The Channel Railway Connecting England and France: Illustrated by Chart of Soundings, and Lithographed Plans (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Channel Railway Connecting England and France: Illustrated by Chart of Soundings, and Lithographed PlansThrough the earth, by tunnelling under the bed of the sea; through the water, within submerged tubes; and through the air on a bridge.Before introducing the present project, it may be well to notice briefly a few of the schemes that have already been before the public; to show how long the idea of roadway communication has existed; how earnestly the accomplishment of this great work is desired on both sides of the Channel; to illustrate the increasing interest that scientific and practical men are taking in the matter; and to enable the reader to compare or contrast the projects of others with the one now before him, in order to judge whether or not too much is claimed for this, in asserting that it is the most practicable method yet proposed for connecting the Railways of England and France. There have been before the world about a dozen projects for this purpose, including the present; three projectors, all French, proposed tunnelling under the Channel; seven, two French and five English, proposed submerged tubes; a Frenchman proposes an arched roadway, or tunnel, on the bottom; and an Englishman, a mammoth bridge.The idea of tunnelling is much the oldest; a French engineer, Mathieu, sixty-six years ago, considered the work practicable, prepared elaborate plans, and laid them before Napoleon, then First Consul. They were some time exposed in the Luxembourg and other public galleries in Paris; but they have long been lost; and there is now, it appears, no account extant of the then proposed method of accomplishing the work. The project of M. De Gamond, also a tunnel, appeared in 1856, and may be reckoned, along with others that appeared about the same time, as fruit of the international exhibitions of 1851 and 1855.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.