Locomotives

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Richard Trevithick’s, and the world’s, first locomotive of 1804. A model of the first locomotive in the Science Museum. See how similar that is to the engine in the museum? The cylinder here is placed horizontally – it is at full out stroke in the model. The cylinder has been placed vertically in the museum’s engine and it has no wheels because it was an industrial engine but the lineage of the engine is unmistakeable. Watt may have powered the Industrial Revolution in the beginning but this is what really got things moving – literally in more ways than one.



Trevithicks later ‘Catch-me-who-can’ the 1808 locomotive that ran in London. This is similar in layout to the Science Museum engine. The connecting rod going directly to the crankpin on the driving wheel so no gears are necessary. This engine ran up to 20 kph. You can clearly see the exhaust steam pipe to the smoke stack and the thicker pipe around it for heating the water supply.



Puffing Billy. This is the world’s oldest surviving steam railway locomotive. Built in 1814 it carted coal 8 km from a colliery in northern England to a jetty on the river Tyne. Notice that it uses the same firebox and smoke stack arrangement that Trevithick pioneered. Now there are two cylinders and they are no longer inside the boiler. There is an extraordinary collection of levers and rods above the boiler but the crosshead has been dispensed with. Exhaust steam into the smoke stack just like Trevithick did.



Camera shake I am afraid. Notice that the connecting rod does not go to a crank on the wheel; there is a shaft with a gear behind the wheel.



Here is the very famous Rocket by Robert Stephenson. Before it was sent to the museum it was ‘restored’ at the Stephenson’s workshop. In fact they modernised it and put on stuff that had never been on the original engine. Over the years the museum has removed all the un-original stuff from it leaving us with just this.


I quote from the Science Museum http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/nrm_-_locomotives_and_rolling_stock/1862-5.aspx?keywords=rocket

Quote:

Rocket 1829 Robert Stephenson's Rocket marks one of the key advances in railway technology. It also confirmed Stephenson as one of the premier engineers of his age and as a major engineering contractor for the emerging railway network, both in Britain and abroad. The locomotive was built to compete in the Rainhill Trials, held by the new Liverpool & Manchester Railway, to choose between competing designs. The performance of Rocket showed it to be the most successful of the contestants. It also convinced the railway company that the alternative possibility of using stationary steam engines to haul carriages by cables was not worth pursuing. Rocket established the basic architecture for the steam locomotive. The main features were: a multi-tubular boiler, to improve the heat transfer from the firebox gases into the boiler water; the 'blast pipe' which used the steam exhaust to improve the air draught through the firebox; and direct coupling, by connecting rods, from the pistons to the driving wheels.
The result was a dramatic improvement on contemporary locomotives, and at Rainhill a speed of 29 mph was achieved. The basic design principles embodied in Rocket carried through to the last steam locomotives built in Britain during the 1960s.

This is on the official website of the Science Museum. I have highlighted the bits in that quote that I object to. It is perpetuating the myths and legends about this man at the expense of my hero, Richard Trevithick. I have shown you that he incorporated the ‘blast pipe’ on his very first locomotive and it was standard practice on all his high pressure engines yet here they imply that it was Stephenson who established its use. So to for the direct coupling of the cylinder to the wheels – look at ‘Catch-me-who-can’ as it does precisely that. The multi tubular boiler design was new but it was not Stephenson’s idea, it was a colleague of his father who had a financial interest in the venture who introduced the idea and insisted that it be used. It is a better idea than Trevithick’s original return flue idea but Trevithick had made the hot gases pass twice through the water space also looking to improve the heat transfer.. Rocket was a wonderful engine but this popular exaggeration of its attributes disgusts me; especially when an institution like the Science Museum does it.

Puffing Billy is the oldest surviving locomotive in the world. It was built in 1814 and was used to haul coal 8 km to the river Tyne up Newcastle way. Now note that it was operational 15 years before Stephenson’s famous Rocket let alone that Trevithick’s first locomotive had run 25 years previously.



Picture of model of Rocket. This is as it was for the Rainhill trials. Later the pistons were moved down lower as you see in the first photo; they caused the engine to rock less when lying almost horizontally. Robert Stephenson’s father, George, was the engineer who built the railway line.

The Rainhill trials were to select the locomotives for use on the new Liverpool & Manchester Railway. Liverpool was the port by which cotton was imported and sent to Manchester where the spinning and weaving mills were. The finished goods were then exported to the world through Liverpool.

This quote from http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAliverpool.htm shows that the canal owners were very worried by the threat of a railway.

Quote:

The proposed Liverpool & Manchester Railway was a serious economic threat to the Bridgewater Canal. that was making a fortune by shipping goods between Liverpool and Manchester. In 1825 shares in the company, originally purchased at £70, were selling at £1,250 and paying an annual dividend of £35. The Marquis of Stafford, who became the principal owner of the canal after the death of the Duke of Bridgewater, was making an annual profit of £100,000 from the venture, and understandably led the fight against the planned railway. Turnpike Trusts, coach companies and farmers also voiced their opposition. The total quantity of goods passing between Liverpool and Manchester is estimated to be 1,000 tons per day. The average length of time taken by canal is 36 hours. The average charge has been 15s a ton. By the projected railroad, the transit of goods between Liverpool and Manchester will be four of five hours, and the charge to the merchant reduced by at least one-third.

The last line stating that the freight charge would be one third less and the travel time about one eighth compared to the existing canal. When I showed the picture of the canal lock on the Lot river I said I would show why they were superceeded by the railways. Well this is the reason. And in due course the railways were superceeded by trucks.






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Steam engine

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In my post about the Lot river I showed a canal lock and a railway bridge and wrote that I had more to say about that. That will be in two parts; firstly I will discuss steam engines and their place at the start of the Industrial Revolution then, in a second post, I will discuss steam locomotives. This is based on my visit to the Science Museum in London.
I am a mechanical engineer and this has a lot to do with my engineering hero, Richard Trevithick, who is hardly known. I will also address some common misconceptions about these two topics.


This engraving shows the first useful steam engine. It was designed and made by Thomas Newcomen in 1712; 24 years before the birth of James Watt yet Watt is popularly believed to be the inventor of the steam engine. The size of the person in the picture gives the scale of the machine. That he could have made such a huge machine first time out of the blocks amazes me. There had been nothing like this before besides a demonstration by Papin of steam condensing in a syringe. The steam cylinder was of brass 2,4 meters high by over half a meter in diameter; in other words much bigger than a person. Brass working was well established through the manufacture of cannons. These machines became widely used to pump water out of coal mines. Right from the start Newcomen lays down the design of a beam engine. This machine was so big that it requires a purpose built building. It requires a huge tree be cut and shaped for the massive rocking beam and that person sized pieces be attached to the end and shaped to circular arcs. A big boiler had to be designed and made plus the pipes, the pumps and valves to make it work. All of this with no previous machine like it to guide the inventor. In round numbers that was 300 years ago. Newcomen invented the true ‘steam’ engine. (I will explain below why steam is in ‘’)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_steam_engine



This is a Newcomen engine in the Science Museum in London. It was built in 1791 and was in use for 127 years until 1918 (15 years after the first aircraft flight) which is over 200 years after the first one went into operation. Obviously Newcomen’s design was brilliant to have persisted for that long.



This is the second engine Watt made in Birmingham in 1777.

Watt was a university instrument maker who had to repair a model of a Newcomen engine. He realised that it could be made significantly more efficient by adding a separate condenser. Watt patented his improvement and charged a high royalty for his engines which resulted in the coal mines keeping their existing Newcomen engines until the 1790s when that patent expired. So the Newcomen engines were the predominant type for more than 75 years and the Watt engines came into play 225 years ago..



This Watt engine has a huge gear wheel for driving rotating machinery. Built in 1797. The previous examples all operated pumps which, like a windpump, just made a rod go up and down. To drive industrial machinery a rotating shaft was needed and this Watt did (others also did it but they could not use Watt’s condenser so their machines were hopelessly inefficient in comparison to Watt’s machines). So here we have the real birth of the Industrial Revolution because now it can be powered. Watt is no hero of mine but he did some very elegant detailed engineering. He needed to make his engine dual acting (powered on the up and the down stroke) before it could drive a wheel. That has been done on this engine. So real power came to the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.



This very large pumping engine is considerably more efficient than a Watt engine. This design was developed by my hero, Richard Trevithick. The Newcomen and Watt engines used steam at atmospheric pressure (so are called atmospheric engines not steam engines). The steam was drawn into the cylinder by the piston rising because of the weight of the pump rod. When the piston was at the top of its stroke and the cylinder was full of steam which was under no pressure the steam inlet valve was closed and cold water sprayed in to make the steam condense back into water. The condensing steam thus pulled the piston down to the bottom of the cylinder (pedants say the atmosphere pushes the piston down). These steam engines were powered by the vacuum created when the steam was condensed. In a Newcomen engine the water was sprayed into the cylinder to condense the steam. In a Watt engine a separate condenser was attached to the cylinder and the water was sprayed into the condenser. Because the cylinder of a Watt engine was not cooled by the water the cylinder remained hot and this saved a lot of steam compared to a Newcomen engine because it took a lot of steam simply to re-heat the cylinder each and every stroke.

What Trevithick did was run his steam at a pressure of 2,5 bar right up to 10 bar. For a big stationary engine like this he retained the condenser so his engine would be 3,5 times as powerful as a Watt engine of the same size when Trevithick used just 2,5 bar pressure. But it is still a beam engine based on the original Newcomen engine of 100 years earlier but now it is a proper steam engine as against an atmospheric engine. Nobody had been able to do anything to progress steam engine design for 25 years while Watt’s patent was valid. Only when it expired about 1800 could others develop his design because he would not allow any other manufacturer to use his separate condenser design (his partner Bolton was the real commercial power whereas Watt was the technical power in the partnership). Trevithick made the first high pressure steam engine in 1799; say 200 years ago.



When I am in London I make a special effort to go and see and touch this. For me personally as a Mechanical Engineer it is the most important artefact of my profession. It is a genuine Trevithck high pressure engine – not a replica. This is the engine which allowed vehicles to be powered – carriages, trains and boats. Here Trevithick uses his higher pressure and omits the Watt condenser. He also dispenses with the huge beam. Using just 3,5 bar up to 6,5 bar pressure Trevithick made the world’s first powered road vehicle in 1801 (Cugnot made something that managed to creep about much earlier but it hardly counts). In 1804 he built the world’s first railway locomotive which pulled 10 tonnes of iron and 5 carriages with 70 men 16 km in just over 4 hours; the world’s first powered train. This one engineer built the first high pressure steam engine which was the basis for mass steam power but he also built the first steam powered road vehicle and the first railway locomotive. Yet he is hardly known at all.

This is what the science Museum says about this particular engine:

Quote:

This is a unique high-pressure steam engine constructed in around 1806 to Richard Trevithick’s design by one of his preferred engine builders, Hazledine and Co. of Bridgnorth in Shropshire. Richard Trevithick was the first British engineer to use ‘strong’ steam - that is, steam at high pressure. Engines like this consumed three times more coal than James Watt’s earlier engines, but could be made far more compact. They were simple and easy to install or adapt, and could be put to an unprecedented range of uses in industry, railways, agriculture and at sea. This engine was found on a scrap heap and restored in 1882.

It is not obvious in the picture quite what is what. The cylinder is set vertically inside the boiler on the right hand side; thus it loses no heat. The piston rod rises vertically pushing up the big crosshead which is guided by the two large round guide rods. The crosshead extends past the guide rods; two connecting rods from the outside ends of the crosshead drop down to the crank. In the first picture the crank is just visible at the bottom of the picture. The crank is attached to a horizontal shaft running under the engine. The elegant large flywheel is mounted on that shaft on the far side of the engine. In the last photo the flywheel and crank on it can be seen except the crank is not obvious from the angle the picture has been taken at, it is on the spoke. The small water pump is low down in front of the engine in the first photo driven by a rod coming down from a lever attached to the crosshead. A very interesting thing is the pipe running across the top of the boiler from the cylinder to the smoke stack. This is the exhaust steam pipe; it ejects the spent steam vertically inside the exhaust stack which greatly increases the draft through the engine & thus enhances the combustion. An advanced concept that Trevithick pioneered. Besides that the feed water from the pump is pre-heated by the exhaust steam – it is in the large pipe surrounding the exhaust steam pipe (I learned that from a Gutenberg project copy of Scientific American of January 1885 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14041/14041-h/14041-h.htm )The cylinder is double acting – it is powered on the upward and the downward stroke unlike the single acting engines of Newcomen and Watt.



The exhaust steam pipe going into the smoke stack and water feed is clear in this photo.



In this photo you can just see another advanced feature that Trevithick introduced. At the lower end is the fire grate. There was a tube inside for the fire which bent round and came back to the exhaust smoke stack at the same end , this is called a return flue and doubles the area for the heat to get from the fire into the water.

Those are all the pictures I took of that engine that I pay homage to each time I visit London. I always go up to it and pat it. It is not a visually significant engine and most people don’t realise how it transformed the world. In the background of the last photo you can see the largest steam engine in the museum



This is it and it was running when I took this photo. That engine was built about 100 years ago.



It is so big I can’t really get a decent photo of it. Quote from www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

Quote:

This mill engine was constructed in 1903 by the Burnley Ironworks Company for Harle Syke Mill in Burnley, Lancashire. Increasingly reliable and efficient steam engines became Britain’s main power source in the later 19th century, driving everything from cotton mills to lawn mowers. At the heart of each factory there was a steam engine like this one. It drove 1700 power looms for weaving textiles at the same time, using a complex system of rotating shafts, pulleys and belts.

This 700 Horsepower engine has Corliss valve gear. Corliss was an American engineer who designed what I regard as the greatest ever beam engine. The Centennial Engine.



A drawing of it from a book of mine. This is a beam engine as was the original Newcomen engine butthis is the most exquisite one ever in my opinion.



A picture from when it was working.



Quote from http://www.steamtraction.com/archive/2750/

Quote:

The Corliss Centennial Engine is photographed in position within Machinery Hall of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The 700-ton 40-foot tall engine developed 1,400 HP to provide all motive power for the 14 acres of machinery displayed during the six-month Centennial celebration. The 30-foot flywheel revolved at 36 rpm's; the wing-shaped walking-beams were made from 10,000 used horseshoes, which Mr. Corliss thought provided the sturdiest sort of metal available.

The winders on the gold mines on the Reef used steam engines similar to the big one in the Science Museaum (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markham_&_Co. ). When I was at varsity one of the technicians there mentioned to me the difficulty they had adjusting the Corliss valves. Corliss valves were brilliant at improving engine efficiency but you had to understand the principles behind them before you could hope to adjust them correctly and an uninformed mechanic would soon get everything messed up. It is a pity all those beautiful (well to me anyway) old steam engines like the one still running in the Science Museum were broken up when the gold mines converted to electric power winders.

This link has animated steam engines, Newcomen, Watt and Trevithick plus some others but no Corliss; when I first click the individual links the picture is partial but if I close that and ask for the same animation again I get the complete picture (double clicking also seems to help).
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/energyhall/theme_See%20the%20engines%20at%20work.asp



To complete this post I must include this. It is Parson’s steam turbine. The steam turbine rendered reciprocating steam engines obsolete. His first one, made in 1884, is on display in another part of the Science Museum, this particular one was made in 1892. So the steam engine ruled for 175 years before the steam turbine replaced it. About 100 years ago.

So we have a nice sequence here:
300 years ago Newcomen with the first steam engine
200 years ago; Watt engine gives rotating power to drive the Industrial Revolution
200 years ago Trevithick develops high pressure steam engine & first powered train and carriage
100 years ago the end of steam engines as depicted by the big red one here and the start of steam turbines as shown here.






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Towns

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I would like to show you something that I appreciated about the towns & cities in France. I have no qualification to talk about this topic. I end with a few comments about South Africa.



This is Avignon where we started our French holiday. Notice that all the roofs are the same colour. The roof tiles vary from area to area in France but each area sticks to what is endemic locally so you have this uniformity. It is so different to the garish and clashing roofs that we have in RSA nowadays. I am going to try & show you how there are local traditions in France and they have been maintained. This gives each area and community an identity which persists from birth to death. Notice in the photos that follow that there is very little that could have changed in a lifetime. A great consistency throughout a lifetime.

I grew up in Somerset West. The town that is there is absolutely different to what it was in the 50s when I was a school boy and that applies to most towns in South Africa unless you get into the backveldt (boondocks).



A much smaller town, Sauveterre in the Bordeaux wine region right the other side of France. The tiles are more yellow here but they are all the same. Notice too that there are no modern tall buildings spoiling the harmony of the place.



Here is Roussillon in Provence where we walked. This is the place where red and yellow ochre was quarried for paint colour; you can see the colour of the cliffs below the town. And those are the colours they have used on their buildings so the town blends with the countryside. That is what struck me in France; how their buildings blended into the countryside.



This is the walk into the town with the natural colour of the earth there.



Closer view of the cellar burrowed into the red ochre.



This is inside the town. Just the colours of the countryside. Lovely.



In Lourmarin. The clay is different this side of the Luberon hills so the roofs are browner but they are all the same throughout the town and the walls are all painted the same colour. Notice how the Protestant ‘temple’ in the foreground matches the colour of the earth.



Another town close to Lourmarin.



Here we are right the other side of France in Segre. Here they have got slate for the roofs and pink walls are popular but pastel coloured shutters, windows and doors are not used whereas that was the norm in Provence. These things give the places an identity and it also gives the people and the communities an identity. We completely lack that here in our formal buildings and also in the RDP slums that are being built. The traditional tribal buildings in South Africa have wonderful community identities.



This is much further north in Brittany but it is still slate roof country. Here I would like you to notice how there are no huge names of the shops on the buildings. It is all low stated and sympathetic to the buildings. Notice too the flowers on the ‘street furniture’ (lamp posts and other hardware built into the streets), I was struck by this in France as you see them in all the towns and villages.



Check the plants here, Avignon down in the south.



Lourmarin in the south. Look at the plants but these are placed here by the owners of the buildings; they are not municipal plants. The residents are in harmony with the authorities.



Lourmarin again.



Lourmarin. Here is an outside restaurant. All over in Provence it was like this, sit outside and have your meal. Nice and warm down here. Avignon (and Lourmarin) is 44 degrees north whereas Cape Town is 34 degrees south so Avignon is quite a bit further from the equator. The wind does not blow like it does in Cape Town so this outside eating is very pleasant. But what this does is keep the people in touch with each other, you have not disappeared from view when you go for a cup of coffee or a beer or glass of wine; you are still with the general community while having your drink or food.



Tables & chairs outside again; in Uzes which is not far from Avignon. The start of our drive across country.



Another part of Uzes. We are out of Provence and it is noticeable that the windows and shutters are painted grey whereas in Provence pastel green and blue predominated.



This is Uzes again. In fact we had supper here later this evening. It is a creperie (pancake place but French pancakes which are thinner).



People having supper in the creperie. We were going to sit at the empty table on the right but it looked as if it was about to rain so we went inside.



And it did rain. Look at it pouring off the sunshade behind the young couple. But notice the public lifestyle. You are members of the community while having a meal like that.



We had supper in this Pizzeria in Sauveterre which is in the Bordeaux area. Notice how the buildings blend into a harmonious set because they are of similar height and colour and that name for the restaurant is about the biggest we saw in France. This is so different to what we are used to where the town center (this is a small village but it is the town square which is the major commercial part of the village) is an assault on visual restraint. Think of Bellville where the shops are in competition to see who can have the biggest and most garish advertising on the front. What does a resident identify with in Bellville, Solly Kramer’s bright sign? Compare that to what we found in France where the villages & towns are built for people and the shops are there to serve the people not treat them like product to be lured into their commercial traps.



This is something we saw all over Avignon but I don’t remember seeing anywhere else. The blanked off window has a picture of somebody significant associated with the building. Many closed up windows & doors or blank pieces of unimportant walls had them. Something about civic pride.



This is Nant near Millau. That is the Mayor’s office (town hall) on the right and the market building to the left of it. That market was built in the 1600s but is still there. The town, like so much of France comprises buildings built in the 1700s or early 1800s immediately after the French Revolution. Since then those buildings have been retained and are still in use. This is so different to what has happened here where old (Victorian) buildings are removed to make way for redevelopment. Doing that obliterates the links with your past. Not so in France; there is continuity and a heritage for all to associate themselves with. But they did in the 1700s & early 1800s what we are doing now for there is very little from before that period that remains in France. That market building is unusual. Forts and churches do remain but not much else.



This is Pauillac on the Gironde estuary downstream from Bordeaux. This is like Blouberg for Bordeaux but retains its original river frontage. The locals care about it and defend it; something that very few do for our towns.



This is Fort St Andre on the far side of the Rhone River from Avignon (you can just see the water through the trees growing on the island in the river). I want to show the defensive walls that are still to be found in many French towns.



Here is the wall in St Emilion. Avignon has almost the entire wall around the old city still there. (Part of it shows on the map of Pont d’Avignon & I mentioned it there.)



This is a Duke’s castle in Uzes. This particular town has preserved its medieval center and it is now protected as an historical sector. Notice the coat of arms of the duke painted on the roof. Besides the churches very little from before the 1700s remains, French towns were almost completely rebuilt in the 1700s and, particularly, after the revolution at the end of the 1700s. But since then they have preserved what was built then (I have not been to Paris or the other big cities).



This remains. That is an old public laundry trough. Water comes out the spout on the wall onto the flat scrubbing shelf underneath then drains into the rinsing tank and then flows into the soaking tank and out into the drain on the ground in front. Just something from a bygone age but retained to add continuity and a link with the past. Lourmarin.



An old water pump. No longer in use but retained as part of the heritage of the place. (Near Cancon)



Simpler one in Roussillon



Uzes. A decorative fountain. Bronze; that would be gone in a flash here. For example, three big brass plaques recording Darwin’s visit to the end of Sea Point were recently removed. Most countries are developing their infrastructure but we are doing the opposite – our infrastructure is being dismantled. Infrastructure is what our national savings (taxes) are invested in. We dug up the gold, sold it and built up this country. Now we are witnessing the reverse. The destruction.



An old canal still in use but now by pleasure craft as against barges. There is an entire inland waterway system, like the public footpaths, that can be used. Of no commercial use but a big asset to the public. Segre



A lot of what remains originated from the days of animal transport (and walking). There had to be paths linking all the villages and towns for people to move about and that public right of way would have been the basis for the system of paths that go everywhere in France today. With the advent of cars the larger roads used by carriages would become the basis of the roads but the old footpaths & bridle tracks have remained up until today. Here is one of those in a town (St Emilion).



Uzes at night. No cars, a people friendly place; which is what a town is supposed to be but our city fathers seem to think they should be car friendly at the expense of people’s convenience. Look at Strand Street right through the middle of Cape Town upgraded to a main throughway in the 60s.



But in France there is also the decline of rural towns. All of those houses are unoccupied and falling into disrepair (near Cancon). Below is a chart I came across while looking for information about Nant for this write up. See how the population peaked in 1846 at 3445 but with the Industrial Revolution really making a difference to society by then the population started a steady decline so that there were only 916 residents in 2007. That is also part of the reason French towns have remained unchanged since they were rebuilt during the Industrial Revolution (late 1700s & early 1800s) – there has been a migration of people to the big industrialised towns (which we did not go to).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nant


Table of the population of Nant France from the French edition of Wikipedia.

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Just because I have it here is a picture from Chelsea in London taken on this same trip.



Very different to what we saw in France. Is it? Not really, the materials used are different but the preservation of the original fabric here is just what they do in France. This place too is being husbanded.
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There is another terrible violence that is inflicted on our towns – malls. The town centre of Somerset West (for example) is now dead because a large shopping mall has been built outside town. The shops, restaurants and cinemas etc have moved there leaving the hopeless cases to occupy the buildings on the main road. That a civic violence like that is permitted is astounding. In France there is the continuity of place and society but here we permit our heritage to be obliterated at the altar to commercial greed. The wellbeing of businesses is deemed more important than the good of the people. Cape Town had a thriving city centre in the 50s & 60s but now it has been overtaken by Tygerberg Centre and Centaury City.
The best laid out place that I have lived in will probably surprise you. It is Sasolburg.


That is Sasolburg. Why I rate it so highly is I think it was laid out with people in mind and not shops or cars. Essentially it is like a tros (bunch) of grapes; circles touching each other. The yellow roads are the ones to get around town and none are boring straight roads. The houses are along the white roads. Notice that you can’t take a shortcut through the white roads; this means that only the people who live on one of the white groups will be using those roads so the locals get to know the locals and notice when they change their cars or strangers are in the area. That is the important thing – the locals know what is going on and when strangers are there. Again there are no boring straight white roads. In each of the yellow circles there is a blank grey area. That is public open land with walkways and bicycle tracks. The dark buildings shown are schools and churches –notice that they are in the public open spaces. The children can ride to school through on those cycle tracks without going on the yellow roads (except where the cycle tracks join between the circles & there there are traffic lights for them and marshals when the schools open and close each day). On Sundays the churchgoers can also walk to church. I don’t know how the sewers, water supply, electric supply and telephone system is arranged but that could all be run through the public open space so the roads would not need to be dug up each time something needed to be done to them.

Why the Sasolburg plan has not been duplicated is a mystery to me. That the RDP housing is being done in such a terrible regimented way is tragic. If it just had the short local roads like Sasolburg – or even better dead-end roads so only the residents of each road would use it their communities would be vastly safer than they are in the current designs. The town planning of the RDP developments is the grimmest imaginable. To me it seems that the squatter camps have better social structure than the RDP stuff.






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