THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2617, 10 August 1881, Page 3

THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

The following is from the London “Daily News” of June 17: —The Channel Tunnel seems to be rapidly coming within reach of practical realisation. At the meeting of the South Eastern Railway Company yesterday Sir Edward Watkin announced the complete success of the preliminary borings, and the resolution of his own Company on this side and the French Company on the other to make a further important step. A gallery seven feet in diameter has already been driven from tbe shaft near Abbots’ Cliff for half a mile towards France, and an agreement has been made to push forward a similar headway under the sea for a mile on each side of the Channel. At the present rate of progress this will probably be done within the next six months, and then it is expected that the further nine miles on each side will be undertaken at once. All the conditions seem favorable to the project. The eoil is found to he exactly similar at both ends. It is, as was expected, grey chalk, impervious to water ; and there is every reason to anticipate that it will ho found to stretch in an unbroken bed across the Channel. If this is realised the making of the tunnel is only a question of time and money. Last week the machinery excavated 67 yards of lineal distance, equal to about 2 miles a year. At this rate the two headways might meet under tbe middle of the Channel in about five years ; and probably a nearly equal period might be occupied in enlarging this mere 7 feet burrow to a capacious railway tunnel. It may be taken for granted that if the strata under the Channel are once pierced in the manner Sir E. Watkin proposes, the ■enlargement of the bore into a great international roadway will soon follow.