VAST SCHEMES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 75, 21 December 1928, Page 6

VAST SCHEMES

STUDIED BY BRITISH, FRENCH AND SPANISH ENGINEERS TUNNELLING CHANNEL & STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR RAILWAY ACROSS SAHARA United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Rec. December 20, 7.40 p.m.) London, December 19. A Paris message states that three vast engineering schemes are being studied by British, French, . and Spanish engineers. They include the linking up of a Channel ' tunnel with a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar and a railway across the Sahara, which engineers claim should have results as important as the Panama Canal, the transSiberian, and trans-Canadian railways. A Spanish Government technical commission is now preparing a report on the Gibraltar tunnel, with one terminus at Algeciras and the other in Spanish Morocco. France’s contribution will be a transSaharan railway costing sixteen millions sterling, the material for which would be obtained from Germany tin der the Dawes plan, and may reduce the price by one-third. There are millions of potential labourers available at low wages, so experts are of opinion that the -railway will be self-support-ing in twenty-five years. It will open up cotton plantations, cattle ranches, and granaries, and will have immense potentialities if associated with suitable irrigation works.