Trans-Atlantic railway tunnel

[Irascible]

NS Savannah suggests that wouldn't be overly popular.

I suspect there might be a few security issues - if you think airport security is bad now...

 

[Northumbriana]

If there ever was a case for such a tunnel I'd guess it would most likely be for freight with some sleeper trains. Trains would probably be driverless. Might be suitable for airless tube maglev trains if they ever become a reality.

They'd probably have to create a load of artificial islands en route for emergency evacuations. With those islands needing facilities to house train loads of passengers comfortably until rescue arrives. Which also means a runway or dock.

Might need to be a load of tunnels for this. Two freight track tunnels, two airless maglev tunnels, a utility tunnel for cables and an escape tunnel with some sort of transportation to the nearest artificial island.

I'm racking up quite the bill here. Fun to think about at least.

 

[JonathanH]

They'd probably have to create a load of artificial islands en route for emergency evacuations.

I do wonder how an artifical island in a deep ocean could be built.

 

[deltic]

I wrote an essay on this at school 50 years ago! I worked on some ideas for a tunnel between GB and Ireland including the then PM's idea of popping up in the Isle of Man which was actually quite sound. However, the time it would take to bore even a 50km tunnel and volume of spoil that would need to be removed made it unworkable. A tunnel boring machine can do may be 15 miles a year - it would take over 100 years if you had a machine at each end before they met up in the centre. A floating bridge would probably be more feasible with automated freight trains running over it. Its interesting that before the Russia/Ukraine war increasing volumes of freight were moving from China to Europe by rail but still a very small percentage of that moved by sea.

 

[zwk500]

I do wonder how an artifical island in a deep ocean could be built.

It would need to be some sort of semi-submersible Oil Rig type structure.

 

[Bantamzen]

What do you think is the likelihood of an electric railway tunnel being built between England and the USA, under the Atlantic Ocean, within either the next 50 or 100 years?

The 'special relationship' is still there and as international business continues to develop, there will probably be stronger links in the future between England and America. However, air travel could eventually start to reduce until it is no longer seen as a viable transport option, because of concerns about pollution. This is where electric rail links could be a solution, and the only obvious way to link England with America is by a tunnel under the Atlantic, with dual-gauge trains.

Could this be the next major project after HS2? In 2123, could we have a 10:00 London Paddington to Manhatton via Cardiff and Nantucket Island?

What are your thoughts? It might seem crazy now, but then the Channel Tunnel idea would have probably seemed crazy in 1900!

The chances are somewhere between 0 and 0.0. Even if spades were in the ground tomorrow it would takes decades just to sort out the boring of the tunnels, decades more to install all the infrastructure and even years to test. Oh and then there would be the cost which would doubtless run into trillions.

And while all that was happening aviation and marine technology will have advanced at enough of a rate so as to make any environmental advantages of the tunnel negligible. So you'd be left with an uber-expensive tunnel that would be much slower than going by air, and way more expensive than both air and sea.

 

[PGAT]

When I first saw this thread my mind instantly went to this video:

 

[RobShipway]

If a tunnel was built I would expect that there would be a speed limit within the tunnel of say 110mph, so how many hours, days would people be within the said tunnel? Surely, it would still be quicker to certainly travel by air and probably safer by ship, which probably would take just as long depending on how the ship is propelled.

 

[zwk500]

If a tunnel was built I would expect that there would be a speed limit within the tunnel of say 110mph, so how many hours, days would people be within the said tunnel? Surely, it would still be quicker to certainly travel by air and probably safer by ship, which probably would take just as long depending on how the ship is propelled.

I doubt it, there's no technical reason to limit the speed so slow. Also Good luck finding a 110mph ship that can deal with Atlantic swell. Hydrodynamics are still part of the laws of physics.

 

[Trainguy34]

If a tunnel was built I would expect that there would be a speed limit within the tunnel of say 110mph, so how many hours, days would people be within the said tunnel? Surely, it would still be quicker to certainly travel by air and probably safer by ship, which probably would take just as long depending on how the ship is propelled.

If it went from the West Coast of Ireland to Newfoundland at 110 Mph continuously, around 17 hours 30 mins, Assuming 186 Mph on solid ground, 1:30 across Newfoundland, 40 Mins in 110 Mph tunnels to Nova Scotia, just under 2 hours across Nova Scotia at 186, 1:25 to near Boston, 45 mins to Boston South via the Airport then 4 hours on Acela Tracks to NYC, an additional 3 hours to Washington for a grand total of around 1 day 5 hours to NYC, 1 day 8 hours to Washington assuming 2 hours for London - The West Coast of Ireland

 

[Sorcerer]

If you went with 110mph (170km/h) you would have no business case for building the tunnel. The only solution to make it competitive with airlines is to use hyperloop technologies or Maglev trains inside a vacuum tunnel so you could remove air resistance and friction and allow the train to reach competitive speeds. But then that brings another issue regarding spacing between the tunnel vehicles in case of an emergency stop. At 600mph/1000kmh you would need to space them very far apart. If you went with something such as 5000mph/8000kmh you would likely only have one service per hour in each direction to account for the 18 minutes of acceleration, 18 minutes at speed, and 18 minutes of deceleration. For an international journey 1tph isn't too bad, but it's not very flexible either in that you can't simply add more services per hour if need be without potentially slowing travel times.

 

[JonathanH]

If you went with something such as 5000mph/8000kmh you would likely only have one service per hour in each direction to account for the 18 minutes of acceleration, 18 minutes at speed, and 18 minutes of deceleration.

Can the human body withstand the forces associated with travel at 5000 mph?

 

[AdamWW]

Can the human body withstand the forces associated with travel at 5000 mph?

So long as there isn't excessive vibration then it's the acceleration that provides the forces, not the actual speed.

The international space station orbits at around 17 000 mph.

 

[MontyP]

Why dual-gauge trains? UK and US both use the same gauge.

If you can figure out a way to build a 3000 mile tunnel under an ocean that is up to 4000m deep then I'm pretty sure that figuring out gauging problems will not be too difficult

 

[Wolfie]

What do you think is the likelihood of an electric railway tunnel being built between England and the USA, under the Atlantic Ocean, within either the next 50 or 100 years?

The 'special relationship' is still there and as international business continues to develop, there will probably be stronger links in the future between England and America. However, air travel could eventually start to reduce until it is no longer seen as a viable transport option, because of concerns about pollution. This is where electric rail links could be a solution, and the only obvious way to link England with America is by a tunnel under the Atlantic, with dual-gauge trains.

Could this be the next major project after HS2? In 2123, could we have a 10:00 London Paddington to Manhatton via Cardiff and Nantucket Island?

What are your thoughts? It might seem crazy now, but then the Channel Tunnel idea would have probably seemed crazy in 1900!

Zero. The technology is nowhere near doing that and there would be so many safety risks...

 

[Sorcerer]

Can the human body withstand the forces associated with travel at 5000 mph?

It certainly wouldn't hold up well against the forces of acceleration if done too quickly, which is why it would take around 20 minutes to reach a speed of 5000mph. That said the speeds could still be slower and remain competitive. Just 1500mph would be able to bring the trip down to about 3 hours. But of course the speculation is all we have because such a tunnel will practically never happen.

 

[zwk500]

It certainly wouldn't hold up well against the forces of acceleration if done too quickly, which is why it would take around 20 minutes to reach a speed of 5000mph. That said the speeds could still be slower and remain competitive. Just 1500mph would be able to bring the trip down to about 3 hours. But of course the speculation is all we have because such a tunnel will practically never happen.

LHR-JFK flights are around 7h30 today, with check=in and baggage reclaim to be added on to that. The current LHR-JFK Passenger market is c.3m pa, or just under 58,000 a week, or just over 8,000 a day. A 400m Eurostar can take 900 passengers, so an hourly e1000 Velaro would happily cover that flow (obvs many others EUR-USA flows to factor in) .

 

[Bald Rick]

A floating bridge would probably be more feasible

it would need to be rather flexible. A close family member has experienced 50 metre high waves in the North Atlantic…

Can the human body withstand the forces associated with travel at 5000 mph?

Yes. What the human body can’t withstand is the forces associated with deceleration between 5000mph and 0mph In anything less than about 20 seconds (and even 2 minutes would be for some people).

 

[Irascible]

I do wonder how an artifical island in a deep ocean could be built.

Artificial volcanos? the idea seems about as sane as the rest of the plan

So long as there isn't excessive vibration then it's the acceleration that provides the forces, not the actual speed.

Some sort of multi-point magnetic guidance ( it's a tunnel, easy enough ) around the circumference of the train rather than plain maglev would help, I'd think.

 

[JonathanH]

Yes, trying to harness a natural phenomenon would be ideal, but basically you need volcanic activity, then for that activity to cease once the island is formed.

 

[Recessio]

The other aspect is that this tunnel would have to go through International Waters. This would cause a big headache in terms of jurisdiction, maintenance, asylum claims, births en-route - it will make the Channel Tunnel look simple.

Also this will never happen. We couldn't even build a tunnel from Britain to Ireland.

 

[Philip]

If I added an extra 0 to my initial timeframe or even half that...I don't think we can safely assume something like this may not have been built or at least attempted come the turn of the next millennium. In the 16th century if you told someone that travel between London and Manchester in 2 hours would one day be possible, they'd have found it hard to believe.

 

[jagardner1984]

It’s not something I see any chance of happening. At All.

That said, there are amazing clips from the 80s of the BBC series “Tomorrow’s World” where they speak in excited tones about incredible futuristic concepts such as … the mobile phone.

It is one of the joys of human ingenuity that as I rattle further on the path towards old age (!) - there will be further technological developments that shift the direction of the next generation in ways that I can barely comprehend now, as those early prototypes of the mobile have shifted the way we live our lives today.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

That said, there are amazing clips from the 80s of the BBC series “Tomorrow’s World” where they speak in excited tones about incredible futuristic concepts such as … the mobile phone.

That sounds like the one in which the late Christine McNulty, probably the best futurologist who ever lived, correctly forecast an awful lot of stuff 30 years before it happened?

Even she did not predict an Atlantic rail tunnel...

 

[61653 HTAFC]

If I added an extra 0 to my initial timeframe or even half that...I don't think we can safely assume something like this may not have been built or at least attempted come the turn of the next millennium. In the 16th century if you told someone that travel between London and Manchester in 2 hours would one day be possible, they'd have found it hard to believe.

It’s not something I see any chance of happening. At All.

That said, there are amazing clips from the 80s of the BBC series “Tomorrow’s World” where they speak in excited tones about incredible futuristic concepts such as … the mobile phone.

It is one of the joys of human ingenuity that as I rattle further on the path towards old age (!) - there will be further technological developments that shift the direction of the next generation in ways that I can barely comprehend now, as those early prototypes of the mobile have shifted the way we live our lives today.

Nothing dates quicker than predictions about the future...

That said, any idea of a fixed link across the Atlantic ocean is very much in the realm of science fiction. Even more so if the only way to make it work involves things like hyperloop- a dead-end technology that will never be feasible from a practical standpoint, let alone an economic one.

 

[Philip]

On a more general point, even if a fixed link isn't realistic, do you think we could eventually see the rail networks of the UK and the USA start to come together in non-tangible ways, such as an integrated ticket system (which includes the transfer by air or sea), shared rolling stock fleets (so for example USA Rail ordering their own fleet of 195s or 390s or 802s from the same manufacturers), American railroad locos being shipped to the UK to haul more freights etc?

 

[JonathanH]

On a more general point, even if a fixed link isn't realistic, do you think we could eventually see the rail networks of the UK and the USA start to come together in non-tangible ways, such as an integrated ticket system (which includes the transfer by air or sea), shared rolling stock fleets (so for example USA Rail ordering their own fleet of 195s or 390s or 802s from the same manufacturers), American railroad locos being shipped to the UK to haul more freights etc?

No. Why would there need to be an integrated ticket system for the UK and US when there is no fixed link? What is the gain in having one?

 

[Philip]

No. Why would there need to be an integrated ticket system for the UK and US when there is no fixed link? What is the gain in having one?

Because a lot of people travel between the two and this is only likely to increase as business links strengthen.

 

[JonathanH]

Because a lot of people travel between the two and this is only likely to increase as business links strengthen.

They are more than capable of organising their own tickets in the relevant locations.

Some corporate booking systems may be able to sort through journeys already if it is really necessary.

On the matter of rolling stock we may have the same track gauge, but our loading gauge is much smaller than that in other countries so our trains don't export well.

We already have locomotives from North America in operation in the UK, indeed the class 66 is the standard freight locomotive, but direct transfers of US locomotives to work in the UK isn't happening.

 

[Mainline421]

...American railroad locos being shipped to the UK to haul more freights etc?

This is already the case in a way

Zero chance for the rest.