TUNNEL TO IRELAND.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 119, 12 September 1885, Page 5

TUNNEL TO IRELAND.

One of the greatest engineering feats of the age is the proposed tunnel to connect the Scottish and Irish coasts. The distance by the proposed route is twenty -one and a half, miles, to be driven from only two fans, and at a great depth ewing to the remarkable trough which skirts the Scottish coast at about a third of the distance between the shores. Sir Charles Crawford, who haa given the project great study, considers that the work could be completed within eight years. He states that such a tunnel, would bring the coalfields of Ayr within forty miles of the manufactories of Belfast % . would make the magnificents harbour of, , Lough Swilly the port of call for the transAtlantic liners; would bring America nearly r , twenty-four hours nearer Englnd, and' pour . into Ireland such a vivifying stream or life,-., and commerce as would do more to spread,, „ comfort and prosperity than decades .of re,r .', medial legislation. As regards the,diffici|l- , ties ot ventilation, he thinks either air e.fcv .' gines, 'daily brought oaearer pq^ect4bn,.O£".,* electricity, now working a tramway withjn?.,^ a score of miles of Ponaghadee, or, the ,cP9ix »- tinuous wire rope, so largely vusedf in Amer-^.i ica, would enable us to dispense 1 with v thjB $ i smoke- breathing looomotives, and.w.ith' it^, banish the bugbear of asphyxia. Theepoj,-',^ mous traffic -which would be. created) 4#- \ t gether with a reasonable, rebate fc whicH;thq *^ Midland and other lines would, douls|ejft/v be glad 1 to give on the volume , of. ;,trje#b^ y( passed over, their lines, would probably J3uf ? ,4, 1 fice to provideHhe ' £27o;ooo .neVreveMd,,^ required to give 3i per cent on £2,000,000; „ debentures and 5 per cent dividend 'tin £4,000,000 share capital.