Tunnel From UK to North Ireland

[mowque]

Wiki has a page called the Tusker Tunnel. All I have really found on the idea. Is this ASB or not? It would be quite long.

 

[Custard Cream Monster]

Depends on if you get someone to bankroll the thing, sounds like all the difficulties and costs of the Channel Tunnel but less of the rewards.

 

[jakewilson]

I hate to say this, but it'd be a really big terrorist magnet. Being a literal and symbolic link between Ulster and Great Britain.

 

[Falkenburg]

This is quite interesting.

Falkenburg

 

[Bernard Woolley]

IIRC there was also a proposal for a tunnel between England and the Republic. One potential problem with a rail tunnel would be the difference in guages between that used on the British mainland and NI/Republic of Ireland.

 

[Cook]

IIRC there was also a proposal for a tunnel between England and the Republic. One potential problem with a rail tunnel would be the difference in guages between that used on the British mainland and NI/Republic of Ireland.

That is the most minor of your worries, you just lay a third track down over the existing main line. The trains running through the tunnel are going to be High Speed Rail anyway. Given the enormous cost of tunnels you are going to want to take the shortest route, even if it adds an extra hour to your travel time.

 

[TheMann]

That is the most minor of your worries, you just lay a third track down over the existing main line. The trains running through the tunnel are going to be High Speed Rail anyway. Given the enormous cost of tunnels you are going to want to take the shortest route, even if it adds an extra hour to your travel time.

The big problem there is cost. It's about 12 km from the Mull of Kintyre to Northern Ireland. Dublin to North Wales is about 100 km. Either way, you have to build new infrastructure on both ends, and if you are serious enough to build a bridge this size, you could do lots of tunneling and backfill to make a competitive high-speed route from Belfast to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with then a train to London, and one could also run a line from Ulster to Dublin and do the full route. Yes, it's a roundabout route, but the cost of building the tunnel all the way from North Wales to Ireland would be far too much to stomach. Terrorism would be of little concern, as the overwhelming majority of the Irish Republicans have turned in their AR-15s (Long past fucking time on that front, too) and you just know that both Dublin and London would come down extremely hard on the perpetrators.

 

[Russell]

The big problem there is cost. It's about 12 km from the Mull of Kintyre to Northern Ireland.

Further to that, the Mull of Kintyre is the middle of nowhere. It takes about three hours to reach Campbeltown from Glasgow in a roundabout loop (no train). So it isn't exactly a time saving initative. Better link it in from existing rail networks at Ardrossan but that more or less doubles the distance of a proespctive tunnel so even somewhere in South Ayrshire would be better. Personally though, I would be building it Anglesey for better connection to both Dublin, London and Europe in general.

Russell

 

[mowque]

The big problem there is cost. It's about 12 km from the Mull of Kintyre to Northern Ireland. Dublin to North Wales is about 100 km. Either way, you have to build new infrastructure on both ends, and if you are serious enough to build a bridge this size, you could do lots of tunneling and backfill to make a competitive high-speed route from Belfast to Glasgow and Edinburgh, with then a train to London, and one could also run a line from Ulster to Dublin and do the full route. Yes, it's a roundabout route, but the cost of building the tunnel all the way from North Wales to Ireland would be far too much to stomach. Terrorism would be of little concern, as the overwhelming majority of the Irish Republicans have turned in their AR-15s (Long past fucking time on that front, too) and you just know that both Dublin and London would come down extremely hard on the perpetrators.

Would this require ASB amounts of effort or just unlikely?

 

[naraht]

Three possibilities.

I think that there are basically three possibilities based on where the ferriess are that British Rail connects to: From Fishguard to Rosslare (basically on the SE corner of Ireland), from Holyhead to Dublin or from Stanraer to the Belfast(NI) area.

 

[SlickWilly]

I have started a thread on what changes would happen if there was a 'Chunnel'/Bridge between Ireland (Rep) and Britain before.