The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-01-02
The Proposed Submarine Railway
Between England and the Conti-

The Proposed Submarine Railway
Between England and the Conti-
nent.
The great engineering project of tunnelling
the English Channel is beginning to excite
on both sides of that narrow sea growing
interest akin to that we feel in our rapid
transit. In recent editorial the London
Times decidedly encourages the undertaking
and remarks: cit will not, after all, be the
greatest achievement which the present gen.
GRAFTON has seen actually accomplished. The
scheme, which aims to connect Great Britain
and the Continent by a submarine railway, is
auspiciously inaugurated by two associations
of capitalists, one British and one French,
and proposes to proceed without dependence
upon governmental aid The only thing asked
of Parliament is the right to purchase land at
st. Margaret's Bay and portion Of the beach
and foreshore about hallway between Deal
and Dover. A similar request is, Of course,
to be made of the French government for the
purchase of land on the opposite shore But
no subsidy or money grant is solicited.
The scheme is certainly magnificent one,
and, though its boldness is startling its exc
cution does not appear SO difficult as some of
the later engineering feats Of the century
The Suez Canal, constructed through
moving sea Of sand, coursing through an
isthmian waste of over q hundred miles, was
work equally stupendous. The perforation
of Mont Gents and its monumental Alpine
rock, as we'll US the great undertaking Of the
submarine cable seemed in the initiation
quite as formidable as the cutting of the gray
chalk which stretches across the straits from
Dover to Calais The scene Of the engineers
operations in the latter case must lie beneath
fculty of known insurmountability For
long time mining has been extensively
carried on beneath the sea bed, and
in some instances where the latter
was attenuated to comparatively mere
shell. In Cornwall, Cumberland and
been worked so near the bottom of the ocean
that the beating Of the pillows could be dis
tinctly heard in the miners galleries. 1t is
said that one of the Cumberland pits extends
more than four thousand yards under the sea
floor, and the manager states that the amount
OF sea water finding its way into the mine is
scarcely appreciable.
1t should be borne in mind that the Channel
tunnel would be cut, not through adamantine
rock, as the Alpine tunnel and much Of the
Hoosac, but through geological formation Of
looser texture, and yet sufficiently firm to bear
the superintendent body OF water. About four
hundred feet OF water is near the maximum
weight that would have to be sustained, and,
as the tunnel would be strongly supported and
braced as rapidly as made, the pressure from
above would be the least thing to be feared.
The whole question seems to be one
of money and time, scarcely involving
any large demand upon engineering skill and
invention; for within very short space of
time the machinery and science requisite for
such piercngs have been greatly increased
and perfected. The extensive researches
already made by biologists and mining ex-
perts afford strong evidence of the continuity
of the chalk bed along the line Of the proposed
railway, and the regularity of the stratum,
if further experiment confirms it, will pre-
clude the supposition OF any assure likely to
endanger the structure.
By employing well-tested tunnelling ma
chine, invented by Mr.. Brunton, for per-
forating chalk deposits, it is estimated the
Channel opening could be finished in two
years, at a cost per mile far less than that Of
the London Metropolitan and District rail-
ways. The distance between the points to be
connected is about twenty-three miles, and
the total estimated cost of the work, inclusive
Of railways at either end, is about ten million
pounds. We shall look with great interest
for further tidings from the great enterprise.