The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-13
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL TO BE
CROSSED BY RAIL.

From the N. Y. Herald.
Germs of invention fructify quickly in the
warm atmosphere of progress that fills our
time. Our rapidity of motion, as we rush on
''ahead, evolves mental as well as physical
caloric, and tiny acorn of thought, dropped
by the wayside, quickly yields us the branch
ing oak of hundredfold practical applica-
ton. When, some twenty or thirty years
ago, canal boats were constructed in sections
on our New York and Pennsylvania lines, so
that the separate compartments could be
caught up bodily, swung to their places on
railroad platform cars, and whisked away over
the Allegheny Mountains, with all the nicely
packed freight that they contained entirely
undisturbed, very few of even the most enter
prising engineers could have coniectured that
this plan would within the lifetime of a
generation, be developed into an oceanic SER
vice on the same principle. The difference
of application in the matter which we are
about to mention is that the latter case re-
verses the system, since it takes up freight
cars and conveys them on steam vessels across
the seas
of an English engineer to establish a system
of pontoon service across the English Chan
mel to the coast of France. This suggestion
has been worked up TO a point that has
brought it before the British Parliament,
where, under the title of IA Bill for Interna-
tional Communication, it has been approved,
with certain conditions, by Parliamentary
committee. Those conditions preserve intact
all rights of admiralty and such as come
under the control of the Department of
Public Works. The bill, however, will not
have the force of law until after the
French Government shall have fully ad-
hered to it, nor work be commenced until
the capital shall all have been subscribed,
with one-half of the same paid in. 1t is
known already that Napoleon III is greatly
pleased with the scheme and will favor it in
every way. This much having been pre-
missed, we may briefly state the exact terms
of the project which, when carried into per-
feet execution, will complete the chain of
direct transit for packed merchandise be-
tween the British islands and the Italian
ports on the Mediterranean, passing through
the French and German centres on the way
The same system then applied at those ports
the railroad gauge of track having been
modelled in conformity-might, for that
matter, send on the identical Car that left
Glasgow to India, Australia, and after that to
America, and SO quite around the world.
The protect, then, is to establish pontoon
service between Dover in England, and the
! port of Andrecehes, near Boulogne, in France,
the pontoons to be made somewhat like our
ferry boats, SO as to be boarded by trains at
either end, and large enoughto accommodate
| at one time twenty-four cars with their loco
motive and tender Each floating platform
will measure four hundred and twenty feet in
length, and have steam propulsion of sixteen
hundred horsepower. The resources Of
science and the experience of railroading and
shipbuilding will be exhausted in rendering
the transit as safe and easy as possible. The
pontoon boats WILL in ordinary weather, glide
so smoothly and with such uniform nifty through
the water that the passengers will feel scarcely
any sea motion, and the speed attainable is
confidently estimated at from twenty to
twenty-five miles per hour. The computed
cost of the works necessary at either port for
the embarkation and landing of the
trains and the shelter of passengers and
goods will be about three million five hun
dred thousand dollars, while the vessels them
selves will cost about six hundred thousand
dollars.
This enterprise receives great encourage
ment from the fact that several of the leading
capitalists of Northern France, among whom
is Baron Anthony Rothschild President of
the Northern French Railway, are urging the
imperial government to construct all the
needed works at Andrecelles Those at Dover
are promised by various private parties, and
will be put up very rapidly. This weighty
enterprise, which is far more of an interna-
tional than a local character, and which
directly interests the governments of the two
greatest trading nations of Northern Europe,
will render passenger traffic far more easy