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This time it’s a railway tunnel to Northern Ireland.

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adb968008

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1 hour ago, Bomag said:

The amount of moaning and winging is incredible, if you think this is a 'political' project look at some of the road tunnels in Norway where the usage in in 100's of cars a day.

 

If I was looking at a tunnel to Ireland I would go immersed tube from Holyhead to Malahide as a first option, but a bored/blasted tunnel Galloway to Larne or Ards is perfectly doable in engineering terms. The benefit would also be to stop Galloway being so difficult to get to, their problem is that they are not in the SNP's heartland which is why the A9 is being fully dualled and the A75 isn't.

Norway isnt a bankrupt economy that exists on borrowed money.

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phil-b259

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1 hour ago, Bomag said:

The amount of moaning and winging is incredible, if you think this is a 'political' project look at some of the road tunnels in Norway where the usage in in 100's of cars a day.

 

If I was looking at a tunnel to Ireland I would go immersed tube from Holyhead to Malahide as a first option, but a bored/blasted tunnel Galloway to Larne or Ards is perfectly doable in engineering terms. The benefit would also be to stop Galloway being so difficult to get to, their problem is that they are not in the SNP's heartland which is why the A9 is being fully dualled and the A75 isn't.

 

As has been noted before when this idea has been floated, the problem is a Stranraer - Larne tunnel is only really useful for the Scots - for the bulk of England by the time you have driven all the way up the M6 and across to Stranraer the travel time to most of Ireland becomes far grater than simply taking the ferry from Holyhead!

 

The channel tunnel by contrast was dug alongside one of the busiest ferry routes in the world and required no large detours to for traffic from either the UK or Europe to use it.

 

As has been noted the length of any tunnel to Ireland and the geology it would have to pass through also mean it would make the construction costs of the Channel Tunnel (which basically bankrupted the builders) look like a bargain.

 

Consequently its not a case of whether an Ireland - UK tunnel is possible - its whether it makes the remotest of sense economically speaking - and Boris / the DUP aren't going to make the BCR come anywhere remotely close to acceptable however enthusiastic they get about it.

 

 

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Michael Hodgson

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1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Unlike Scotland?

 

Miaow!

 

1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:

 

As has been noted before when this idea has been floated, the problem is a Stranraer - Larne tunnel is only really useful for the Scots - for the bulk of England by the time you have driven all the way up the M6 and across to Stranraer the travel time to most of Ireland becomes far grater than simply taking the ferry from Holyhead!

 

 

It's the Irish not the Scots who benefit from any new route across the Irish Sea.  Wouldn't the Scots be better off with a High Speed Line running from Kyle of Lochalsh to Portree, or from Thurso to Kirkwall & Lerwick, and with Phase II the extension to Bergen?

 

They might also want to upgrade line speed on the existing northern routes too.

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caradoc

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2 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

As has been noted before when this idea has been floated, the problem is a Stranraer - Larne tunnel is only really useful for the Scots - for the bulk of England by the time you have driven all the way up the M6 and across to Stranraer the travel time to most of Ireland becomes far grater than simply taking the ferry from Holyhead!

 

The channel tunnel by contrast was dug alongside one of the busiest ferry routes in the world and required no large detours to for traffic from either the UK or Europe to use it.

 

Valid points, in fact the tunnel would not even be useful for many Scots; Last year I flew from Glasgow to Belfast which took 25 minutes, less than the train from Glasgow to Ayr, never mind on to Stranraer, through the tunnel and into Belfast ! And the BCR would not be helped by the need to upgrade and electrify Ayr/Stranraer, build an effectively new railway between Dumfries and Stranraer, and either regauge the existing line or build another new railway between Larne and Belfast. So while this is an eye-catching proposal, it is nothing more than that and and will never get built. 

 

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mdvle

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5 hours ago, Bomag said:

If I was looking at a tunnel to Ireland I would go immersed tube from Holyhead to Malahide as a first option,

 

4 hours ago, phil-b259 said:

As has been noted before when this idea has been floated, the problem is a Stranraer - Larne tunnel is only really useful for the Scots - for the bulk of England by the time you have driven all the way up the M6 and across to Stranraer the travel time to most of Ireland becomes far grater than simply taking the ferry from Holyhead!

 

All of which ignores that this isn't about England, or Scotland, but about Northern Ireland - and getting them a better connection to the rest of the UK - and forcing them to go through Ireland for that better route - is likely a non-starter.

 

(which isn't to say I think it will be built, or even whether it should be built - that being a political question rather than a financial one - but dismissing it because it doesn't serve the needs of the English misses the point).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Andy Hayter

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2 hours ago, caradoc said:

 

Valid points, in fact the tunnel would not even be useful for many Scots; Last year I flew from Glasgow to Belfast which took 25 minutes, less than the train from Glasgow to Ayr, never mind on to Stranraer, through the tunnel and into Belfast ! And the BCR would not be helped by the need to upgrade and electrify Ayr/Stranraer, build an effectively new railway between Dumfries and Stranraer, and either regauge the existing line or build another new railway between Larne and Belfast. So while this is an eye-catching proposal, it is nothing more than that and and will never get built. 

 

That is a bit of an unfair comparison.

 

Glasgow - Belfast.

Get of the train at Queen street and walk to the bus stand  - 5 minutes

Wait for the bus - 15 minutes (20 minute running time)

Bus to airport - 45 minutes ( 1 hour 5 minutes running time)

Check in and wait for flight minimum 45 minutes (1 hour 50 minutes rt)

Flight 25 minutes (2 hours 15 minutes.)

Clear airport with luggage as required minimum 30 minutes (rt 2hours 45 minutes) 

Transfer to city centre 30 minutes   (rt 3hours 15 minutes)

 

So that is a real time of minimum 195minutes versus a flight time of 25 minutes.

Edited by Andy Hayter
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caradoc

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1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

That is a bit of an unfair comparison.

 

It does depends from where in Scotland one is starting ! For me, Glasgow Airport is as close as Glasgow Central, in fact closer if (as usual) I get a lift or taxi for the journey, so my home to airport timing would be around 20 minutes. You are right of course about check-in time, but OTOH with hand luggage only our plane-bus time at Belfast Airport was less than 10 minutes. So I make total journey time as around 2 hours 10 minutes. But regardless, I cannot see how sufficient traffic potential exists to cover even a fraction of the cost of the tunnel and associated rail improvements. 

 

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Northmoor

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15 hours ago, daveyb said:

When did the last explosion in the Irish Sea occur?

 

 

 

Never, that's when.

 

There are lots of occasions when cable and pipe laying operations have disturbed uxo in that area but without incident so far. One of the issues is that the uxo tends to migrate due to changes in sea density and salinity affecting the buoyancy of said debris. Last deep sea dump was Sep 91 into the English Channel/North Sea well off the NW coast of the Netherlands. The ammunition was prepare at CAD Bracht and was obsolete and surplus WMR stock following Options for Change in 1990.

 

The time frame for this proposal means very few of us will see it even start. Not worth frothing about... 

No explosions, but 25 years ago when I lived in Scotland, it was regularly in the news that more and more chemical munitions were washing up on the beaches in SW Scotland, disturbed by cable-laying across Beaufort's Dyke, exactly as was predicted.  It was a real concern when people walking their dogs or children kept finding these things fizzing on the sand as they dried out after being washed ashore.

 

We needn't worry, this tunnel won't happen, it just gets the headlines because the other options in the paper aren't interesting enough to report on.  Just like the the business case will include a Do Nothing Option, there will also be an Ideal-Case-Money-No-Object Option as a comparator, for no reason than to show how nonsensically expensive (probably 200x a realistic budget) it is to solve 99% of the connectivity "problem", as opposed to spending a realistic amount of money solving perhaps 25% of that "problem".

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John M Upton

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On a similar theme, was there a film once which featured a railway tunnel built beneath the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to the US which failed because the trench in the middle of the Atlantic basically wrecked it?

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pH

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17 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

On a similar theme, was there a film once which featured a railway tunnel built beneath the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to the US which failed because the trench in the middle of the Atlantic basically wrecked it?


And when it would be much cheaper to bore a tunnel under the Bering Strait?

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dagrizz

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40 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

On a similar theme, was there a film once which featured a railway tunnel built beneath the Atlantic Ocean from the UK to the US which failed because the trench in the middle of the Atlantic basically wrecked it?

 

I don't remember a film, but there was a book by Harry Harrison, called 'A transatlantic tunnel hurrah!'. It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek and visualised a world where mineral oil did not exist. 

 

Graham

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Vistisen

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On 14/02/2021 at 17:44, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

 

I'm rather amused that the land corridor used railway line that was shut by Beeching's cuts is now being touted as a new route !

 

The re-gauging of Ulster's lines won't be of so much of a problem as it might have been in the past for they will be able to use all of the surplus redundant stock here in mainland Britain that are currently subject to massive timetable cuts.

 

Gibbo.

Not a problem https://www.google.com/search?q=spanish+dual+gauge+train&client=ms-android-oneplus-rvo3&prmd=ivsn&sxsrf=ALeKk03P51v02PTMgLFKL6OytybRHCYxkQ:1613430220580&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjgmqv5_-zuAhXp1uAKHcZ-BrsQ_AUoAnoECAIQAg&cshid=1613430244174&biw=360&bih=614#

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Arun Sharma

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1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

No explosions, but 25 years ago when I lived in Scotland, it was regularly in the news that more and more chemical munitions were washing up on the beaches in SW Scotland, disturbed by cable-laying across Beaufort's Dyke, exactly as was predicted.  It was a real concern when people walking their dogs or children kept finding these things fizzing on the sand as they dried out after being washed ashore.

 

Not so many years ago I was talking to a chap who was raised in the Silloth area and spent his National Service period [immediately post-WW2] on landing craft in the Solway Firth dumping munitions into the Irish Sea. What was especially interesting in his story, having been involved in the clearance of WW1 and WW2 chemical weaponry sites myself, was that the ammunition was dumped wherever convenient. I would suggest that anyone who believes that it is possible to say with certainty that a particular bit of sea bed [and hence tunnel roof!] between the Solway Firth, Mull of Kintyre, Galloway and Northern Ireland is free from explosives is deluding themselves.

Edited by Arun Sharma
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pH

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43 minutes ago, Arun Sharma said:

I would suggest that anyone who believes that it is possible to say with certainty that a particular bit of sea bed [and hence tunnel roof!] between the Solway Firth, Mull of Kintyre, Galloway and Northern Ireland is free from explosives is deluding themselves.


See this New Scientist article: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-bombs-dumped-off-western-scotland-washing-up-on-beaches/

 

Not everything is definitely in Beaufort’s Dyke.

 

17 hours ago, daveyb said:

When did the last explosion in the Irish Sea occur?

 

Never, that's when.

 

According to this:

 

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121018180851/http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/712B6133-E353-4030-9DD0-F677DC3B6F38/0/bgs_beauforts.pdf

 

there were 47 underwater explosions recorded by the British Geological Survey seismograph network “in the area of Beaufort’s Dyke” between 1992 and 2004.

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Compound2632

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On 14/02/2021 at 21:32, Michael Hodgson said:

Why dig this tunnel - why not just lay it on the sea bed?   A bit like one of those undersea telephone cables, or the WW2 PLUTO system. just needs a larger diameter polypropylene garden hose.

 

On one of my first trips through the Channel Tunnel, a little boy sitting on the other side of the carriage to me was disappointed at how dark it was out of the window, up to the moment he became convinced he'd seen a fish.

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