A WAR ENTERPRISE.

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 3647, 2 December 1918, Page 1

A WAR ENTERPRISE.

CHANNEL FERRY SERVICE

A recent cable message from London stated: "The cross-Channel train and ferry service was an enormous advantage during the war- in forwarding urgent replacements of guns, tanks, etc. j during the Germans' March offensive. It is probably not an exaggeration to say that this alone justified the whole outlay. A regular service has been maintained between Richborough (on the coast of Kent, I close to Sandwich) and Calais or Dunkirk, and between Southampton and Dieppe, by means of three twin-screw steamers, 333 feet long, 61 feet broad, 10 feet in draught, with a speed of 12 knots, and each provided witb four lines of rail track, carrying fifty-four ten-ton wagons. The whole scheme was carried out with military labour."

The Channel ferry, which was as much talked about before the war as the Channel became an accomplished fact during the war. For some time past low-built ferry boats have been running through one of the Channel ports and the French coast with trucks taken direct from our railways. On the other side of the Channel the wagons have been transferred from the ferry boats to the French lines, and so to their destination. The service is working under Government control, without a hitch, and is proving of the greatest value. After the war it will be readily adaptable to a service for passengers, who will enter the train in London and remain in their carriages until they alight in Paris or Rome. It is 13 years since Parliamentary powers were first obtained in the country to proceed with a train ferry service between England and France; but, though a syndicate was formed, with Lord Weardale as chairman and the late Sir William Baker and Sir William Waite as expert advisers, the war came before the project materialised. ' . Even at that time there was nothing new in the idea. In Canada and the United States alone there are more than 70 train ferry services over the great lakes and rivers. On the Continent most travellers used to be familiar with the service between Germany and Denmark, which, as the late Sir Charles Rivers Wilson once remarked, "enabled them to sleep as quietly as babes in their railway carriages while travelling across the Continent, and wake up on the other side of the water without having been disturbed, the train having been run on board ship while they slumbered." ' The chief engineering difficulty has always been to get a train on board ship when, owing to the tide, there is a variation of 20ft or more in the water-level. This difficulty and others have been most successfully over- , come by the Government. From the j French side there has always been the greatest encouragement for the Channel ferry, and it is interesting to re- ! call that one of the earliest enthusi- ! asts about the old scheme was the present Premier, M. Clemenceau.