French Channel Tunnel engineers installing 273mm carbon manganese pipework for high-pressure firemain in the Service Tunnel.
A fire is a frightening prospect in any tunnel but the Channel Tunnel was designed with safety in depth. Along the length of the Service Tunnel is a network of firemain pipes which are linked into every cross passage (at 375m intervals) so the hydrants -with separate French and UK connectors - can be accessed in the rail tunnels. Each pipe is 12m long and weighs 500 kilos, is installed using a specially-designed works train and is hung from the Service Tunnel roof using special support brackets. Water is supplied from four land-based pumping stations at the UK and French Terminals and at the UK and French coasts. 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 × 4147px
Location: Service Tunnel, 40m under seabed, Europe
Photo credit: © qaphotos.com / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: -operation, -surface, -vi, 20th, adit, amazing, anglo-french, assembly, boring, breakthrough, build, building, carbon, cave, cavern, century, chalk, chamber, channel, cheriton, claustrophobic, cliff, confined, construction, continent, contractor, courage, cutterhead, danger, dangerous, dark, determination, digging, dover, engineer, engineering, equipment, europe, euroshuttle, eurostar, eurotunnel, excavation, finance, fire, fire-fighters, fire-fighting, firemain, fixed, france, frethun, frontiers, gault, gloomy, greatest, hard, hat, helmet, high, high-speed, hydrant, imagination, industry, infrastructure, international, link, machines, manche, manganese, marl, marvel, mighty, miner, mining, modern, passage, perseverance, pipe, pipework, planning, portal, private, project, protective, rail, risky, safety, sangatte, shaft, shakespeare, shuttle, site, surveyor, tbm, terminal, tgv, tml, train, transmanche, transport, transportation, tunnel, tunnelling, uk, underground, visibility, water, wonders, workforce, world
