A Channel Tunnel engineer examines the 'eyes' created in the UK Crossover ready to receive two rail tunnel boring machines.
During the construction of the Channel Tunnel under the sea, two vast caverns (Crossovers) were constructed about 8 kilometres from the UK and the French coasts. These were the largest undersea caverns ever built (156m long, wide and high) and would trains in the the two rail tunnels to switch from track to track to facilitate maintenance. The UK Crossover was construction using the New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) which was considered to be fast, flexible and cost-effective - the cavern was built in just seven months. The pictured 'eyes' were created to receive the two huge rail tunnel boring machines, once they had travelled through the crossover cavern. 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. It allows maintenance workers access to the tunnels and provides a safe route for escape during emergencies.
Size: 4157px × 4157px
Location: 40m under sea bed, 8kms from Dover, Europe.
Photo credit: © qaphotos.com / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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