И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

The Mersey Tunnel
The Mersey¹ Tunnel in England belongs to the world's longest underwater tunnels. It was bored deep under the river Mersey to link two towns, Liverpool² and Birkenhead.³ Its construction was conducted from the opposite sides of the river and the tunnellers were to meet in the middle of the river beneath its bottom.

. At first compressed-air drills were used for boring the tunnel, and the rate of construction was not very high. Later, however, tunnelling was speeded up owing to the application of explosives.

When completed, the Mersey Tunnel became an impor­tant means of communication between the two towns be­cause it permitted to considerably increase the flow of road traffic. In addition, the traffic was not affected by weather conditions.

However, in the course of time it became obvious that the carrying capacity of the Mersey Tunnel was not suffi­cient to meet the needs of the growing towns, and now a scheme is being prepared to rebuild it.