Category: Europe

  • The Rove canal tunnel #2

    This is the second part of the posts covering the Rove canal tunnel. In the first part the canal was approved and construction given the go ahead. The canal and the tunnel’s construction finally began in 1905(**). Due in part to the massive Rove tunnel, it was predicted that the Marseille-Rhône canal would take eight…

  • The Rove canal tunnel

    This is a special feature covering the Rove tunnel in France. This follows on from the recent Railways and Canal Tunnels series. Rove tunnel deserves a whole post because there’s very little in the way of English websites or blogs featuring this gigantic tunnel. The enormous subterranean waterway system, which was built for inland transportation…

  • The picturesque upper Lötschental is where the recent calamity involving the village of Blatten occurred. It is a disaster of gigantic proportions and the huge avalanche and mud slide from the Birch glacier has buried the village to a depths of between 50 and 200 metres. That’s pretty deep if one thinks about it. Fifty…

  • In writing about railways and canal tunnels one might perhaps wonder why railways and canals in general are not the subject of discussion – apart from the Railway and Canal Historical Society who have existed since the 1950s with the aim of bringing history and topics on both together. There’s no doubt railways were substantially…

  • The Opicina tram in Northern Italy, the world’s only tramway of its kind, has been shut nearly 5 years. Following an accident on Via Commerciale between Trieste and Opicina in August 2016, it was forced to close. The line was meant to reopen in March 2020 but then came the COVID pandemic. The last time…