Cross-channel train proposal thrown off track

The Channel Tunnel has had a chequered history, attracting equal amounts of criticism and praise since it was first proposed in 1802.

Today, reporters at The Engineer are overwhelmingly in favour of the tunnel, thinking it a convenient way to jump on the train to Paris, drink French wine and take a stroll around the Louvre.

But this wasn’t the case in 1881. In a damning report addressing the proposals put forward by a Sir Edward Watkin, The Engineer claimed that such a tunnel would not only compromise Britain’s national security, but would also be impossible to build.

’It is not easy to believe that Sir E Watkin meant for his speech on the Channel Tunnel, delivered last Friday at a meeting of the shareholders of the South-Eastern Railway, to be taken quite seriously,’ said the report. ’The statement that it may be possible to drive a tunnel 7ft in diameter and 22 miles long under the sea in the space of five years makes a demand on our powers of belief to which they are not equal.’