I have been looking at numerous posts just hoping I do not re-post or repeat what has been discussed years before. I found some interesting stuff on here
Two drawings of the Woodside Ventilation Station for the Queensway tunnel beneath the River Mersey. The drawings are from a battered copy of The Story of the Mersey Tunnel Officially Named Queensway published by Charles Birchall and Sons (1934).

A little on Herbert Rowse here
Fascinating stuff

There has been lots posted on here about the Queensway tunnel and the ventilation shafts, but there's no harm in resurrecting old threads. The Woodside shaft is most impressive if you get up close. Although I can't now remember the details, I know it was built using one single brick of unusual dimensions (something like 10" x 3" x 2 1/2"), set in different orientations. I think Rowse did a great job on all aspects of the tunnel design.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the rail tunnel ventilation shaft mentioned in the market thread, which is about 40 years earlier.

Can't see these images. Pity. I'm sure they are interesting.

I think you have to have a User Plus subscription.

The tunnel ventilation shaft got a mention or two from Mark Steel when he visited Birkenhead for his comedy show Mark Steel's in Town ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEgPktmj9Tg

The search function is not good on this site and I could not find a specific thread regarding the shaft so no harm in creating a new thread.
Regarding the market thread you are correct. The similar design threw me off with the one on Taylor st
I get a bit excited at times


Excoriator, if you click on the link I posted and scroll down the page both pictures are there
The inside workings are fascinating and the design is something else
I often wonder why they are different than the liverpool side shafts

That 3 year search is what has thrown me
I would do a search older than a year, 2 years and then 3 years
After that I gave up
Just done an older than 6 years search and found one here
Cheers Chris

Sorry Mikeeb, but I still can't see them. I have clicked on all the links I can find with no joy. Thanks for trying to help however.

I was brought up in the South Wales valleys. Our village had a disused mine which was a fine place for a boy to explore. The mine had two shafts going down vertically over half a mile. They had been capped, but you could get to them through the ventilation system. The centrifugal fan blades were. truly enormous - maybe eight feet by about twelve - driven by a shaft some twelve inches or more in diameter. The (Steam) engine that drove them had gone for salvage, sadly.

You had to climb through this fan which was in a massive brick line enclosure to get to a gently sloping brick lined tunnel perhaps ten feet square which led to the updraft shaft.

From there one could drop bricks down the half mile drop which made a splendid thunderous boom when they hit the bottom.

When I think of the risks we took as ten year olds, I shudder, and my legs turn to jelly! Just as well our parents were unaware of the risks we took. We had all been strictly forbidden from playing there. But at that age, one is immortal. Fortunately we all survived it, but it has left me with a fascination for large ventilation systems.

You are right about being invincible as kids though
It is a miracle we are still alive when I think back
Try this link clicky
Some great architects sketches by Rowse clicky
Notice the sketch for the front of Sidney st is almost identical to North John st
I wonder why there are 3 on the Birkenhead side whilst there is only 2 over in Liverpool

Just found the third shaft in Liverpool. New Quay, thanks to a previous thread.
I was going off an Echo story "The Birkenhead Queensway tunnel is serviced by five working ventilation shafts, including the Grade II-listed building in North John Street"
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/merseysides-hidden-treasures---day-3369858
Does that mean one of them is not in operation today?

info,

http://www.tunnelusers.org.uk/wowe.htm

http://www.cbrd.co.uk/articles/queensway-tunnel/plans.shtml

I would expect, although I don't know, that the Taylor St. one is out of action, since the Birkenhead dock branch, which it served, is closed.

It's interesting to realise that the ventilation system as it now exists was very much a last-minute decision.
It was only in late 1930 that alarm bells began to ring as a result of a problem in a tunnel in Pittsburg when several people had been affected by carbon monoxide poisoning. This resulted in a re-think fairly late on in the construction process and which increased the total cost of the tunnel from £5,222,000 to £7,723,000. This resulted in a new Parliamentary bill which allowed the extension of the toll period from 25 years to 40 years (can you hear me, Merseytravel?). The extra cost fell upon the ratepayers of Liverpool and Birkenhead.

Here's an interesting article detailing the ventilation system.
http://www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/M&NW_anniversary/Section-10_merseytunnel.pdf

Nice link bert.
I love the picture showing the scale of the vent shaft here
Cheers for that PDF Chris, what a find
We now know it is the Taylor st shaft not in use
What I found most interesting in the article was the addition of another vent to prevent the build-up of deadly fumes in the centre of the tunnel when the traffic levels got so high. It would be easy to not notice this vent or not even know what it is, unlike the huge structures of the other vents
And one of them is a dummy vent because it looks aesthetically pleasing can you imagine them building another Georges Dock vent on the other side of the Liver building
I have always thought they were just an architectural feature (well one of them is anyway )
"The architect of the original ventilation buildings, Herbert Rowse, insisted, quite rightly, that the arrangement was kept symmetrical"

At the end of the article there is another first
"One final point on the lighting, which possibly represents another first, although this time in the Kingsway (Wallasey) Tunnel, is that the warning signs installed in the Tunnel soon after it
opened in 1971, used fibre optics. These signs incorporated two lamps, one to illuminate the word ‘STOP’ and one to illuminate the word ‘ENGINE’. The intention was that, in case of emergency or hold-up, the second lamp would come on a few minutes after the first one, so that stationary vehicles did not increase the pollution level"
That sign is now in the tunnel museum

Found another interesting article published 9 March 1937
"The problem was so important that extensive full-scale experiments were made before the choice of a ventilation system was made"
http://wondersofworldengineering.com/merseytunnel.html
Jeez, I'm going on a bit now aren't I?

"Going on a bit" is what these threads in the History section are all about; the acquisition and spreading of knowledge. The threads on, for instance, the Tranmere and Bidston tunnels run to many pages. Thanks for the link: not only the Mersey tunnel but many more interesting subjects there.

@ mikeeb. Are you aware of this?

https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/visiting/event/mersey-tunnel-tours2

Done this a few times- and thoroughly recommend it.

That I will be visiting Rude
After reading all about it, I have to see it now

I've been up the Georges Dock shaft - the control room for the lighting and ventilation is at the top. It's a wonderful building inside full of Art Deco fixtures and fittings, surprising considering how few people were ever going to see them.

The control panel is (was?) huge, is curved in a dark wood, probably mahogany.

At the time I was working for a computer repair company and had been called out to look at the PC controlling the tunnel lighting. In those days additional lighting was turned on and off to match the conditions outside so drivers exiting the tunnel weren't blinded by bright sunlight. Older readers may remember the huge banks of lights mounted on the roofs at each tunnel exit. Those are long gone. They were turned on and off by the PC I was called out to fix, and the controlling program was written in Microsoft BASIC loaded from a floppy.

Floppy disk! shows you how fast technology is moving
Cheers for that Mike, a nice little snippet of personal experience