London Banter - View Single Post - After the Ball is over

Tom Anderson · November 19th 07, 01:33 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On Mon, 19 Nov 2007, Colin Rosenstiel wrote:

In article ,
(Tom Anderson) wrote:

On Mon, 19 Nov 2007, Colin Rosenstiel wrote:

In article ,
(Clive.) wrote:

In message
, Colin
Rosenstiel writes

Most conveniently, what they do with some trains at the French-
Spanish border: slide the wheels along the axles to fit the other
gauge. Other solutions include mixed-gauge track, bogie changing,
and (of course) having the passengers change trains.

In the latter option it seems a bit pointless going to the
expense of building a tunnel.

According to my Jane's world railways the high speed line into
Madrid is standard gauge, not the normal Spanish broad gauge.

What's that got to do with a tunnel under the Irish Sea?

It relates to how you deal with the problem of the UK being on standard
gauge and Ireland being on broad gauge, which would be raised by the
construction of such a tunnel - the analogy is that if you're going to
build the tunnel, you might as well build the high-speed link on the
Irish side to standard gauge, since it won't have normal Irish trains
running on it anyway.

But no-one was talking about an Irish high speed link!

If you're building a tunnel, you also need a high speed link at each end.
It's implicit.

On the Irish side, it would be a rather short high speed link (unless you
wanted to run it on to Cork or something), but still, it has to have a
gauge!

tom

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