TRAINS UNDER THE SEA

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 543, 21 December 1928, Page 9

TRAINS UNDER THE SEA

BOLD PLAN IN EUROPE ENGLAND TO AFRICA BY RAIL (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Wednesday. A message from Paris says three vast engineering schemes are being studied by British, French and Spanish engineers. The schemes include the linking up of a proposed tunnel under the English Channel with a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar and a railway across the Sahara Desert. The engineers claim that such a scheme would, in its results, be as important as the Panama Canal, the trans-Siberian and the trans-Canad-ian railways. A technical commission appointed by the Spanish Government is now preparing a report on the proposed Gibraltar tunnel. This would have one of its termini at Algeciras, on the bay five miles west of Gibraltar, and the other in Spanish Morocco. France’s contribution to the undertaking would be a railway across the Sahara desert to cost £16,000,000. The material for this line would be obtained from Germany, under the Dawes Plan, which might reduce the price by one-third. As there are millions of potential labourers available at low wages, the experts are of opinion that the railway would be self-supporting in 25 years’ time. It would open up cotton plantations, cattle ranches and granaries, and would have immense potentialities if associated with suitable irrigation works.