Victorians’ tunnel vision for Irish Sea

EVEN in an era of railway engineering marvels, such as the Forth Bridge and Severn tunnel, it would have been an epic project on an entirely different scale.

Ambitious Victorian plans to link Scotland and Northern Ireland by train have been unearthed by an Edinburgh author researching a book on railway maps.

The 1890 proposals comprised seven options for spanning the 21-mile wide North Channel, including various types of tunnels on three possible routes from Stranraer and a solid causeway from Kintyre. However, a bridge was rejected.

One tunnel involved sinking a steel and concrete tube to the seabed, to be held in position by chains and anchors.

The plans would have cost up to £70 million – the equivalent of £6.7 billion today.

A prospectus for the project was headed: “The proposed Channel Tunnel and through trains between Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast and Londonderry.”

Its promoters said the route would meet growing demand for faster travel, while enabling travellers to avoid “the dread of sea sickness”.

However, the plans came to nothing because of the lack of state funding. The prospectus concluded: “No railway company or body of speculators would ever venture upon an undertaking of so doubtful a character.”

David Spaven, author of Mapping the Railways, with Julian Holland, said the plans had been an extraordinary find in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Mr Spaven, who is also the principal of Deltix Transport Consulting, said: “I have been interested in railways since childhood, but was amazed because I had never heard of this scheme before.

“It’s hard to put yourself in the position of the Victorian and Edwardian railway engineers, who had a monopoly on land transport and probably thought the sky was the limit.

“But looking back at the project now, it was probably just a dream. The volume of traffic would have struggled to justify the capital cost, which was the pessimistic conclusion at the time. The line would have been on a wholly different magnitude than anything attempted elsewhere in Britain.”

The Forth Bridge was completed in 1890, while the four-mile Severn tunnel, opened four years earlier, remained the longest on the British network until the Channel Tunnel more than a century later.

Mr Spaven said building a Scotland-Ireland link now would have mixed blessings.

He said: “It would be a road tunnel, which would generate an enormous amount of traffic, bringing economic benefits, but also environmental harm.”

Four years ago, an Irish think-tank revived the train-link plans to enable Ireland to join the European high-speed rail network.

The Centre for Cross Border Studies said it could enable passengers to travel from Dublin to Glasgow in one and a half hours, and Paris in seven and a half.

Director Andy Pollak said the most likely option was a bridge between County Down or County Antrim and the Mull of Galloway, near Stranraer.

However, critics said the 1,000ft-deep Beaufort’s Dyke trench could pose problems.