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‘Annie’ and her courageous crew
THEY are Britain’s pride, the modern railway “navvies’ who have just completed the country’s first and much celebrated high-speed line to St Pancras.
Unlike their Victorian counterparts, today’s workers, while at times doing difficult and gruelling work, had modern technology like giant tunnelling bores to assist them, and were paid well for their services.
Some of these faces already adorn the walls of a popular exhibition by Brian Griffin opposite St Pancras station.
We show them in our montage, which also includes pictures taken by London and Continental Railways during the final stages of project.
For almost 10 years these men were part of a team of 8,000 construction workers, engineers and surveyors who worked more than 50 million man hours to complete the entire job in time for the official opening by the Queen.
The early navvies dug manually using simple spades. Today there is Annie, the nickname given to a highly sophisticated giant bore (centre photo) used to cut and dig along some of the 109km (68 miles) of track.
Annie, almost as tall as two double decker buses, has a giant screw that was able to dig 100 yards a week and shifted 792,000 tons of earth in an underground tunnel between St Pancras and Stratford.
But it will be the characters and camaraderie, rather than machines, that will never be forgotten – at least by those who worked on the line.
One of them was Liam McDonagh (bottom right) from Camden. His picture is the centre piece in the remarkable exhibition by Royal Society photographer Brian Griffin.
With his distinctive bushy grey beard, short tunic and the exotic backdrop, you could be forgiven for thinking that he is a railway navvy from the 19th century. Look again and you see Liam’s mobile phone and safety helmet. In fact he is a modern Irish-born steel worker and the mural backdrop for the photograph was from inside the St Pancras hotel.
Brian Griffin says: “Everyone loves Liam – he seems to epitomise a railway worker. Even the tunic looks old, but in fact that’s just a modern security vest.”
Another of his photos, the Sikh worker (middle left with turban), is also prominently displayed at the Teamphoto exhibition of 165 stunning portraits.
Simon Bainbridge, editor of The British Journal of Photography, says that Brian Griffin captured many of the workers in a makeshift studio in a car park, and saw them as “courageous figures”.
He adds: “While the workers are portrayed as heroes, the managers – the thinkers controlling this massive undertaking – are caught in more contemplative mood, shot in cinematic compositions while making decisions among the city of portable cabins around the St Pancras construction site.”
PETER GRUNER
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