French workers excavating a cross passage between two rail tunnels by hand using 'air spades' on the Channel Tunnel project
Although the main tunnels on the Channel Tunnel were excavated by using the most modern boring machines available, the cross passages that link the rail tunnels and provide an exit into the service tunnel in an emergency, were built by hand. Workers used traditional equipment such as hydraulic air spades (pnuematic drills) to dig these cross passages at 750m intervals along the tunnel's length. The Channel Tunnel is no ordinary project. The four types of cross-channel service that the Tunnel offers - conventional freight and passenger trains, plus two types of road vehicle shuttle have made it into the busiest railway in the world. The fast and efficient movement of road and rail traffic into, through and out of the Eurotunnel system is integral to that success. The Channel Tunnel is one of the wonders of the modern world. It is thirty-two miles long at an average depth of 45 metres below the sea-bed, the longest undersea tunnel and the second longest rail tunnel in the world (only the Seikan Tunnel in Japan is longer). It was built between 1987 and 1994 by Anglo-French consortium TransManche Link and is owned and operated by Anglo-French Eurotunnel plc. It opened for business in late 1994, offering services including a shuttle train for car, coach and freight vehicles, a Eurostar high-speed passenger service linking London with Paris and Brussels and a rail freight service. The tunnel boring machines were specially designed for excavating the chalk marl rock which lies beneath the seabed along the tunnel route. Digging the tunnel took 15 thousand workers around 170 million man-hours over 7 years with tunnelling happening simultaneously from both ends. The Channel Tunnel consists of three parallel tunnels. There are two rail tunnels carrying trains to and from the UK to France and a smaller access tunnel served by narrow rubber-tyred vehicles and connected by transverse passages to the main tunnels at regular intervals.
Size: 3310px × 3309px
Location: 40m under seabed between UK and France
Photo credit: © qaphotos.com / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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