Irish Mail Route
Another option is to follow the traditional route of the Irish Mail steamers from North Wales (Holyhead) to Dublin (Dún Laoghaire). This tunnel would be about 100 km (62 mi) long. The main London-Dublin route is more direct and high-speed trains would be competitive with airlines. Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham are on this route. The distance from London to Dublin would be 550 km, taking 2½ hours on high-speed trains. While this competes well with air travel, the trains would need to compete with budget airline prices.
The British portal of this route would connect to the North Wales Coast Line around Anglesey. The North Wales Coast Line connects North Wales to Crewe (and the West Coast Main Line) via Chester. It runs along the North Wales Coast for most of its length, parallel to the A55 road. The transport corridor is constrained by mountains to the south and by several seaside resort towns.
Increased traffic would mean that capacity along the transport corridor would need to be increased. There are two options for the location of the terminals:
- In Wales near the tunnel portal, with the A55 road being widened to motorway standard.
- In England near the M6 motorway, with rebuilt large loading gauge railway between tunnel portal and terminal.
There are no major population centres along this route (for this reason there have been no container trains from Holyhead Port for some years), therefore, most traffic would be between Ireland and England. An English train terminal would be better for the environment than roads, however, a Welsh terminal would bring development opportunities to North Wales. Either option would probably require a dedicated high-speed railway line.
Most of the route between Crewe and Llandudno Junction is flat along the coast and would be easy to rebuild. However, further west, there would be some problems. At Conwy, the line skirts Conwy Castle before crossing the River Conwy on the Conwy Bridge, and would probably have to be tunneled under (also making grade separation at Llandudno Junction easier).
From Bangor, the line rises from just above sea level and runs through tunnels before turning sharply to cross the Menai Strait via the single-tracked Britannia Bridge, 100 feet above the strait. Even if some trains were diverted by reopening the line to Caernarfon, a new crossing of the Menai Strait would probably be required, possibly in a tunnel, too.
Presently, Holyhead-Liverpool trains follow a circuitous route from Chester to reach Liverpool. The Wirral Line offers a more direct route via the Wirral peninsula but is a commuter line and would be unsuited to very high speed trains. The Borderlands Line crosses the North Wales Coast Line at Shotton station, but this terminates on the Wirral and does not reach Liverpool; current plans see it being integrated into the Wirral Line. Journeys would be shorter using a new rail line through a tunnel under the Dee Estuary, across the Wirral (probably partially in a tunnel) and in a tunnel under the River Mersey to connect to Liverpool Lime Street. This could be a possible second phase project after the main works.
Read more about this topic: Tusker Tunnel, Possible Routes
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