50 Fun Facts About The Channel Tunnel

Which town in England does the Channel Tunnel connect to Coquelles in France?

The Cheriton terminal near Folkestone links straight onto the M20; the French end feeds the A16.

Which Swiss bore has since overtaken the Channel link as the longest of its kind in Europe?

When it opened in 1994 the Channel Tunnel was by far the longest tunnel in Europe.

How long is the Channel Tunnel from portal to portal?

Only about 38 km of that is under the sea; the rest is under land at either end.

What record does the Channel Tunnel still hold among the world's tunnels?

Its 37.9 km undersea stretch beats Japan's Seikan Tunnel, which is longer overall.

Where does the Channel Tunnel rank among the world's longest railway tunnels?

Only two rail tunnels, one in Switzerland and one in Japan, are longer.

How far below the seabed does the tunnel run on average?

Its deepest point is 75 m below sea level.

Trains in the tunnel are limited to what maximum speed for safety reasons?

The tunnel was designed for 200 km/h; trains reach 300 km/h only on the high-speed lines outside.

Which name did Groupe Eurotunnel, the tunnel's operator, adopt in 2017?

It also runs the LeShuttle car and lorry service and charges Eurostar and freight operators to pass through.

Who proposed the earliest known Channel tunnel scheme, in 1802, with oil lamps and horse-drawn coaches?

His plan had an artificial island mid-Channel where the horses could be changed.

Which geological tool did Henry Marc Brunel invent while surveying the Strait of Dover seabed in 1866?

His survey proved the seabed was chalk like the cliffs, so a tunnel was technically feasible.

Why was the 1880s Anglo-French tunnel, already 1.8 km long on the British side, abandoned in 1883?

The British boring machine was reused for a ventilation tunnel under the Mersey.

Who made the 1907 fantasy film Tunnelling the English Channel?

The dreamers were Edward VII and French president Armand Fallières.

Which British statesman argued for a Channel tunnel in a 1924 essay titled 'Should Strategists Veto The Tunnel?'

He returned to the theme in the Daily Mail in 1936 with 'Why Not A Channel Tunnel?'.

Which British government cancelled a partly begun Channel tunnel project in January 1975?

Uncertainty over EEC membership and doubled cost estimates were blamed; the French were dismayed.

What happened to the French boring machine abandoned underground when the 1975 project was cancelled?

It lay in its stub tunnel for 14 years before driving Istanbul's Moda sewer tunnel.

Which two leaders agreed in 1981 to set up a working group on a privately funded link?

Thatcher assumed the private scheme would be for cars rather than trains.

Which shortlisted 1985 rival to the rail tunnel was a 35 km suspension bridge with an enclosed roadway?

The ferry lobby's protest campaign was called Flexilink.

Where was the 1986 Anglo-French treaty on the Channel Tunnel signed?

It drew a land frontier between the two countries in the middle of the tunnel, the first of its kind.

How many tunnel boring machines cut the Channel Tunnel's bores?

Six worked from the English side and five from the French side.

What was the rock stratum through which most of the tunnel was bored?

Its 30-40% clay content makes it impermeable to water yet easy to excavate.

How many bores make up the Channel Tunnel?

Two rail tunnels flank a smaller service tunnel, linked by 270 cross-passages.

From which spot near Dover was the English tunnelling launched?

The French access was via a 75 m deep shaft on the coast near Calais.

Unlike the British machines, the French tunnel boring machines were all named after what?

They included Brigitte, Europa, Catherine and Virginie, which still stands in a roundabout by the A16.

What was done with the British undersea boring machines when they finished their drives?

The buried machines were then used to provide an electrical earth.

For how much did Eurotunnel later sell a boring machine displayed beside the M20 on eBay?

The buyer was a scrap metal merchant.

When the service tunnel headings met in 1990, how far out of horizontal alignment were they?

Vertically they were just 8 cm off, and the whole tunnel came out 2 cm shorter than estimated.

Which soft toy did British tunnellers pass through to the French when the two sides met?

Graham Fagg and Philippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel on 1 December 1990 with the media watching.

A BBC commentator called Graham Fagg the first man to cross the Channel by land in how many years?

Britain was last joined to the continent before the sea level rose after the last Ice Age.

Who officially opened the tunnel in Calais on 6 May 1994?

The Queen's Eurostar stopped nose to nose with the president's train from Paris; they then rode Le Shuttle to a matching ceremony on the English side.

What did the first freight train through the tunnel, on 1 June 1994, carry?

Full public service did not begin for several months after the opening.

What was the final construction cost of the tunnel, in 1985 prices?

That was an 80% overrun on the £2.6 billion forecast; financing costs were 140% higher than expected.

How many workers died during the tunnel's construction between 1987 and 1993?

Eight of them were British; most deaths came in the first months of boring.

What became of the spoil dumped behind a seawall at the foot of the Dover cliffs?

About 4.9 million cubic metres of spoil created 30 hectares of new land, opened to the public in 1997.

Who came up with the name of the country park built from the tunnel spoil?

Rock samphire, mentioned in King Lear, was once picked from the Dover cliffs and pickled for London tables.

Which body named the tunnel one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in 1994?

Popular Mechanics published the list the following year.

Without cooling, engineers calculated trains would raise the tunnel temperature to what?

So they laid 480 km of chilled-water pipes, Europe's largest cooling system, to keep it under 35 °C.

Why is the service tunnel kept at higher air pressure than the rail tunnels?

Twin fans sit in vertical shafts at each end, though only one on each side runs at a time.

From which London station did the first Eurostar services run in November 1994?

St Pancras International took over as the terminus in November 2007 when the new high-speed line was completed.

Roughly how long is the LeShuttle crossing, platform to platform?

Passengers stay with their cars; toilets are provided in the double-deck section.

Why does the shuttle loop at the English terminal run clockwise while the French one runs anticlockwise?

Each wheelset spends only half its time on the outer edge of the curves.

Where do the drivers of heavy goods vehicles ride during the crossing?

HGV shuttle wagons are largely open, unlike the enclosed car wagons.

Why can LeShuttle trains never leave the tunnel and its two terminals?

They are among the largest railway vehicles in Europe.

What was on fire in the tunnel's first serious blaze, on 18 November 1996?

Its heart reached an estimated 1,000 °C and full service took six months to restore.

What was the policy that led the driver of the burning 1996 shuttle to keep going into the tunnel?

He stopped 19 km in when the train showed a serious fault; everyone reached the service tunnel by 22:30.

How much did repairs cost after the September 2008 fire on an HGV shuttle?

Full service resumed on 9 February 2009.

What stranded 2,000 passengers in the tunnel for about 16 hours in December 2009?

Snow got past the winterisation shields, then melted in the tunnel's warm air and shorted the electrics.

The tunnel forms a border between the Schengen zone and which other passport-free grouping?

That is why passports are checked before boarding by officials of both countries.

Where did the French Red Cross open a migrant centre in 1999, in a warehouse once used to build the tunnel?

By 2002 it housed up to 1,500 people at a time and became a diplomatic flashpoint.

What was the price of Eurotunnel shares when they were issued in December 1987?

They tripled to £11 by mid-1989, then collapsed as delays mounted; the company suspended debt payments in 1995.

Besides tunnelling under the Thames, which river does High Speed 1 cross between the tunnel and London?

The 110 km line cost £6.84 billion and opened fully in November 2007.