THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 336, 10 July 1875, Page 3

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

The Channel tunnel, the Lancet remarks, if it becomes an accomplished fact, will test very severely the abilities of our “ ventilating ” architects and engineers. The Engineer has elaborated some curious statistics on the subject, and arrives at the conclusion that, having regard to the number of trains sent through daily, it will be necessary, if ordinary locomotives are used, to renew the air in the tunnel entirely every hour, and, as the tunnel is twenty miles long, and all the air must be drawn from one end or the other, a current of air must be passed through at the rate of twenty miles an hour. These results are, of course, arrived at on the supposition that the air would be rendered irrespirable by jthe coke smoke evolved, and the obvious alternative is to apply motive power by means other than those in use on ordinary railways. It has, too, yet to be decided by the engineering world whether the erection of a shaft or shafts in the Channel is practicable. In

considering this important subject of ventilation in connection with the Channel tunnel, we have no work in existence at all analogous to the proposed structure ; for that through Mount Cenis is comparatively short, and admirably situated for purposes of ventilation, and the Metropolitan railway is so riddled with openings, shafts, and holes in every direction, that even London smoke and dirt fail to make its atmosphere more than dense, or in some parts disagreeable.