Behind me is the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, in south London. It's your standard,
start-of-the-20th century foot tunnel. Stairs or a lift down, under the river, stairs or
a lift back up. There's quite a few of these left in the world.
But about ten years after this was built, a German engineer thought:
what if we go bigger?
This is the St Pauli Elbtunnel, in Hamburg, Germany. Much the same: go in, take a lift
down, cross under the river. Except it's not just pedestrians and bikes that take the lift
here: this is good for cars too.
Of course, the automobile wasn't common when this was built: originally, horses and wagons
would have been brought down in these lifts. And construction was risky: while it was being
built the tunnel was kept pressurised and air locked, in order to keep the water out.
But because decompression sickness — the bends — wasn't understood, hundreds of workers
suffered from what was then called Caissons Disease, and three died.
Like the Greenwich tunnel, this is a useful commuter route. For cars, it's one way in
the morning, and the other way in the evening; and there are speed bumps just in case someone
sees a clear tunnel ahead of them and decides to, I don't know, break the underground speed
record. Most road traffic goes elsewhere, over other routes, under or over the river,
but there are still plenty of folks who regularly use this odd, hundred-year old tunnel and
car lift as part of their everyday life.
And yes, for everyone who's inevitably going to ask in the comments, of course I went to
Miniatur Wunderland while I was in Hamburg. It's absolutely brilliant, I did the behind-the-scenes
tour which is well worth the money, but there is nothing I could film there with my iPhone
and GoPro that hasn't already been shot by people with much, much better cameras. So
if you want to see what's in there, and it is incredible, I've put some links in the
description.
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