If it is 13 years late by your reckoning it was 1994 when it ought to
have been approved - but it was not - by a Tory government.

The previous study that made as far as a Bill were presented in 1991
to a Tory gov finally rejected in 1994 by a Tory gov.

How do you think now then ?


Well therein lies the difference

Tories said we're not doing it and doing it they did not.

New Labour said we are doing it and doing it they did not.

The difference we now call spin.

D7666 wrote:

On Mar 15, 10:53*am, Mizter T wrote:

Tunnel boring


So, it's finally really happening.


Most days I travel one way or the other through Paddington on the
Hamcity & Mersmith line and I've been watching the machinery being
assembled bit by bit. Its impressive kit. I don't recall the channel
tunnel machinery being as impressive but maybe grey cells are
decaying.


The Channel Tunnel machinery was crude and simplistic on the British
side, but extremely sophisticated and impressive on the French side.

The British tunnelling engineers laughed at the French machines,
claiming that they were absurdly complex and would make very slow
progress compared to the much simpler machines on the British side.

In the final reckoning, the French machines were very reliable and
worked faster than expected despite encountering ground conditions
that were much worse than expected. Meanwhile, the British machines
struggled in better ground that the French had to deal with and proved
unreliable and inadequate.

The planned meeting point between the British and French tunnel drives
had to be moved towards Kent several times (and by significant
distances) because the French machines made such rapid progress
compared to ours.

On 15/03/2012 20:48, Bruce wrote:
wrote:

On Mar 15, 10:53 am, Mizter wrote:

Tunnel boring


So, it's finally really happening.


Most days I travel one way or the other through Paddington on the
Hamcity& Mersmith line and I've been watching the machinery being
assembled bit by bit. Its impressive kit. I don't recall the channel
tunnel machinery being as impressive but maybe grey cells are
decaying.


The Channel Tunnel machinery was crude and simplistic on the British
side, but extremely sophisticated and impressive on the French side.

The British tunnelling engineers laughed at the French machines,

Which engineers, and how do you know that they did?

It doesn't seen the sort of thing that engineers (real engineers, rather
than repairmen or shopkeepers) who I've come across would do, as most
seem to find different approaches to specific problems to be quite
interesting.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 11:11:40 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 10:55:45 on Thu, 15 Mar
2012, d remarked:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17365934

There doesn't seem to be much distance between the 2 bores. Surely they
won't be that close the entire route? Looks like it would collapse.

The tunnel is concrete-lined as the machine moves forward.

I'm fairly sure the tunnel segments are up to the job, they're probably
similar to the chunnel ones, or even the HS1 ones.

I'm more interested in them apparently using GPS 38m underground!

I expect that's a simple throw away line that means rather less than it
sounds. I expect that "navigation" is going to be driven by laser
sightings out of the rear of the machines, along the tunnel bores using
intermediate survey points, to a datum point outside the tunnel bore.

The datum point might be fixed by gps, although for a fixed point where
absolute accuracy is needed, I suspect that it will be physically
surveyed. Although the co-ordinates of various surveying points will be
known, the fact that gps systems can use / display such co-ordinates
doesn't mean that other systems that use such co-ordinates are gps, which
is what I suspect that someone failed to understand when writing that.

I wouldn't trust a gps derived position underground even if I could
receive the signals - you don't know how much bouncing about it's done
getting through the soil, pipes, rocks of various types, cables etc above
you, and every signal bounce is a loss of accuracy.

Rgds

Denis McMahon

The Channel Tunnel machinery was crude and simplistic on the British
side, but extremely sophisticated and impressive on the French side.


Yes, you can always rely on the French to be a bunch of poseurs.

Pity they aren’t so good at armies.

Mind you, I bet they wouldn’t have needed £17bn to build HS2.

On 15/03/2012 11:11, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:55:45 on Thu, 15 Mar
2012, d remarked:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17365934

There doesn't seem to be much distance between the 2 bores. Surely
they won't
be that close the entire route? Looks like it would collapse.

The tunnel is concrete-lined as the machine moves forward.

I'm more interested in them apparently using GPS 38m underground!

Did they ever choose names for them?

On Mar 15, 8:44*pm, allantracy wrote:

New Labour said we are doing it and doing it they did not.


Explain.

What did they not do ?

NO WAY was a project like this ever going to get authorised underway
and completed in one term of government. If you really think that you
are more in cloud cuckoo land than I thought. there has been an
election, but that does not undo what was done before.

--
Nick
..

allantracy wrote:
Bruce wrote:
The Channel Tunnel machinery was crude and simplistic on the British
side, but extremely sophisticated and impressive on the French side.


Yes, you can always rely on the French to be a bunch of poseurs.


Laugh as much as you want, but it seems you can rely on the French to
get the job done. Actually, they not only got *their* job done, they
bored and lined a lot of the tunnel that was supposed to be built from
the English side, so they did quite a lot of *ours* too.

If it hadn't been for the ability and efforts of the French, the
overall project would have taken much longer to complete and the final
cost would have been even further over budget.

wrote on 15 March 2012
21:38:54 ...
On 15/03/2012 11:11, Roland Perry wrote:
In , at 10:55:45 on Thu, 15 Mar
2012, d remarked:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17365934

There doesn't seem to be much distance between the 2 bores. Surely
they won't
be that close the entire route? Looks like it would collapse.

The tunnel is concrete-lined as the machine moves forward.

I'm more interested in them apparently using GPS 38m underground!

Did they ever choose names for them?

Yes. The one currently at Westbourne Park is named Ada, as I saw today
from a Circle Line train.

The names a
PHYLLIS, after Phyllis Pearsall, who created the London A-Z street atlas
ADA, after Ada Lovelace, who worked with Charles Babbage on his
"analytical engine", and is regarded as the first computer programmer
(Phyllis will be first to start boring at Royal Oak, and I assume she
must be already on the slope leading down to the portal there.)

The others whose names have been announced are VICTORIA and ELIZABETH,
after the two queens; MARY, after Mary Brunel the wife of the famous
railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel; and SOPHIA after Sophia Brunel
the wife of IKB's father Marc Isambard Brunel who built the first tunnel
under the Thames.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/site...ines-announced
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

In article , (Mizter T) wrote:

Tunnel boring to begin from the Royal Oak portal heading eastwards
under central London.

Pictorial:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17365934

"The scheme is currently the largest civil engineering project in Europe."
Really? Bigger than the Gotthard Base Tunnel?

Video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17356912

So, it's finally really happening.

I thought they were starting on the 21st? I noted the date some time back as
it's my younger daughter's birthday.

--
Colin Rosenstiel