Transatlantic Tunnel Train-Trip?
Will T Rogers
My latest travel adventure required a round-trip ticket on the Transatlantic Tunnel "bullet train" from New York’s Grand Central Terminal to London’s Victoria Station.
The train accelerates for seven minutes to 1200 miles per hour and at its end takes seven minutes to slow back to a stop. During the trip you ride through the longest undersea tunnel in the world. Its design is a more advanced version of the English Channel Eurostar train that runs under the seabed between southern England and northern France. The new Atlantic train is a technological marvel built around powerful engine thrust, minimal atmospheric resistance, minimum rail friction, and a mostly straight-line tunnel path.
My train left at noon, New York time (5pm London time) scheduled to take three hours through five time zones to reach London at 8pm. When the train is moving at top speed there is little sense of rapid motion. Perhaps the minimum of vibrations and the absence of scenery passing by outside made this possible. At one point I balanced a coin on edge on a table in the dining car. It didn't tip over. Unlike seven-hour plane trips where you wish the flight would end, I felt disappointed when this trip ended. The surroundings were so pleasant as was the novelty of riding beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
Now at Victoria Station it was a short walk to the Underground trains. A District Line train took me two stops from Victoria Underground station to South Kensington. My hotel was just a short walk along Cromwell Road. Later I strolled the neighbourhood and stopped at a pub for supper. After paying the bartender for a gin and tonic and a dish of sausages and potatoes (called bangers and mash) I scanned the Daily Mail before the food arrived. One of the stories was about ticket prices on the high speed train being similar to plane trips.
On the way to the pub I bought an international stamp and a picture postcard to send home as a memento. The card showed the Transatlantic train coasting into Victoria Station. Months or years from now the card will give me something to remember about the trip. Several of my best pictures this trip were taken at Marylebone train station, which is near Lisson Grove the neighbourhood where the fictional character Eliza Doolittle lived in the play Pygmalion.
People do things in London they might not do in other cities. For example some buy small narrowboats on which to live along the banks of London canals. Others rent these boats as though they were apartments or flats. If you’re brave, you can take a guided tour of Deptford Creek at low tide to see close-up those interesting things concealed by the water at high tide (boots are supplied by the guide).
For the more cautious, the Dennis Servers Museum House looks like it did in the eighteenth century. You step through the rooms and see household things, like a half eaten slice of bread, that make it look like the family has just gone out. Then there is the thousand-year-old Tower of London and the two-thousand-year-old Roman Wall.
Like New York, London is a city of bridges. The ones in London are often smaller and more artistic in design with interesting histories. One tiny bridge uncoils from a clock-like shape on one bank to reach the nearby bank and then recoils back to its octagon shape when unused. 1950s styled American diners have become popular. The most authentic is Fatboy’s Diner on Trinity Buoy Wharf. Nearby an artist installed a double bell on the Thames riverfront that chimes when the tide rises. Someone else renovated a 550-tonne lightship as a sound-recording studio.
Several hundred years ago someone built an indoor cistern possibly to store water for indoor plants. Later it was promoted as “Roman” baths, akin to the two-thousand year-old ones in Bath England. Although not Roman the much smaller London Baths are an attraction because they are now four centuries old.
Surprisingly, I came home two pounds lighter than when I left. Walking the city to take pictures while carrying camera equipment and avoiding heavy meals at expensive restaurants both help explain the weight loss. I took fifty photographs to add to my travels-webpage.
The trip home took about three hours to cross back though the five time zones, so I arrived in New York “two hours” before I left London.
The Transatlantic tunnel trains can only depart after several computers independently scan ten thousand data-sensors spaced across the undersea route. The scans verify that there are no threats to the tunnel or to train travel.
The undersea line has four passenger trains that rotate in and out of service. It also has track-maintenance trains based in London and New York.
This wished-for trip may become possible in five or ten years.
