THE SEVERN TUNNEL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1504, 26 October 1886, Page 3

THE SEVERN TUNNEL.

On September Ist was completed one of the most stupendous engineering achievments of the world’s history, though probably many are not yet aware of the fact. It is fourteen years since the Great Western Railway Company obtained their Act for the boring of the Severn Tunnel, and for nearly the whole of that time the work has been steadily proceeded with in the face of almost incredible difficulties. Four time have the works been flooded by the sea and by lan'’-springs. On one occasion it was fouua necessary to build a wall 15ft thick to protect the workings from the land-water on the Gloucestershire side. Divers have, by the necessity of things, had to be employed only less frequently than navvies ; arid now, after thirteen years of the most costly labor imaginable, the tunnel has at last been opened for goods traffic. The actual bore is nearly four and a-half miles long, exactly half that distance being under the estuary of the Severn. Over the middle of the tunnel during the highest tides there is more than a hundred feet of water, from all of which it will be seen that such undertakings as the Mersey Tunnel are reallly child’s play in com parison with Sir John Hawkshaw’s great achievement. Some idea of the work may be gathered from the fact that, 75,000,000 bricks have been used to line this g'ant bore, and that it has been thought necessary to.. erect duplicate pumps capable of discharging considerably more than a millipn gallons of water per ,hour, it is expected that passenger traffic under the Severn will be commenced by the Ist of November.