LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Channel Tunnel: Trains
built 629 days ago
The Channel Tunnel is a 50-km long, triple-tube, rail tunnel linking the English county of Kent to the French sous-préfecture of Calais. Four types of train run through the tunnel: Eurostar passenger trains, car transporter trains, HGV transporter trains (HGV shuttles) and freight trains of both national railways. The fire started on a truck being carried on an HGV shuttle.
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The Channel Tunnel is 50.450 km (31.35 miles) long, of which 37.9 km (23.55 miles) are undersea. The average depth is 45.7 m (150 ft) underneath the seabed, and the deepest is 60 m (197 ft). It opened for business in late 1994, offering three principal services: a shuttle for vehicles, Eurostar passenger service linking London primarily with Paris and Brussels, and freight trains.
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The Channel Tunnel... called the Euro Tunnel or Chunnel, actually consists of three tunnels. Two of the tubes are full sized and accommodate rail traffic. In between the two train tunnels is a smaller service tunnel that serves as an emergency escape route. There are also several "cross-over" passages that allow trains to switch from one track to another. Just one year after the Chunnel opened, this engineering design was put to the test. Thirty-one people were trapped in a fire that broke out in a train coming from France.
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The Channel Tunnel locomotive will weigh from sixty to seventy tons, and will be charged with 1,200 cubic feet of air, compressed to the density of seventy atmospheres, the equivalent of which is over 80,000 cubic feet of free air. This will give power sufficient to draw a train of 250 tons gross weight (including the engine) the distance of twenty-two miles under the sea, Assuming that the rate of traveling be thirty miles an hour, the air discharged by the engine would give a supply of free and pure air to the amount of 2,000 cubic feet, approximately, which will be far in excess of what is needed by the passengers in the train. Reservoirs will be placed at convenient intervals, so that the engines, should they need it, may be replenished with compressed air. It will, therefore, be seen that Colonel Beaumont's system of compressed-air engines affords equal advantages with the ordinary steam locomotives, and with no increase in weight."
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In 1994 the Channel Tunnel was considered completed. The tunnel was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and French President François Mitterrand in a ceremony held in Calais on 6 May 1994. The Queen travelled through the tunnel to Calais on a Eurostar train which stopped nose to nose with the train which carried President Mitterrand from Paris.[7] Following the ceremony President Mitterrand and the Queen travelled on Le Shuttle to a similar ceremony in Folkestone.[7]
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The Channel Tunnel was completed at a cost of $12 billion. At 31.35 miles in length, it is the second longest tunnel in the world. The train cars and coaches that travel in it are each 1/4 mile long. The trains reach speeds of 186 miles per hour.
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