How Victorian engineers almost built an underwater tunnel between Scotland and Ireland

How Victorian engineers almost built an underwater tunnel between Scotland and Ireland

This story has been reported by various news sites, including the B.B.C., but by far the best and most comprehensive description is from science [fiction] blog io9.

As anyone who has crossed the Irish Sea will tell you, a train journey (or, these days, an aeroplane flight) is infinitely more preferable to a ferry crossing and this was obviously very much the case even a hundred years ago.  It should come as no surprise therefore that the industrially-minded Victorians seriously considered a series of railway tunnels beneath the Irish Sea; the idea of a Channel Tunnel had been mooted almost a century earlier so the intent was clearly there.  Regrettably in both cases the huge engineering challenge would prove too great for Victorian science to overcome.  Nevertheless that such a plan was drawn up is a remarkable testament to the technological ambition and farsightedness of 19th Century engineers.

The suggestion of tunnels between mainland Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man still occasionally appears even today.  But it was the Victorians who first thought of the idea even though they, and subsequent supporters of the scheme, were always stymied by the matter of cost, politics and now a difference in the railway gauge.  It's not to say that the project is unfeasible, however, and I'm sure the vision will still be revisited in the future and - who knows? - maybe even undertaken.

Peel microcars to make comeback

Peel microcars to make comeback

Back in the 1950s at the height of the Suez crisis microcars were considered the future of personal travel. The likes of the BMW Isetta, the Heinkel Kabine/Trojan, the Messerschmitt KR-series and the wonderfully-named and conceived Zundapp Janus were all popular for around ten years from the mid-fifties as the fuel prices began to bite and small became cool.

The smallest of all the microcars, however, came from the Isle of Man in the form of the Peel Engineering P50 (above) and the delightfully jet-age Trident (right), both of which still hold the record for the smallest production car. To modern eyes the may look toy-like to the point of ridiculousness but at the time they were a genuine attempt to provide cheap motoring to the individual.

Now, thanks to the popular B.B.C. programme Dragon's Den, they look to making something of a small return. Sadly not, it would seem, with a new model as a serious alternative to the small cars of today (the original Peels would fail modern crash test regulations abysmally) but rather more as a limited-production plaything for the well-off car enthusiast (and at c.£12,500 a pop, you'd have to be both seriously well-off and seriously enthusiastic). Still, if it means a new audience for and a heightened awareness of this amazing little car and its history, then so much the better.