“Everything Ready” For Channel Tunnel Start

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 21

“Everything Ready” For Channel Tunnel Start

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, June 9.

The chairman of the Channel Tunnel Company, Mr Leo D’Erlanger, said today everything was ready for work to start on the Channel tunnel between England and France. He told the annual meeting of the company, founded in 1881, that the need to reach a decision to start digging became more urgent every day. The civil engineering conclusions and recommendations were in the hands of the British and French governments and he hoped they were losing no time in considering them. Mr D’Erlanger said people had talked stupidly of the cost being hundreds of millions of pounds. In 1960 the most qualified engineering brains had put the price of

the tunnel, until it became productive, at £l3O million. A tunnel study group, formed by five private companies in France, Britain and the United States, has given detailed recommendations over the last few years for a tunnel between Calais and Dover.

Plans for a permanent link between Britain and France, considered on and off for over 150 years, reached their climax in February, 1964 when the two countries announced their decision to go ahead with a two-stream, 32-mile long rail tunnel costing about £2OO million and taking about six years to complete.

I never was a Nazi, but 1 always tried to be a good national Socialist. Adolf Wolf, councillor in Bayreuth.