A20 year leap forward to 1989, and things had certainly moved on for the now well established, and monthly journal Tunnels & Tunnelling. Editor David Light had moved on and the one man outfit had been bolstered to a team of two full time staff writers, a full time sub editor and various technical freelancers, all under the guiding hand of the late and still highly regarded editor David Martin.
By 1989, T&T had long gained the accolade of being the official journal of the British Tunnelling Society and even had competition in the form of (the recently closed down) World Tunnelling, illustrating the growth of the sector at that time.
The July issue offered 33 pages of large bore related action and six pages dedicated to the microtunnelling discipline. Interestingly, the issue was supported by many of the companies who are still with us today, including Atlas Copco, Bekaert, Dosco, Herrenknecht, Robbins, Sandvik, Schwing, Tamrock and Wirth.
Widespread international interest in the first four contracts on Lesotho’s Highlands Water Project, with its 45km and 37km long tunnels, dominated the news. A light-hearted news story reported how delegates at the 9th RETC conference in Los Angeles were rocked by two earthquakes of up to 4.6 on the Richter scale during the Monday morning sessions. Typically this by all accounts led to some ‘interesting discussions about the relative safety of tunnels during earthquakes’!
Now in full swing, the Channel Tunnel had a page dedicated to progress. By July, the first morale boosting TBM breakthrough had occurred, namely the 3.2km long French landward service tunnel, whilst all six marine tunnel drives were underway. Eurotunnel was reportedly spending £2M per day on construction and company shares stood at 1113p on the 28 June 1989.
Articles covered a wide range of topics from rockbolts to immersed tubes to instrumentation. Shotcrete covered several pages in a technical review, whilst the issue was closed with the International Journal of Non-Man-Entry Tunnelling & Pipejacking, an 11 page Microtunnelling supplement.
