Exploded engineering diagram of a UK Channel Tunnel Boring Machine - in reality a hugely long underground moving factory.
It's very rare to see a fully assembled tunnel boring machine above ground and therefore difficult to comprehend the sheer size, scale and length of these vast moving underground factories. This exploded schematic drawing, however, gives even a casual viewer a much clearer notion of what a boring machine is like in reality. 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. It allows maintenance workers access to the tunnels and provides a safe route for escape during emergencies.
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Photo credit: © qaphotos.com / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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