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A Great Moment of Tunnelling from way back: 1 December 1990 EUROTUNNEL Breakthrough!

I think a good deal of the tunnel under the English channel has been dug with TBMs. But these last points were dug manually and there you go! Two sides meet each other under the sea!

 

  • Arie van den Broek
    By Arie van den Broek

    What an achievement man!

    A great leap for the mankind!

  • Ansh Chaturvedi
    By Ansh Chaturvedi

    Geology of the channel made it a very easy tunnelling project.

    You can see that they can cut the tunnel like cutting cheese.

  • Martin Sirzo
    By Martin Sirzo

    Dear @Ansh, channel tunnel geology may have been a dream geology for tunnellers but nevertheless, it does not change the fact that, it was a great tunnelling achievement.

    Eurotunnel English Channel tunnel geological profile.

    It is interesting (but not surprising) that the tunnelers have followed the chalk layer all the way.

    It was a grea tunnelling achievement all the way. Definitely!

     

     Image by: Commander Keane [CC BY-SA 4.0]

  • Lutz Genscher
    By Lutz Genscher

    Looking at the meeting point on the drawing, it looks like the English did the most of the boring and the French just waited!

  • Peter R. Morgan
    By Peter R. Morgan

    @Lutz I guess it is a fairly precise comment -:) No doubt the French demanded and got the half the credit though...

    @Martin thanks for sharing the great graphics here.

  • Heiko vd Berg
    By Heiko vd Berg

    I completely agree that this -in my humble opinion- remains the greatest tunnelling achievement, regardless of geology, chalk whatever. This is the TOP!

  • Heiko vd Berg
    By Heiko vd Berg

    The Eurotunnel diggers motto was: FOLLOW THE CHALK

     

  • Robin McAuley
    By Robin McAuley

    Uploader of the video I had posted has been barred from sharing (I don't see why people do that, especially when they are not really the owner of the video). I am sharing here virtually the same thing by another uploader.

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