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THERE鈥橲 been a direct train link between the UK and France since the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, but railway aficionados will be well aware that there were many proposals for a subterranean link between the two countries prior to the one that finally got built.

New Scientist鈥荣 issue delved into some of the vagaries of the tunnel that wouldn鈥檛 get built later that decade. The then-state railway operator British Rail was researching how loud the 鈥渨hoosh鈥� might be when a high-speed train emerged from the tunnel mouth. Whether local residents were reassured by being told that it would be no worse 鈥渢han the equivalent noise from the increased volumes of road traffic that would pass through the area if the tunnel was not built鈥� was not recorded.

Solutions to a different problem were required from British Rail in 1976: how to clean the rails of the piles of faeces deposited there from train toilets that flushed onto the track. that line workers were, not surprisingly, objecting to being struck by effluent as fast trains passed. Adding tanks under carriages was one idea but seemed a bit basic. Fortunately, we reported modernity on the horizon. The Advanced Passenger Train (APT) would be built with chemical toilets to treat waste aboard. Sadly, like the 1970s version of the Channel Tunnel, this train also had a long, stop-start history and ran only sporadically before finally being withdrawn in 1986. Happily, its toilet technology lived on.

Unfortunately, the tunnel and the APT weren鈥檛 the only delayed rail projects. Tunnels can be slow to be built, trains can run late, but there was a period when even British Rail鈥檚 timetable was slow out of the sheds. New Scientist鈥荣 5 October 1991 edition reported that there were posters at London Bridge station announcing 鈥淏ritish Rail regrets that the October timetable has been delayed by six weeks鈥�. Presumably it was due to arrive in November, delayed but, unlike the tunnel and the APT, not cancelled.