Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
I'm not convinced 19th and early 20th century passengers would have had an experience remotely similar to going on a high speed train through the Channel Tunnel.  |
Believe it or not, they tried …
https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/cha...-1880-attempt/
Quote:
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There had been numerous proposals for a tunnel under the channel throughout the 19th Century including one by Napoleon, but the first serious attempt to build a tunnel came with an Act of Parliament in 1875 authorising the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. to start preliminary trials. This was an Anglo French project with a simultaneous Act of Parliament in France. By 1877 several shafts had been sunk to a depth of 330 feet at Sangatte in France but initial work carried out at St. Margaret’s Bay, to the east of Dover had to be abandoned due to flooding. In 1880 under the direction of Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the South Eastern Railway, a new shaft (No. 1 shaft) was sunk at Abbot’s Cliff, between Dover and Folkestone with a horizontal gallery being driven along the cliff, 10 feet above the high water mark. This seven foot diameter pilot tunnel was eventually to be enlarged to standard gauge with a connection to the South Eastern Railway.
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Fear of it being used by a foreign invader eventually put a stop to it. Plus ca change.
In all seriousness though, the willingness to even try to build something so challenging with the technology available to them in the latter 19th century does rather illustrate my point. The Orient Express was there to get busy people from A to B, it was not a gin palace on rails. The Eurostar connection is in that sense truer to the spirit of the original, even if it doesn’t use vintage rolling stock to get you to where the Orient Express always originally terminated, i.e. France, not London.