Cross harbour road tunnel – link to planning of Shing Mun reservoir, late 1920s?

AC wrote a comment following the article, Cross Harbour bridge proposal – road 1901, tram 1920s.

“There were suggestions (not detailed proposals) during the planning of the Shing Mun Reservoir scheme to construct a road tunnel together with the cross harbour pipeline, much like the first Lion Rock Tunnel for the Plover Cove scheme. It was however not taken forward.”

AC adds,” I came across this last summer at the UK’s National Archives in London. I’m working from memory. There were some meeting minutes regarding the latter stages of the Shing Mun Scheme. The meetings were attended by, (among others), Governor Clementi, if and when he was in London, and William Chatham, then retired Director of Public Works, invited to attend for his experience in HK.

It was Clementi who brought up the idea of building a cross-harbour tunnel together with pipeline / aqueduct. There weren’t any detailed plans included with the minutes.”

HF: Can anyone provide further details about this proposal which I suppose must have been discussed in the late 1920s as Clementi was Governor from 1925 to 1930?

The image on the Home Page is of a cross section of the Shing Mun Reservoir gorge dam, 1936 extracted from: A Look Back : Civil Engineering in Hong Kong 1841-1941 written by C Michael Guilford.

This article was first posted on 28th May 2015.

Related Indhhk articles:

1. Cross Harbour bridge proposal – road 1901, tram 1920s
2. Kowloon Trams – the when, the where but not the why not…and proposed cross harbour tram bridge!
3. Chevalier R Pescio – Tunnelling the Peak – proposed tramway 1906-1910
4. Sir John Douglas Clague – connected to a wide array of Hong Kong businesses and lobbyist for the first Cross Harbour tunnel
5. Beacon Hill Tunnel, KCR, longest tunnel in China 1910
6. Hong Kong Electric – pioneer of mechanised tunnelling in 1989
7. The Cross-Harbour Tunnel – Part 1 Gestation
8. The Cross-Harbour Tunnel – Part 2 Construction
9. Abandoned Railway Lines, Stations and Tunnels in Hong Kong…and more