Don’t let your tunnel of love become a ghost train

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If you like Bruce Springsteen, you’re probably aware of his marital breakdown album “Tunnel of Love”. The title track is an ingenious extended metaphor of a tunnel of love becoming a horror show as a marriage, that started well, disintegrates. It ends with this:

“It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough

Man meets woman and they fall in love

But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough

And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love.”

You didn’t click on a Raildiary blog though to read an analysis of a track from 1987 though, we know.

You want relevant rail news and not some metaphorical flights of fancy, but bear with us as tunnels are a key component of our work.

There’s news this week that a rail tunnel has been given the green light for construction under the Irish Sea. This 31 mile construction will connect the west of Scotland (Stranraer) with Northern Ireland. You can read more here.

Larne, north of Belfast, will be the destination and the whole project involves building a new connection between Carlisle and Stranraer.

The tunnel has replaced the idea of Boris Johnson’s bridge which engineers felt was unattainable.

The Irish Sea project will probably mimic the Channel Tunnel which is oddly the same length at 31.4 mile. This took six years to complete its 2 single track tunnels and service channel, opening to great acclaim in May 1994.

We all know that tunnels make great sense for moving freight and people. Apart from extreme heat and extreme cold, they don’t suffer the same issues as bridges do in poor weather and high winds.

Tunnels whisk millions of people around London daily and their speed contrasts greatly with the frenzied activity above ground.

Elon Musk is even endorsing tunnels with his cleverly named “The Boring Company” which he created when stuck in traffic in Los Angeles. Of course, the Tesla and PayPal founder has plans for 100% electrical vehicles across mini hubs within LA.

In the UK, Mole Solutions is adopting a similar strategy - you can read more about them here.

These projects, in Scotland, LA and the UK as a whole are exciting for tunnel technology and for our team at Raildiary.

Our app is designed for rail construction projects like tunnels. It’s already successfully used on large scale rail projects and, with it being app-based, network signals are never an issue. If you’re half a mile under LA or en route to Larne, construction teams in tunnel logistics don’t have to worry about 4G strength.

Finally, Bruce Springsteen did find happiness after marital breakdown in 1987 and, stretching the analogy to breaking point, your rail project could be a tunnel of love with Raildiary at your side.