Today in History: The English Tunnel breaks ground in France
It was no ordinary hole as it connected Great Britain with the European mainland for the first time in more than 8 000 years.
On this day in 1990, shortly after 11am, 40,2m below the English Channel, workers drilled an opening the size of a car through a wall of rock on the French end of the Channel Tunnel.
The Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” was not a new idea. It had been suggested to Napoleon Bonaparte, in fact, as early as 1802. It wasn’t until the late 20th century, though, that the necessary technology was developed.
In 1986, Britain and France signed a treaty authorising the construction of a tunnel running between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France. Over the next four years, nearly 13 000 workers dug 152,8km of tunnels at an average depth of 45 metres below sea level.
Eight million cubic metres of soil were removed, at a rate of some 2 400 tons per hour. The completed Chunnel would have three interconnected tubes, including one rail track in each direction and one service tunnel. The price? A whopping $15 billion.
After workers drilled that final hole on 1 December 1990, they exchanged French and British flags and toasted each other with champagne. Final construction took four more years, and the Channel Tunnel finally opened for passenger service on 6 May 1994, with Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and France’s President Francois Mitterrand on hand in Calais for the inaugural run.
A company called Eurotunnel won the 55-year concession to operate the Chunnel, which is the crucial stretch of the Eurostar high-speed rail link between London and Paris. The regular shuttle train through the tunnel runs 49,8km in total – 23 of those underwater – and takes 20 minutes, with an additional 15-minute loop to turn the train around. The Chunnel is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world, after the Seikan Tunnel in Japan.
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