cross-posted from: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/727
crossposted: https://lemmy.skoops.social/post/665
Oh boy...
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It's amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it's because the USA is so big, large cities so far apart, and public transport so terrible it doesn't occur to them that Europe is not the same.
You live in a world with the chunnel. The odds that a similar passage between islands formerly of the same empire is not so remote.
The odds are and were actually zero since no such tunnel exists. And if people are aware of the chunnel spanning 20 miles they sure as hell would be aware of a tunnel between Ireland and England which would be a nigh impossible feat of engineering whether it went directly, or circuitously through Wales or Scotland.
Yes it doesn't exist, but the idea that it could exist and be unknown to an American tourist is not terrifically remote. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.
I make no claims for the base knowledge of any of my countrymen - they will make a fool of me if I try. But the distance between ~Donaghadee in N.I. and Portpatrick in Scotland is roughly the same between Dover and Calais.
Not knowing the geographic or hydrological factors of either area, it doesn't seem to me to be much more impossible a feat than the chunnel was.
Yes there are parts of Ireland and Scotland which are close but the engineering challenge is so vast that it would cost hundreds of billions if not trillions. The channel tunnel was a major feat of engineering made possible by the relative shallowness of the channel and boring through soft rock and chalk.
The sea between Ireland and Scotland is 2-3x as deep and through granite & igneous rock. A tunnel isn't an option. People have proposed a bridge instead, assuming they can figure a way to sink piles 100-150m into the sea floor and build a 20 mile bridge over waters that can have 15-20m freak waves, high winds and storms. Or the seafloor that is scattered with thousands of tonnes of unexploded ordinance.
But even if they did all that, trains in Ireland / UK aren't even on the same track gauge. Nor would anyone to travel to the tip of Ireland to get to the hinterlands of Scotland, to change trains, to get another train to catch another train to get anywhere in England. Not when it would be easier and faster to get a ferry/coach or just fly.
So basically the idea comes up every now and again but it is not practical or feasible.
Is an American tourist really expected to know all that? How many locals even know all that?
Brit here. I had no idea about the rock formations under the Irish sea. None whatsoever. I don't think it's on the GCSE geography syllabus!
Estimating by the next reply you got, maybe they're being sarcastic on a long timescale.
Jesus Christ, everyone should know it especially if they're flying there, to the island known as Ireland. And yes all the locals would.
Facts, if you are aware of a tunnel I expect you to be subscribed to Tunnels & Bridges monthly, that kind of arcane knowledge is not for the faint of heart
I'm from Australia and wouldn't have been able to confidently say there wasn't a tunnel between Ireland and England. There are long tunnels in a few places and one there wouldn't be too surprising to me
In their defense, I have no idea what the capital of Kentucky or Virginia is :/
PS: I don't know it for most states 🙃 actually, I didn't know California's, New York's or Illinois'...this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
Kentucky is Frankfort. Yes its spelled differently from Germany's one.
California is Sacramento, New York is Albany, and every once in a while the capital is the biggest or most important city like seriously, Philadelphia was nearly the nation's capital but fumbled even being the state capital.
Oh and ohio is fun here because Columbus has slowly grown to be the biggest city in ohio. Cleveland and Cincinnati are more historically significant while Columbus was just a big city focused on the university and business. But as the great lakes manufacturing and ohio River manufacturing fell by the wayside and Columbus kept growing it beat them out.
That's because it's not named after the German one. It's named after "Frank's Ford" which is part of a creek in the area.
Some people say it's because there is a surprisingly large German population in the area, but it was already called Frankfort by the late 1700s when the large influx of German immigrants really started.
Who really knows haha
That's really interesting. That said, it's an unimaginably meh city. Like gorgeous to get to but it's there alright. Certainly is a city I've been to many times.
Usually this is because the capital doesn't generally change over time while the relative size of cities often does, especially on the scale of a century or more.
That's completely wrong. Many states moved their capital away from population centers on the coast into more geographically central locations inland. Other states deliberately planned their capitals to be in central locations when it was already clear where the population centers were going to be.
If anything the capital city only grows and becomes the population center. Population never drifts away from the capital.
Tell that to Albany, NY. Population is about 1.2% of NYC.
Or to Sacramento, CA which is the fourth largest city in the state.
Then there are states where the population doesn't really concentrate like that, like WV. Biggest city is the capital, but that's not saying much. That's largely a result of the geography, where most of the state is forested mountains, with people wherever there's a flat spot. It's beautiful, but wildly impractical for large population centers. The only reason Charleston is still the biggest city is the three-way interstate junction that meets at it, and that's thanks to Robert C Byrd using his influence to help his constituents.
I live in West Virginia and a recurring joke is that we should just give up and rename the state to Robert C Byrd. His name is on everything.
I do too, I'm in the greater Charleston area. And yeah, fucking everything is named for him, but to be fair much of the time it's because he secured the funding to make it happen. Man was corrupt as hell, but he did a lot of good for the state.
I live in Charleston, nice to meet you. Yeah he wasn't a pleasant man but nobody can deny what he accomplished. Even compared to him our politics is a total shitshow now. I do like the mayor, she's pretty good for a Democrat.
What point of mine are you trying to refute here? Sacramento and Albany were never the population centers of their states as your theory suggests. They were selected because of their central geographic location as with the vast majority of US state capitals.
Its like your hung up on me saying "population drifts towards the capital" because it generally does but rarely overcomes any major metropol on the coast.
Looking at China's provincial capitals and EU's capitals, they all look like they hoovered up all the population around them, why doesn't that happen in the US? Lemme guess...car culture?
No its just completely wrong theory. Population centers are usually on the edge of the state and capitals are deliberately kept in the geographic center of the state. If the population center isn't on the edge then its in the capitol.
As an American, neither do i. I was taught them but unlike STEM courses i would never use that knowledge in my adult life.
Meanwhile i knew there wasn't a tunnel between IE/UK.
Some of us are more worldly i guess...
Yeah but I do know that I can't take a train from Hawaii to California, there's a big wet thing in the way.
Also the country's called Ireland, it's a hint.
Yeah except that logic doesn't apply to the UK and France
Is that a no?
I took the train from brussel to sicily. It's not that stupid. Sometime trains go on boat.
... Your train went on a boat to sicily? From where? Marseille ? Never heard of this, i'm curious
I mean it's actually quite unique to sicily, but there is a boat that starts in reggio (on the tip of the boot) and ferrys to messina, sicily. It have rails connection, so the train is loaded on the boat on one side and discharged on the other side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_train_ferries#Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_float
Apparently there are also similar connection between Varna and Odessa (awesome, after the war I'd love to do that). It would be awesome to have them between Ireland and the UK. There's the booze cruise between hollyhead, wales and Dublin. People used to take them during holiday in ireland (because alcohol sales was forbidden) just to get pissed during the crossing and back lmao
Honestly, if I ever get out of this shithole and into a country with decent public transit and healthcare, it's going to feel like I stepped onto the USS Enterprise.
To be fair, these exist not in Ireland but in other places they do.
https://youtu.be/5ZNNPNRWq2U
If it wasn't for NI being somehow behind the times compared to both England and Ireland, there would be a chunnel between them.
I doubt it. The enormous cost of the chunnel made economic, as well as symbolic and political sense. Between ireland and UK it wouldn't.
Come to think about it, maybe now it should be closed
i'd say the largest reason it won't happen is that ireland has a tiny population, compared to the channel tunnel linking london and france
I actually think that's a fair question, the distance between Ireland and Scotland is less than the English channel and that can be crossed by rail. If I were to travel to Japan or some other place that I don't know, then I'd assume that some of the islands are connected by rail and some aren't, so in a conversation it would be natural for me to ask the same question: can I go there by rail?