MODEL HARBOUR

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11877, 23 February 1933, Page 2

MODEL HARBOUR

SOLVING RANGOON’S SILTPROBLEM.

il MONTHS Oe HEADACHE

LONDON, Dec. 22

It is a far cry from Burma to Bloomsbury, but in a certain basement- of that salubrious neighbourhood has been built a scale- model of Rangoon harbour, with tides, currents, monsoons, and everything that one i's accustomed to asssociate with the mouth of the great Irawadi.

The model is there for scientific reasons anc? owes its origin to the fact that the entrance to. the port of Rangopn is, to an almost scandalous degree addicted to silting. The Rangoon port authorities were so alarmed by this propensity that- they asked the firm of Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners, London, to construct a working model of the sea and river round the port, and to test on it experimental means of' stopping the process. Tiie co-operation of University College was invoked so successfully that a basement was loaned and the model laid down. Now, the tides are'flowing tidal bore's can be seen running iin. high, up the Rangoon river, and ail the complex repercussions of the tide and river-flow in the connected estuaries and creeks can be followed by the eye. And soon tiny ripples, corresponding with the waves whipped up by a monsoon, will be rushing up the bay from the blast of eiectno fans.

As ma|y be imagined, all this was not done in a day. Eleven months of headache and hard work were brought, to 'the task, which, 'when it came to scale measurements tested the skill of three trained' engineers. One thousand one hundred grains of sand from Rangoon were accurately measured, and then the sands of old England were laterally scoured for grains of similar proportion. The water too, it- was found, had to be nine times as salt a 3 the sea to have the right effect of precipitating silt. The flow of the river and its tributaries in wet and dry seasons had also to ho taken into account, and the amount of silt, carried, by them .in each season specially measured. These rivers are now running—from taps supplied with the exact proportion of Barking silt—high or low according to the "season.” The model will "run lor 7 weeks more, or ‘,‘76! years,”- and then the fate of Rangoon harbour in 2000 A.D., if left unattended, will be> known. After that the - engineers! will - begin building their defences against silt, and which ever defence proves more effective will in due course be applied to the actual harbour.

Meanwhile, the amenities of Bloomsbury are undisturbed.