3310 x 3310 px | 28 x 28 cm | 11 x 11 inches | 300dpi
Aufnahmedatum:
14. November 1990
Ort:
40m under seabed between UK and France
Weitere Informationen:
Dieses Bild kann kleinere Mängel aufweisen, da es sich um ein historisches Bild oder ein Reportagebild handel
The approach adopted for optimising the route of the 150 km of Channel Tunnel under the seabed (and some 900, 000 years after the geological features were formed) was to regularly examine and ascertain the quality of the ground at 1km intervals as the work progressed. This approach enabled engineers to place the tunnel route in the zone of least risk. If this was not possible, then the risk would be met by adapting the tunnel location or the work procedures or the accuracy would be improved by conducting further exploration. This was the approach that was also used for determining the location of the two huge undersea crossovers caverns. 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.
