HERIAN News

This year, 2006 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the most innovative of all Victorian engineers; Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Like others before him and since, Brunel was challenged by the landscape of Wales to develop innovative engineering solutions, working with Welsh industry in his pursuit of excellence.

Ironwork for his suspension bridges came from Merthyr Tydfil along with rails for the Great Western Railway. Welsh coal fuelled his ships and railways and was the cargo of the SS Great Britain when it sailed from Penarth Dock on its last commercial voyage. As well as fuelling the industrial revolution, Wales was also the birthplace of arguably, the greatest innovation of the nineteenth century, the steam railway locomotive. Thirty years after Trevithick's historic journey of 1804, Brunel was commissioned to build the Taff Vale Railway with its unique skew crossing ofthe Taff. On the broad gauge South Wales Railway his ideas for bowstring girders and tubular suspension spans were first developed with his only surviving timber work still carrying traffic today. To minimise coal breakage from collieries to docks such as Briton Ferry, Brunel introduced containerisation on the Vale of Neath Railway. The port of Milford Haven was selected by Brunel for the PSS Great Eastern, a ship equipped by Brown Lenox of Pontypridd with a record-breaking size of chain cable.

The industrial infrastructure of Wales was created through innovation, a factor crucial today in transforming the economy into a knowledge-based one. For our track record so far see; 'Welsh Achievements in Science, Technology and Engineering'.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's first major engineering work, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, brought him to south Wales in search of ironwork. The Merthyr ironmasters recognised his skills and he was engaged to build the Taff Vale Railway. The Taff Vale Railway and the South Wales Railway, the latter linking south Wales to the Great Western Railway system, still operate as part of the railway system today. Other lines engineered by Brunel, such as the Vale of Neath, Llynvi Valley and South Wales Mineral Railway, have not fared so well and have closed over the years with the decline of the coal industry.

To celebrate the Brunel Bicentenary this year a major exhibition; Brunel: Gweithiau yng Nghymru - Works in Wales, will open in Swansea and then tour south Wales (see below and www.museumwales.ac.uk for further details)

Please find below a brochure and list of events in PDF Form: