Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I
Forfatter: Archibald Williams
År: 1945
Serie: Engineering Wonders of the World
Forlag: Thomas Nelson and Sons
Sted: London, Edinburgh, Dublin and New York
Sider: 456
UDK: 600 eng - gl.
Volume I with 520 Illustrations, Maps and Diagrams
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{See page 85.)
THE STORY OF THE
SEVERN TUNNEL.
The driving of a submarine tunnel is generally accompanied by great diffi-
culties, but no undertaking of the kind has taxed the resource and
courage of engineer and contractor more than did the Severn Tunnel, which
is remarkable as being the longest submarine tunnel in the world.
THE Severn estuary, while making an
important addition to the total
length of coast-line of Great Britain,
is a very serious impediment to communication
The
Severn
Estuary.
between the western counties
of England and the south of
Wales. It presents a funnel-
shaped opening, a hundred or
more miles long, up which the tides rush as
into a trap, and pile up the sea-water to a
height exceeded only in the Bay of Fundy.
During the ebb and flow the current is ex-
tremely strong, and at low tide ever-shifting
sandbanks are a source of anxiety to the
navigator. In 1828 the famous engineer,
Thomas Telford, threw an iron arch bridge of
150 feet span across the river at Gloucester ;
and some fifty years later the Midland Railway
spanned it twenty-six miles lower down by a
truss bridge nearly three-quarters of a mile in