on the Underground map. Wapping station is inside the tunnel's northern shaft - the platforms are narrow because the tunnel is - and the twin horseshoe arches of Brunel's original brickwork are lit at the platform ends. The Brunel Museum at the Rotherhithe end has the story.

Where
Wapping High Street, E1W 3PA
Nearest station
Wapping · 1 min walk

Station hours; a single fare rides the tunnel

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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