I have just finished watching this incredible movie from the early days of cinema. the story of engineers from Europe and America that build a tunnel under the ocean from London to New York and the engineering challenges and relationships that are strained along the way. The views of the tunnel and the high speed railway cars that travel along it’s length are amazing and realistic for the time, not to forget the two way television screens that are used for communication are very reminiscent of Star Trek technology especially the screens that are attached to peoples desks allowing them to take calls whilst at their desk, they look exactly like the small screens used in Star Trek that came out in 1966!
They could even make video calls from an airplane. The only gripe is that they do not show enough of the tunnel and the construction, but the scenes they do show as I said look extremely realistic. But judging by the speed of the railway cars that travel along the tunnel, they would take quite a long time to travel 3300 miles and would not be practical unless they could travel faster than the Concorde. There is an interactive diagram of the Transatlantic tunnel proposal that was on Discovery Channel a while ago. That had a tunnel that was a vacuum and the trains travelled at 8000 KPH, meaning the journey would only take 54mins.
That would revolutionise world travel along with a Bering Strait tunnel from Alaska to Russia. that would require a 3000 KM long road from Russian cities to the Bering strait tunnel but would be an integrated part of the global highway. The screen-shots on this page show the size of the tunnel, and the celebrations of the official opening ceremony. Something like this might be built one day, but not in our lifetimes.