I was recently reminded via the Shields Gazette of a very interesting engineer, Elfric Wells Chalmers Kearney (1881-1966). Kearney was Australian but spent nearly all of his life in Britain, during which he designed & promoted the Kearney Tube. This was an electric & gravity underground monorail which I think would have had excellent prospects in specific applications, such as a crossing of the Tyne between South & North Shields.
Many people now think that that the first Tyne Tunnel opened in 1967, forgetting that the pedestrian & cycle tunnels opened in 1951, and that these had their roots in earlier work, including that involving Kearney.
Colin Fish recently pointed me to a 1939 LNER promotional leaflet, sections of which are reproduced below:
 |
| The fare would be the same as the cost of this leaflet - 2d, ie less than 1p (Cover of 1939 LNER leaflet) |
