Great Western Railway. Long Tunnel, Fox's Wood.

Lithograph, Long Tunnel, Fox's Wood, by John Cooke Bourne, 1846. Lithograph depicting the interior of the tunnel on the Great Western Railway between Bath and Bristol, during its construction. Two broad gauge tracks curve through the tunnel, cut through rock. There are navvies working and standing on the track. Drawn and lithographed by J C Bourne. Title below. Text at bottom right reads "Printed by C F Cheffins". From Bourne's 'The History and Description of the Great Western Railway", published in 1846.

William Strutt, a civil engineer, architect and entrepreneur in cotton, is well known for being an early pioneer and promoter of fire-resistant building design. William Strutt was inspired to improve the safety of buildings after seeing his father's old mill burn down. He applied these ideas to his own buildings. This material are examples of how he redesigned cotton mills, avoiding the use of timber and other flammable materials. Instead using cast ironwork, bricks, and ceramics.

This material comes from one of William Strutt's later constructions, the Dye house, which was constructed in the early 1830s and was considered a more sophistcated improvement over his earlier fire-proof buildings, the cruciform mill from the 1790s, and his rebuilt South Mill in the 1810s. Most notably, this building is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the practice of using bolting columns to beam connections, and of the use of double flanged beams. This design allowed for taller walls, and a more raised curved roof, features which would later be used at on a greater scale in the landmark construction of the Sheerness Dockyard storehouses in 1858.

Of Strutt's original mill sites, only the North Mill in Belper remains, and is now a World Heritage Site.This lithograph was published in 1846 as part of a series of views of the Great Western Railway by John Cooke Bourne (1814–1896). Eight years earlier Bourne produced a series of views showing the construction of the London & Birmingham Railway (also in the National Railway Museum collection). The Great Western views were very different to these earlier views: by 1846 the Great Western was already well established, so Bourne produced a series of drawings that reflected the grandeur and permanence of Brunel’s great broad-gauge railway.

Bourne was commissioned to create the Great Western series by Charles Frederick Cheffins. Cheffins was an engineer and draughtsman known for his drawings of locomotive engines, his cartographic work, and as a surveyor for numerous railroad projects. He started making lithographs in 1830 and often lithographed work for other artists. However, Bourne had the ability to transfer his own drawings onto the lithographic stone, so in this case Cheffins served solely as the printer.

It has been estimated that no fewer than 2,000 prints of railway subjects were produced during the years 1830 to the late 1840s, and scarcely a line opened without at least one view of its engineering accomplishments being published. It is difficult for us today to understand the emotional as well as financial commitment to railways during these early years. The railway was often seen as a slowly spreading symbol of change and progress towards a better world.