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Kind: captions
Language: en-GB

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Behind me is the entrance to the Greenwich
Foot Tunnel, in south London. It's your standard,

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start-of-the-20th century foot tunnel. Stairs
or a lift down, under the river, stairs or

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a lift back up. There's quite a few of these
left in the world.

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But about ten years after this was built,
a German engineer thought:

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what if we go bigger?

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This is the St Pauli Elbtunnel, in Hamburg,
Germany. Much the same: go in, take a lift

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down, cross under the river. Except it's not
just pedestrians and bikes that take the lift

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here: this is good for cars too.

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Of course, the automobile wasn't common when
this was built: originally, horses and wagons

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would have been brought down in these lifts.
And construction was risky: while it was being

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built the tunnel was kept pressurised and
air locked, in order to keep the water out.

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But because decompression sickness — the
bends — wasn't understood, hundreds of workers

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suffered from what was then called Caissons
Disease, and three died.

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Like the Greenwich tunnel, this is a useful
commuter route. For cars, it's one way in

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the morning, and the other way in the evening;
and there are speed bumps just in case someone

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sees a clear tunnel ahead of them and decides
to, I don't know, break the underground speed

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record. Most road traffic goes elsewhere,
over other routes, under or over the river,

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but there are still plenty of folks who regularly
use this odd, hundred-year old tunnel and

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car lift as part of their everyday life.

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And yes, for everyone who's inevitably going
to ask in the comments, of course I went to

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Miniatur Wunderland while I was in Hamburg.
It's absolutely brilliant, I did the behind-the-scenes

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tour which is well worth the money, but there
is nothing I could film there with my iPhone

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and GoPro that hasn't already been shot by
people with much, much better cameras. So

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if you want to see what's in there, and it
is incredible, I've put some links in the

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description.

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