‘Tunnelling Tigers’ bid farewell to Gráinne two years on

AN EPIC love affair came to a dramatic end beneath the streets of the capital city yesterday but there weren’t too many tears at seeing it turn to dust.

For two years, Gráinne, a creature of startling proportions, was wooed by her subterranean suitors as they trod a common path in life, 60 feet below ground.

They stayed with her day and night, sweet-talking her in their soft Donegal accents as they got through the daily grind together. They even cleaned her teeth before they bid her farewell each evening.

But even a rock solid relationship can develop cracks and after two intense years of 72-hour weeks when temperatures soared to a steamy 40 degrees centigrade, it was time to come up for air.

Gráinne, the biggest tunnel boring machine at work in Europe, had pulverised her last few inches of rock and clay and the team of men who guided her through the long 2.2 kilometres behind were content to go their separate ways.

“It’s good to have it finished and see the job complete,” said a satisfied Eddie O’Brien from Magheroarty in north west Donegal.

All but a handful of the 20-strong team who worked on Gráinne were from Donegal so that not even their pit boss, Limerickman Tom Haugh, could stop them renaming the country’s biggest ever engineering project the Donegal Port Tunnel.

The Tunnelling Tigers, as they call themselves, carry on a tradition that began in the 1940s when hardy young men in search of work headed off to Scotland to dig courses for sewage pipes and water mains.

Nowadays they more often bump into each other on jobs in Asia and mainland Europe, so a chance to ply their trade on home ground was a rare treat and their camaraderie survived hot, sweaty conditions, a lingering smell of damp boots and diesel fumes, and the forced sharing of sparse personal comforts, namely a tiny mobile canteen attached to the back of Gráinne which they nicknamed the Hard Rock Cafe.

After all that, they weren’t about to become a tragic bunch of Diarmuids to the formidable Gráinne. “We’ve all got through this in one piece,” said John Sweeney of Loughanure as the crew enjoyed a multi-cultural toast with bottles of champagne and tetrapaks of saki.

“We go our way and she goes hers. I don’t think I’ll write.”