ENGLAND TO FRANCE BY TRAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 7 (Supplement)

ENGLAND TO FRANCE BY TRAIN.

Wonders of New "Sleeper" Ferry.

STORY OF BRITISH SKI

rE new cross-channel train ferry service between England and France

was inaugurated on October 12. Passengers are now able to go to bed in a sleeping car in London and wake up in the morning in Paris. In. their slumber they will have been wafted from Dover to Dunkirk in Britain's first passenger train ferry.

The passengers will travel in one of three specially-built ferry boats, each of 3000 tons: each 300 ft long, and each costing more than £140,000.

There is room on board for 12 sleeping ears 03ft long. The sleeping cars can hold 100 people.

Hie sterns of the ships are blunt, find fit flusli on to the end of a connecting bridge at the dock at Dover. A hook on the connecting bridge fits on to a prong at the back of the boat, and a bolt shoots through both. Until this bolt is shot it is impossible for the signalman on shore to set his railway signals to the "safe" position. Inside, the lower deck of each ferry ship is a floating railway yard. It has four parallel sets of railway lines, and these connect up with the land rails. The 12 coaches with their sleeping passengers will be shunted across on to the ship. The brakes will be put on, wedges will be put under the wheels, and chains, anchored to a floor which has

LL AND DOGGEDNESS

been covered with coconut matting so' that the chains shall not clank, will he wrapped round the buffers. Heeling Over. When half the train is embarked on one side of the ship, the ship will naturally heel over. By great ingenuity the connecting bridge will heel over too, so that this causes no dislocation of the junction of the rails. The carriages will be connected up to the ship's own water supply, their lighting batteries will be connected to a dynamo so that thej r will not run down during the voyage. A 6team heating plant alongside on. the deck will keep their heating pipes warm. Its railway yard will not be the only original feature. . On the deck above is a concrete-floored shed which will house 25 motor cars. These are loaded 011, not by cranes, but by a special inclined roadway which brings them up to the deck level. The owners of the cars, and also ordinary passengers (who will be carried in addition to sleeping-car passengers) will have lounges and dining rooms on the same dock level as the cars. Tide Problem. The ferries come in at all states of the tide, and to solve the problem of hoisting the ferries up and down a few feet to bring them on a level with the railway has been a task that lias cost three years' labour (often heart-breaking labour), wonderful feats of engineering —and half a million pounds.

It was obvious from the start that a lock, like a canal lock, only bigger, would have to be built with infinite difficulty, in the open sea at Dover. At first they tried to put up a ringfence of steel piles and build the lock in the space left after the sea had been pumped out. After several months of toil, the sea, in one stormy winter's night, swept all their fence away, and a crane with it. Then they called in divers, nearly a score of them. It was really these divers, working 50ft or so below the sea in almost total darkness, who built the dock —under water and all by a sense of feel. Divers' Skill. Just for a moment take a look at these divers. They are a race by themselves. They are free lances, and belong to no contractor. They go wherever there is diving to be done; and the divers who have mado Dover Lock have worked in Singapore, all over Britain, and in West Africa. One of them cut holes in submerged. German submarines to get out their secret papers in the war. Another was with Scott at the South Pole. They earn £10, £15 and £20 a week, and deserve it, for they have much to endure. They needed all their skill at Dover. The steel wall having failed, the divers were to build another wall of concrete underneath the sea. Inside this wall, in a space from which the sea had been pumped, the dock was to be built. Their job was to lay the foundations. The site for the beginning of the wall was fixed on the surface by the engineers. A weight on the end of a rope was dropped down to the bottom at this point. The diver descended with his hand on this rope and felt his way to the weight. Floundering heavily in the darkness, he feels a rail like a railway line which is lowered to him by a crane. He feels his rope tugging under his armpit. These tugs are a language. They are telling hiin whether to set the rail higher or lower.

The engineers on the surface have a long measuring rod, and by dipping it down on to the rail they gradually get it in the right position, the diver at the bottom packing it with cement and steel plates on their instructions. Twelve hundred feet of rail was laid in this way to form the outline of the whole wall. Then the divers turned themselves into cement workers. Tens of thousands of grab-loads of cement were lowered from cranes to the bottom of the sea, and unloaded by feel by a diver. Cracks in Sea Bed. The floor was levelled off by the divers dragging a levelling instrument over it, just as though it were being done in Piccadilly. On these foundations the walls were made of 3000 concrete blocks, each weighing seven tons. And when it was at last finished it was found that the enclosing walls —000 feet long—were useless. Useless because as soon as they began to pump the water out it was found that there were cracks in the bed of the sea, and that through these the water came as fast as it could be taken away. There was Indescribable disappointment and despair. Then it was decided that as the divers had begun the work they should finish' it—that the whole dock, powerhouse and all, should be made under the sea—and the sea taken away afterwards. The divers turned navvy. They dug at the bottom of the sea with spades. Only not ordinary spades, or the strain would have been too great, but pneumatic spades worked from electric cables. Before the walls of the lock could be erected the divers had to perform another

strange marvel, the using of hoses under water. Their hoses were as big as fire hoses, and with a water pressure so strong that they would spurt even under the water. With these jets, working with infinite toil and slowness, tlie divers washed away the silt from the foundations for the whole lock, driving piles of chalk before them and along the sea bed. Then they turned engineers, setting great girders 30 feet under the sea, girders which they never saw and will never see. Catting Steel Under Water. The crowning feat was the cutting of steel under water. One saw these same unwieldy divers climbing over tlie side of the boat with sizzling oxy-acetylene burners in their hands. The flame still burned under the waves. The gas had been so supercharged with oxygen that it formed a little air-pocket round the flame under the sea. Now it is all finished, the lock, over 400 feet long, opens its great gates, which are not like ordinary gates, but fall down flat into the sea like the walls of Jericho, and the water is sucked in and out by 240 h.p. turbines. And the sleeping car passengers ring for the attendant, who has gold braid on his collar and speaks several languages. They will leave London at 10 p.m., and reach Paris at 8.55 the next morning, travelling by a system which has cost just £1,000,000 to create, and paying the usual first and second class fares, plus, respectively, £1 10/ and £19/ for sleeping car, inclusive of tips. The divers will go on to their next job, which may be in Honolulu.