What did Brunel ever do for us?

The Starcross Fishing and Cruising Club hosted our October meeting upstairs in their wonderful clubhouse in the Brunel Tower.

The SFCC added a mezanine to the space where the beam engine used to sit. The beam engine powered the vacuum in the pipe which ran inside the rails of Brunel's Atmospheric Railway. All this was explained in Jon Nichol 's illustrated presentation. 

Here's his synopsis:

STARCROSS HISTORY SOCIEY – Starcross Fishing ad Cruising Club, 30th October 2026

What Did Brunel Ever Do For Us?

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“Despair is the Mother of invention” 30th October, woke up to find my computer had died, could not be resurrected and I had to talk that evening to the Starcross Fishing and Cruising Club about Brunel and The Brunel Tower.  Monty Python to the rescue, why not use its simple recipe:  What Did Brunel Ever Do For Us? The key was that Brunel’s 1840s railway from Exeter to Plymouth via Starcross included all eight features locally that make him a national British treasure. The eight are: 

1. The Starcross railway was a railway engineering miracle, because Brunel used steam engines and not trains to propel its coaches. 

2. At Starcross he built a port to connect it to Exmouth and for trade and travel. 

3. Architecture – the steam Engines’ engine houses like the Brunel Tower, were architectural gems 

4. Tunnels The railway bored tunnels like the one at Dawlish to reach Plymouth. 

5. The Cockwood viaduct that crossed the bottomless Cockwood bog solved a major engineering problem. 

6. Cuttings At Langstone his cutting  turned  Langstone hill into a headland 

7. Prefabrication The four viaducts on the Exeter to Plymouth were all prefabricated  

8. Experimental Railway Engineering – the Atmospheric Railway from Exeter to Totnes..

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