Recommendation Sought For An Earlier Channel Tunnel Thread

Can anyone recommend a good thread or timeline that includes a much earlier construction of an English Channel Tunnel? Not just earlier in terms of date, but earlier in the sense of being achieved with less advanced technology.

It doesn't need to be main story of the timeline!

Thanks
 
This may be helpful - http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/2071
It's mostly an economic analysis of the OTL channel tunnel, but it does have some useful figures on earlier plans and predicted costs.
When I eventually get this far in A Blunted Sickle the plan is to have them build the Channel Tunnel in the early 1960s in place of Concorde. Doing it a lot earlier is tricky - you need a close relationship between the UK and France, the threat of invasion to have become obsolete (i.e. the UK is a nuclear power) and a shedload of cash. The technology is probably there much earlier - the earlier plans are just about viable - but the costs are hideous without being able to mechanise the digging process and you end up with a very small tunnel without the capacity of the OTL scheme. At a guess 20 years earlier is plausible, much before that gets rather hard.
 
I haven't read Pdf27's link so this might duplicate it. The first Channel Tunnel scheme that was feasible was Edward Watkin's 1875 attempt, which was part of this Paris to Manchester Railway scheme. IIRC progress on the pilot tunnel was better than expected, which led to the British Government stopping the project and having the pilot tunnel filled in.

Therefore if I were you I'd go for that one. I have before in some of the British Railway Electrification essays.
 
Can anyone recommend a good thread or timeline that includes a much earlier construction of an English Channel Tunnel? Not just earlier in terms of date, but earlier in the sense of being achieved with less advanced technology.

It doesn't need to be main story of the timeline!

Thanks

If we base a date on where it was realistically first done elsewhere then the best example I think would be the Seikan Tunnel in Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel

If that can be constructed between 1971 and 1988 then this should give you a ballpark date of 1971 - 1977 - although how much tunnel building experience had been gained from the Seikan tunnel project improved the Channel tunnel project I could not say

But I would guess being slightly conservative with the estimate you could have the Tunnel open and running in the early 80s if not earlier.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
I remember reading that Arthur Conan Doyle was an strong proponent of a earlier "Chunnel" before WWI. So maybe you can use it.

"Alarmed by what he'd seen in the Prince Henry Tour Conan Doyle began to study German war literature. He saw that the submarine and the airplane were going to be important factors in the next war. He was particularly concerned about the threat of submarines blockading food shipments to Britain.
Conan Doyle endorsed the Channel Tunnel proposal as a way of safeguarding Britain from this threat. The tunnel would run between France and England. Conan Doyle argued that the tunnel would ensure that Britain couldn't be cut off from the rest of Europe during wartime and would provide increased tourism revenues during peacetime.
Convinced that this was a vital precaution Conan Doyle eventually took his idea to the public in the form of a story. Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius appeared in the July 1914 edition of the Strand Magazine. The story dealt with a conflict between Britain and a fictional country called Norland. In the story, Norland is able to bring Britain to its knees by the use of a small submarine fleet.
Sadly Conan Doyle's warnings were ignored, at least by the British. German officials were later quoted as saying that the idea of the submarine blockade came to them after hearing Conan Doyle's warnings against such an event. How much of that statement was truth and how much was propaganda designed to cause conflict within Britain is not known."



From https://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiYgL3r1KnLAhVFWRQKHdu1DjAQFggfMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.firstworldwar.com%2Fpoetsandprose%2Fdoyle.htm&usg=AFQjCNFeFeOb-1ODHFzxmKqaKbLsYvbfqA&sig2=wa859pOXlgBYjKGvOWjksg
 

Nick P

Donor
If you can track down a copy then I recommend a read of Tunnel War by Joe Poyer. It is 1911 and the Entente Cordiale decide to cement the peaceful times by linking Britain and France with a tunnel. Spy drama and hijinks ensue!
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joe-poyer-7/tunnel-war/

Harry Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! is a similar work and probably the first full alternate history I read.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase mentions an early tunnel but that's about it.
 
Thanks for all the comments and advice . (And indeed A Transatlantic Tunnel , Hurrah! is a great book)

There have been some brilliant military-focused timelines in the past year or so (I'm looking at you, pdf27) but thought I'd try something more peaceful and maybe half as good.

Not sure yet if the early 21st Century is going to be dieselpunk with
flying-boats, sputniks, record players and penicillin, or whether there's going to be crewed missions to Mars... but a Channel Tunnel should fit in either way...
 
Idle British miners?

Has anyone studied to rise and fall of the mining industry in the UK and France?
How many lulls .... depressions were there around 1900?
Would it have been cheaper to wait for a lull in mining activity?
.... then put unemployed miners to work digging a Chunnel?
.... instead of collecting the dole?
 
It's not the main focus, but my Anglo-French TL has France building the Chunnel in the 1960s.

By the way: @riggerrob, the job title of people digging rail tunnels is sandhogs, and not miners. Two different occupations, different sets of unions, etc.
 

Devvy

Donor
Well, it depends how much earlier you are aiming for.

Pre-WW2 is inconceivable. Defence concerns, however ridiculous they may seem now, ruled the roost. Any fixed link to France was deemed a security risk, and route for "ze evil Germans" to march through to conquer the UK. I've seen suggestions on here that the tunnel could be lined with explosives, to save security concerns, but I can't see that as commercially viable. Would you really want to invest in something that the military can blow up whenever they get slightly twitchy without even asking you?

It would only be the 1950s, in the aftermath of the Luftwaffe raids, that the security concerns were mostly negated because of the strategy of air supremacy and bombing.

There was a serious attempt to create one from 1964ish onwards, resulting in construction starting in 1974. But Labour pulled the plug due to anti-Europe concerns, against the backdrop of the EEC membership uncertainties.

That's the best opportunity for an earlier Channel Tunnel; the 1974 tunnel succeeds, probably opening around 1980. I think this was one thing that I posited in my 12:08 trains timeline several years ago.
 
Pre-WW2 is inconceivable. Defence concerns, however ridiculous they may seem now, ruled the roost. Any fixed link to France was deemed a security risk, and route for "ze evil Germans" to march through to conquer the UK. I've seen suggestions on here that the tunnel could be lined with explosives, to save security concerns, but I can't see that as commercially viable. Would you really want to invest in something that the military can blow up whenever they get slightly twitchy without even asking you?

There were WW2-era explosives lined up in the main Swiss mountain tunnels for decades after the war.
 
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