Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - The Bristol Channel District Guide - selected articles - [1934 Edition] . . . .

The practicality of the whole scheme depends upon the question whether a secondary storage system can be installed at a cost which would enable the electricity generated by the primary tidal turbines and at the secondary station to be sold at prices less than that generated at the best coal-fired stations.

The committee has been advised that the construction of the secondary station would be possible.

The requirements of the whole country in 1941 are estimated at 21,000,000,000 units, and it is pointed out that the proposed Severn barrage would provide one-thirteenth of the total.

The total scheme would take 15 years to complete, and it is estimated that the number of men employed would rise gradually from 2,000 in the first year to 12,000 in the tenth year, then rising rapidly to a maximum of 27,800 in the 13th year.

This would represent an average of 12,024 men, of whom 7,570 would be employed on the barrage and in the engineering works throughout the country, and 4,454 indirectly.

Sailing through the Shoots, we get abreast of Sudbrrok, and pass over the Severn Tunnel (G.W.R.), the situation of which is indicated by the pumping stations standing on each side of the river.

The tunnel was opened for passenger traffic in 1886, is four miles and one-third in length, and has a double line of rails running through it.

It is pierced from 50 to 100 feet below the bed of the river, and occupied 12 years in construction, during which time it was flooded on no fewer than four occasions.

It superseded the New Passage steam ferry, which plied across the river about half-mile higher up.