From the UK to Belgium by Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel. Eurotunnel under the English Channel

1. The length of the tunnel under the English Channel is 51 km, of which 39 pass directly under the strait. Trains from London to Paris and back are in the tunnel from 20 to 35 minutes.

2. Thanks to the Eurotunnel, you can get from Paris to London by train in just 2 hours and 15 minutes.

3. Contrary to the misconception, the Channel Tunnel is not the longest railway tunnel in the world, but only ranks third.

The second place is at the Japanese Seikan Tunnel connecting the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, the length of which is 53.85 km.

And the longest in the world is the Gotthard railway tunnel in the Swiss Alps, the official opening of which is scheduled for 2017. Its length is 57 km.

4. For the first time, the idea of ​​building a tunnel connecting England and continental Europe was voiced as early as the beginning of the 19th century, but for a long time it was rejected due to British fears that the structure could be used for a military invasion of the island.

5. The construction of the tunnel began in 1881 and in 1922. For the first time, the builders managed to walk 2026 meters from the English side and 1829 meters from the French side. In the second tunnel drilling stopped at only 128 meters. Both times construction was interrupted for political reasons.

6. In the post-war period, the Channel Tunnel project progressed extremely slowly.

The research team began working in 1957, the project was approved in 1973, after which it was frozen again, and the real construction of the tunnel began only on December 15, 1987.

7. The Eurotunnel technically consists of three tunnels - two main tunnels with tracks for trains traveling north and south, and one small service tunnel.

The service tunnel every 375 meters has passages connecting it with the main ones. It is designed for access to the main tunnels for service personnel and emergency evacuation of people in case of danger.

8. Road transport overcomes the tunnel under the English Channel in the carriages of special trains.

At the same time, drivers and passengers of cars transported by Eurotunnel Shuttle trains do not leave their vehicles. The procedure for loading a car into a wagon takes no more than eight minutes.

9. Over the twenty years of operation of the Eurotunnel, seven major incidents have occurred in it, due to which the normal operation of the tunnel was disrupted for a period of several hours to several months.

Most of the incidents were related to fires, however, thanks to the professional actions of rescuers, victims were avoided.

10. The Eurotunnel cost a total of around £10bn and was overpriced by 80 per cent.

According to experts, the payback period of the project may exceed 1000 years.

The northern and southern tunnels were completed on May 22, 1991 and June 28, 1991, respectively. Equipment installation work followed. May 6, 1994 Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth II) and French President Francois Mitterrand (François Mitterrand) officially opened the tunnel.

The Eurotunnel is a complex engineering structure, including two track tunnels of circular shape and an internal diameter of 7.6 meters, located at a distance of 30 meters from each other, and a service tunnel with a diameter of 4.8 meters located between them.

The journey from Paris to London takes two hours and 15 minutes, and from Brussels to London two hours. At the same time, the train is in the tunnel itself for no more than 35 minutes. Eurostar has carried more than 150 million passengers since 1994, and passenger numbers have grown steadily over the past decade.

In 2014, 10.4 million passengers used Eurostar services.

The European Union approved the takeover of Eurostar by the French railway operator SNCF. Once the deal is completed, SNCF will have to allow competing firms to fly on the same routes.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Channel Tunnel, FRANCE

The Channel Tunnel is also called the Euro Tunnel. The Channel Rail service runs between Cheriton near Folkestone, Kent, and Coquelles, near Calais. The tunnel is one of the greatest civil engineering projects of the 20th century. It has a design capacity of 600 trains per day in each direction.

The length of the Channel Tunnel is 50 km, of which 39 km is underwater, which includes two railway tunnels and one service tunnel. The two railway tunnels have a diameter of 7.6 m, the central tunnel has a diameter of 4.8 m, which is used for maintenance and ventilation, and, if necessary, the evacuation of passengers in case of emergency. There are also several track switches that switch trains from one rail to another as needed.

The depth of the tunnels is 45 m below sea level. The total number of railway tracks is 195 kilometers, of which 45 kilometers pass through the territory of Great Britain, and 50 km are laid through the territory of France. Traveling from one end to the other takes about 30 minutes.

History of the Channel Tunnel

The Channel Tunnel is one of the largest privately funded engineering projects in history.
French mining engineer Albert Mathieu envisioned building the Channel Tunnel as early as 1802. Many other schemes and projects have appeared over the years. In 1875, the Channel Tunnel, conceived by British engineer John Hawkshaw, was given the green light to build the tunnel by the British and French governments. And in 1881, a new Act gave his rival William the right to implement his own project.

In 1882, the British Parliament banned the use of the tunnel, mainly on national security grounds. And in 1922, the Construction Law allowing it was again adopted, but was soon banned again. In 1960, an alliance of British and French companies began to build the Channel Tunnel. Work stopped in January 1975 after the 740-meter long tunnel was completed. In the 1980s, construction companies began work again, but the project was soon abandoned. In November 1984, the Governments of two countries, France and Great Britain, decided to support the resumption of construction. Construction resumed in April 1985.
In October 1987, the company's shares began to be listed on the stock market.

The tunnel, which cost nearly $16 billion in US dollars, has more than doubled its original cost. The Channel Tunnel was officially opened by Elisabeth II of Great Britain and French President François Mitterrand during a ceremony on May 6, 1994. Almost 7 million passengers are transported through the tunnel every year. In its first six years of operation, the tunnel saw 112 million passengers use its service.

This is not a simple story of the Channel Tunnel. But still, it was built, if you are in the UK or France, don’t forget to admire it and take a ride in the tunnel.

Eurotunnel, Channel Tunnel(French tunnel sous la Manche, English Channel Tunnel, also sometimes simply Eurotunnel listen)) is a double-track railway tunnel approximately 51 km long, of which 39 km pass under the English Channel. Connects continental Europe with the UK by rail. Thanks to the tunnel, it became possible to visit London from Paris in just 2 hours and 15 minutes; in the tunnel itself, the trains are from 20 to 35 minutes. It was inaugurated on May 6, 1994.

The Eurotunnel is the third longest railway tunnel in the world. The longer ones are the Seikan Tunnel (length 53.85 km) and the Gotthard Tunnel (length 57.1 km). However, the Eurotunnel holds records for its length under water - 39 km (for comparison, the underwater segment of Seikan is 23.3 km), as well as for being the longest international tunnel.

The Eurotunnel operator is Eurostar.

History of occurrence

The idea of ​​​​building a tunnel under the English Channel arose at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.

According to the project, the tunnel was supposed to connect two cities: Calais on the French side and Folkestone on the English side (this route is not the shortest possible). It was supposed to dig in an easily pliable chalk geological layer, so the tunnel had to run deeper than planned, about 50 meters below the bottom of the strait, and the southern part should run deeper than the northern one. Because of this, the French first had to build a shaft 50 m in diameter and 60 m deep to reach the sandstone.

Construction

During operation, these machines simultaneously reinforced the walls with concrete segments, forming one and a half meter rings encircling the tunnel shaft. Each ring required an average of 50 minutes to install. British machines on average drilled about 150 meters per week, while French ones - 110 due to different machine designs and drilling conditions.

A laser positioning system was used to accurately align the tunnel parts under construction. Thanks to this system, both sides met at the intended point on December 1, 1990, at a depth of 40 meters from the bottom of the strait. The error was 0.358 meters horizontally and 0.058 meters vertically. In total, the British side completed 84 km of tunnel, and the French side - 69 km. British and French drillers did the last meters of the tunnel manually - using picks and shovels. After this, the main tunnels were connected and the British tunneling shields were taken to underground depots, and the French ones were dismantled and removed from the tunnel.

To guide the machines, the operator looked at computer screens and video monitors. Before the tunnel work began, satellite observatories helped calculate the exact path in every detail. Thin drills were used to probe samples of lime clay, showing which direction to go for more than 150 meters. A laser beam directed at a light-sensitive point on the combine helped the driver choose the right direction.

6-8 km from the coast, tunneling machines built passages under the English Channel, along which, when necessary, trains could be transferred from one tunnel to another. Every 375 meters, teams of tunnelers, equipped with small-sized equipment, laid passages to connect the main tunnels with service ones.

Pressure reduction channels were installed in the arch above the service tunnel, which connected the two main tunnels.

The project was completed in 7 years by 13 thousand workers and engineers.

Safety system

The Eurotunnel consists of three tunnels - two main ones, with a track for trains traveling north and south, and one small service tunnel. The service tunnel every 375 meters has passages connecting it with the main ones. It is designed for access to the main tunnels for service personnel and emergency evacuation of people in case of danger.

Every 250 meters, both main tunnels are connected to each other by a special ventilation system located on top of the service tunnel. This airlock system eliminates the piston effect generated by moving trains by distributing air flows into an adjacent tunnel.

All three tunnels have two interchanges, allowing trains to move freely between the tunnels.

Transport system

TGV line built for Eurotunnel LGV Nord Europe, thanks to which you can get from Paris to London in 2 hours 15 minutes.

Eurostar trains travel through the tunnel itself in 20 minutes, and Shuttle trains in 35 minutes.

There are four types of trains on the Eurotunnel line:

• TGV Eurostar high-speed passenger trains operating between London St Pancras railway station, Paris Gare du Nord ( Gare du Nord) and Midi/Zuid station in Brussels with stops in Ashford, Calais and Lille.
• passenger shuttle trains Eurotunnel Shuttle transporting buses, cars and vans between Sangatte and Folkestone. Thanks to a special loading system, the entire process of entering a car into a carriage takes no more than eight minutes, while passengers remain inside their cars.
• freight trains Eurotunnel Shuttle with open cars in which trucks are transported, while the drivers themselves ride in a separate car.
• freight trains. These trains can carry a variety of cargo and containers between mainland Europe and the UK.

Emergencies

The Eurotunnel's security system has been tested eight times in real emergency situations.

November 18, 1996

The first fire occurred in the tunnel - a shuttle train carrying trucks caught fire. 34 people from the burning train, mostly car drivers, were evacuated into the service tunnel by the arriving French rescue service. Eight victims were taken out of the tunnel in ambulances. The rest were evacuated by another train traveling in the opposite direction. The fire brigade put out the fire for several hours, battling low water pressure in the fire extinguishing system, a strong draft in the ventilation and high temperatures.

200 meters of the tunnel were seriously damaged, another 200 meters were partially damaged. Some sections of the tunnel were burned through 50 mm (the thickness of the concrete ring enclosing the tunnel is 450 mm). The last cars and locomotive of the train were completely disabled.

All victims subsequently fully recovered. There were no casualties, mainly due to the design of the tunnel and the coordinated work of the security services of France and Great Britain.

The Eurotunnel was reopened three days later, on November 21, but only one tunnel was open and only for freight trains: safety rules prohibited passenger transportation during emergencies. They were resumed only on December 4th. The Eurotunnel became fully operational on January 7, 1997.

October 10, 2001

One of the trains suddenly stopped in the middle of the tunnel. Panic arose among the passengers, many were susceptible to attacks of claustrophobia. People spent about five hours underground until they were evacuated through a service tunnel.

August 21, 2006

One of the trucks transported by the shuttle train caught fire. Traffic through the tunnel was suspended for several hours.

September 11, 2008

A fire occurred in the French section of the tunnel - in one of the carriages of a freight train traveling from Great Britain to France. The train was transporting trucks. There were 32 people in it: mostly drivers accompanying their cars. All people were evacuated. As a result of the fire, 14 people were hospitalized, suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning or receiving minor injuries during the evacuation. The tunnel continued to burn all night and even in the morning. In the UK, Kent saw huge traffic jams as police blocked roads to prevent vehicles from driving close to tunnel entrances.

After this accident, traffic in the tunnel was fully restored only on February 23, 2009.

December 18, 2009

Due to the failure of the tunnel's power supply system as a result of a sharp temperature change and snowfall in northern France, five trains stopped in the tunnel.

The breakdowns occurred due to the fact that the trains were not ready for operation in winter conditions; their conductive lines and undercar space were not sufficiently protected. Eurostar noted that all trains undergo annual maintenance taking into account cold weather, but the measures taken were not enough.

January 7, 2010

A Eurostar passenger train carrying 260 passengers from Brussels to London was stuck in the Channel Tunnel for two hours. Teams of specialists were sent to the train, as well as an auxiliary locomotive, which took the faulty train in tow. Representatives of the Eurotunnel company stated that the cause of the breakdown of the train was snow. It got into the train's electrical equipment compartments and melted after entering the tunnel.

March 27, 2014

Train traffic through the tunnel was disrupted due to a fire in a building located next to the entrance to the tunnel on the British side. Four Eurostar trains were returned to their departure points in London, Paris and Brussels. The cause of the incident was a lightning strike. There were no casualties.

January 17, 2015

Train traffic was stopped due to a truck that caught fire in a tunnel near the entrance to it from France. All trains that entered the line were returned to the stations due to smoke. There were no casualties.

This was the fourth time since the start of operation of the Eurotunnel that it was closed due to trucks catching fire on the train platform.

Illegal immigrants

The tunnel has become a relatively easy way for illegal immigrants to enter the UK, where social policy is favorable to visiting foreigners.

On the night of 28–29 July 2015, approximately two thousand immigrants attempted to enter the UK illegally from France through the tunnel. This incident was the largest attempt by illegal migrants to cross the English Channel to enter the UK illegally. According to TASS [ ], in the vicinity of Calais, about 10 thousand immigrants were camped, hoping to illegally cross into the UK.

Financial performance indicators

The contribution of private funding to such a complex project was impressive. £45 million was raised through CTG/F-M, £770 million through a public offering, £206 million from private institutional investors and a syndicated bank loan of up to £5 billion. The estimated cost of the project in 1985 was £2.6 billion. By the end of construction, actual costs amounted to £4.65 billion due to increased safety and environmental requirements for the tunnel [ ] . According to other estimates, a total of about £10 billion was spent on the Eurotunnel (adjusted for inflation).

The Eurotunnel is a grandiose project of the 20th century, which has not yet paid off financially.

On 8 April 2008, Eurotunnel announced an annual profit for the first time in its existence (since 1986), made possible by a large-scale debt restructuring program. The company reported a net profit of one million euros ($1.6 million) for 2007.

In 2008, Eurotunnel operator Eurostar managed to make a profit of 40 million euros.

In 2009, the company paid dividends for the first time since its founding.

In 2010, Eurostar's loss amounted to 58 million euros, which was caused, among other things, by the consequences of the global economic crisis.

In 2011, the company, according to BBC News, made a profit of 11 million euros, passenger traffic reached a record 19 million people, Eurostar shares cost 6.53 euros on the stock market, and dividends amounted to 0.08 euros per share.

On the night of December 2-3, 1994, a group of professional and semi-professional cyclists led by Henri Sannier rode through the tunnel. This was the first official passage of cyclists through the entire tunnel.

The English Channel is a strait between two European countries - England and France. In 1994, the Channel Tunnel, a major engineering feat, was opened. Its total length is more than fifty kilometers, thirty-eight kilometers are laid under water. The creation of this unique structure has a long history. In 1802, the French architect Albert Mathieu developed a project for the construction of a bridge, and a year later a similar plan appeared in England.

In fairness, it must be said that in those days there was no talk about the need for a tunnel under the English Channel, the construction of a bridge over the strait was discussed. It was supposed to be a huge structure, consisting of spans five kilometers long, suspended on especially strong cables. The idea was rejected; experts were alarmed by the scale of construction. Until this time, bridges of this size had not yet been built.

Until the mid-twentieth century, engineers and scientists from the two countries developed projects and plans. They started thinking seriously about building a Channel Tunnel in 1955. And they not only thought about it, but also began construction, dug pits, but the energy crisis forced the construction to be mothballed for eleven long years, when the governments of the two countries announced their intention to continue work. True, the agreement stipulated that only private companies could build on both sides at their own expense.

Nine of the most worthy projects were selected and carried out throughout the year.

Negotiation. A year later, the best project was selected. At first it was planned to build two railway lines in the tunnel, and next to them a highway, but the idea of ​​​​building a road tunnel under the English Channel had to be abandoned.

The arguments were very convincing: a vehicle accident in a tunnel is much more likely than a train crash, and its consequences can paralyze traffic in it for a long time. In addition, the mass of cars on both sides would lead to gas pollution in the tunnel, and in order to get rid of it, the construction of a powerful ventilation system would be required.

Since everyone knows that driving in a tunnel tires the driver, it was decided to go with a design written in 1960 and finally finalized in the 70s. Work began first in England, and three months later in France. Huge specialized machines worked at a speed of one kilometer per month. The work was carried out at a depth of forty-five meters

The completion of the Channel Tunnel railway tunnels occurred in June 1991. But the construction was not completed. It was also necessary to dig a service or operational tunnel, and lay rails in two. As a result of a competition in which more than 2,000 companies participated, Russian construction organizations received the order.

The Channel Tunnel officially opened in 1994. French President Mitterrand also took part in the solemn event. There are 3 tunnels built under the English Channel - 2 railway tunnels, through which trains travel in two directions. The third is service: it performs operational functions.