TRAVEL PROJECTS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 21

TRAVEL PROJECTS

LONDON TO AUSTRALIA BY

TRAIN

VAST POSSIBILITIES.

■ From London to Australia in less than a; fortnight, by train all the way without ■ changing carriages, that is the latest aud greatest of the world's travel projects. In ' the following special article Lord Strathspey, a New Zealander by birth and education, outlines the- scheme and draws attention of its vast possibilities. It is based on a, proposal to seek a land route as for as practicable, ferrying tho trains across the few narrow intervening stretches of sea. ' What the trans-Siberian was to Bussia, and tho C.P.R. to Canada, that to my mind would be, an "all land" route to Australia, he says. "Of the 12,500 miles that separate London from Sydney, only 720 miles are necessarily water, and that could be crossed by train ferries, so that it would be possible to go from the wilds of Scotland to New South Wales in a little over a week without getting out of your Pullman. "Nor is the scheme so difficult or so expensive as might be supposed," he proceeds, "but in any ease the advantages to the trade, of the Empire, to say nothing of finding an outlet lor our surplus population at home, would more than compensate the outlay. And I may add if the project were Undertaken now m the grand spirit of the old Homan load-buuders, it would put hundreds of thousands ol unemployed in work fo^ years to come. All this is obvious, of j course, but tne technical side of the su^fu l°nl W^ eh L take fro>»fMr. J ames John Arnold, an eminent engineer, ani a.relation of the famous-Arnold, may not be quite so familiar.. By far the gnat* portion of the route, 10,000 miles, would be perfectly level Wim, : 0nd es O 17 f B o °rth" eS/ Or *4& «»S and so forth. As regards the 720 miles of n ta«D ferry, the only serious ocean current to be crossed would be that be M,?f h f TW and QuU ] land, but as the currents are tidal between the long belt of islands it mieht be necessary to build locks.at the ports Suppose you covered tKe 10,000 mill's of level at 100 miles an hour.thh w?uld take four days, sa .y, 1800 mi j es £ mgs would take One day and a half increase the rate of the ferry to twenty miles per hour and you get seven day™ al\d. say, another day for stops. ' To begin with, it is the last giant engineering feat leffc-the last of§ 111 great highways that knit the whole world together like the streets T rf town, and xt would thus become an artery of ■ civilisation. Instead of making emigration appear like exile it would »un up to London from Sydney would te far easier than the trip of our fore- & iT t °% Edinburgh- The aesthetic *Zli° ■ *?° T ll Wolild be something , thrown into the bargain,'.:but n Q maS kwng could gauge the commercial value j/ UA an,. ? nterP"se,, and, if I may add, the political value. - y " Aff n > *he *m e should not, any more than in the case of th e Canadian Pacific railway, be judged purely as " STS^-fT* 1 f nd Jt would *c well worth while if only goods were carried backwards and forwards. Minerals, grain, meat, vegetables, chemicals, raw material of every description abound at !»ery .hundred, miles of the. route for %£?*■'?£* Mothe^d. . The directness of the export consequent'" upon th« ,a Mut* .^^d.also in turn benefit ■ £iirt° me f produce!: of manufactured hS?tf''. ? at.,P resenfc «»e. shipment from boat to. rail and rail to boat makes English goods almo ß t prohibitive, in makes, the raw material found all "alone the proposed route impossible to. bring to our industrial areas at a marketable

'-As regards cost, it would ba high of course, but it. could not be caUed a ln- f h6 SenS^ of Spending for profit its completion like, «ay, th* ? h3T} l mnel > for Jt oo«W proper y first § Wh 'T? WOuld he ona °t *c W y noii) I ask> v«t«re. a great sum-we have a surplus of £100,065,000 at the present moment, in hand-iupon a but^ln w^, lch 0 wouW be not an outlay! but like the Suez Canal shares bought W ,000 or 200,000 men a year or two tZ C°Uli S&:? a bitrand then a ?»eat productive scheme that would parhapß in five years', time, reduce the price of bread by half, or double the amount of meat available to the work teg mv, fL h W for *hB *™° Price he no! that" ' WheA he c-an afford even