AMERICA TO IRELAND IN FIFTY HOURS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 364, 17 March 1881, Page 2

AMERICA TO IRELAND IN FIFTY HOURS.

American ingenuity (observes the London Daily Telegraph) has put forth bn amazing project for connecting Great Britain with the United States by a transatlantic railway. Rejecting the notion of. driving a tunnel under the ocean as too tedious and expensive, the devisers of this scheme propose to sink upon the Atlantic bed an iron tube 3000 miles long and 26 feet in diameter, through which two trains might travel simultaneously with psrfebt convenience and safety. As, however, this

about IiSO atmospheres, its casing Will hare to least 8 inches thick, 'the tube is to consist of sections each 160 feet in length, and is to be laid down in the following manner .-—Five such sections are to be welded together upon firmly anchored pontoons, both ends of the length thus prepared for sinking being hermetically closed, hut in such sort that they can be opened from within. Then the entire compartment, 800 feet long,, iiTd be" lowered' into the sea by .afcguf chains, so that it shall reach the boit«& -to immediate proximity to the "section it is to join. The junction will, of course, be ejected by submarine workmen ; and these processes will be carried on with undeviating regularity, starting from the American coast, ontil the shores of Ireland shall be reached by the mighty tube. Meanwhile the laying of rails, telegraph wires, lighting and' ventilation apparatus, and so forth, will go on inside the tube as it grows longer and larger. Edison believes that he can perfect an electric locomotive to draw the train* along through the tube in 50 hours from shore to shore, and Ihe cost of the line, rolling-stock included, is. not to exceed £160,000,000.