The Guy Fox Blog

#3. Blue Trolley (May 2000) What you see here is our Transportation Department – our battered, beloved blue trolley.  When Kourtney applied for that grant from the Peabody Trust ( Object #2 ), she included a budget. Having never done a funding budget before, there were bound to be some mistakes.   Indeed, that budget wasn’t even a twig compared to the robust, well-researched budgets that we submit in our funding applications now. It guesstimated the various line items and confidently stated: “I will re-work / re-design the project to accommodate the funding which is made available to me.” For Distribution Costs, Kourtney guessed ‘£200 to £300’. After all, how much could it cost to send out 5,000 magazines to 65 primary schools? Well. A lot more than you might expect.  (In fact, distribution is one of our most expensive activities. Often,  SENDING  a Guy Fox book is double the cost of  PRINTING  one! ) As we said, there w...

HOW DID THEY BUILD TOWER BRIDGE (PART TWO) First, they built the Towers The steel for the towers was made by William Arrol and Company in Scotland, and it was shipped to London and brought up the river on barges. There wasn't much space to store equipment and materials, so the steel was brought up the river when it was needed. Crews of workers set about 200 rivets per day – by hand. There are two million rivets in Tower Bridge – so you can do the math.The work took a long time! Slowly but surely, the steelwork rose from the Thames like a huge black skeleton. Each tower had four steel pillars. The two pillars on the land-side of the tower would support the suspension chains, while the river-side pillars would support the high level walkways. When the structure was in place, workers built the Walkways. When the pillars were finished, workers started building the high level walkways. They worked 46 metres above the river, without safety nets! Boats would pass below them,...

HOW DID THEY BUILD TOWER BRIDGE? (PART ONE) From the bottom up! It's not a joke. When you look at Tower Bridge, you see a magnificent structure, but did you know that more of the bridge is below the water than above the water? You start with the foundation. And in the case of Tower Bridge, you start deep, deep, deep under the surface of the Thames - 10 metres below the surface of the water , in fact. On 22nd April 1886 , divers started preparing the riverbed for the massive piers. It must have been a scary job - after all, it was 1886. They didn't have scuba gear and safety devices and computer equipment. The divers wore leather suits with metal helmets, and they were connected to the surface by air tubes. They used hand tools and shovels. Above them, on barges, other workers built caissons . What is a caisson? I'm glad you asked. A caisson is an open-ended watertight metal box, with sharp edges. Workers lowered each caisson into the river - down, down, down...

WHY did they build Tower Bridge? Let me take you back to 1860. London had a problem: TRAFFIC! (Does that sound familiar?) Thousands of people and carts and horses crossed the River Thames . You could take a boat across the Thames, but that was slow and expensive. You could cross London Bridge for free, but it was really crowded. You could swim across, but that, well, it was wet! And in the winter, pretty COLD! Obviously, the River Thames needed a new crossing. But the new crossing needed to 1) allow carts and horses and people to cross over it, and 2) allow ships to come into the Pool of London. At the same time! After all, London was one of the world's busiest ports. The big question of the day was: How do you design a bridge which carts and horses can cross over, while tall ships to sail under it? All sorts of architects submitted all sorts of designs -- there were TUNNEL designs; there were designs for really tall BRIDGES; or BRIDGES with steep roads; there was a de...