Tunnel visions and the romance of the railways in Scotland | Letters

Readers respond to an article by Ian Jack on proposals for a rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and a long-lost railway line

Ian Jack (A tunnel linking Scotland and Northern Ireland? Fantasy has replaced British modesty, 19 February) mentioned a vast munitions dump on the seabed" on the route of the proposed rail tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland. The dump lies in the Beaufort Dyke, a deep trench in the North Channel. I reported its presence nearly 30 years ago for BBC News. The Ministry of Defence originally told me that it had dumped munitions there since the end of the second world war, that it knew what they were and that they totalled around 100,000 tonnes.

Some months later, with British Gas by then planning an undersea pipeline there, the MoD rang me with an update. It had been using the dyke since the end of the first world war, it said. It did not know what munitions were down there, but the total was about a million tonnes. I'd fancy my chances of crossing the North Channel in a tunnel as little as on a bridge.
Alex Kirby
Environment correspondent, BBC News, 1987-95