Seven Modern wonders of the world
Seven Modern wonders of the world : Channel
Tunnel | CN Tower |
Empire State Building
| Golden Gate Bridge
| Itaipu Dam | Delta
Works | Panama Canal
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel or Chunnel, is a 51.5 km (31 mi) long rail tunnel beneath the English Channel at the Straits of Dover, connecting Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom ( 51°5'49.5?N, 1°9'21?E) to Coquelles near Calais in northern France ( 50°55'22?N, 1°46'50.16?E).
It was a megaproject with several false starts, but it was finally completed in 1994. It is the second-longest rail tunnel in the world, with the Seikan Tunnel in Japan being longer, but the undersea section of 39 km (24 miles) is the longest undersea tunnel in the world. It is operated by Eurotunnel. The American Society of Civil Engineers has declared the tunnel to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Construction
Digging the tunnel took 13,000 workers over seven years, with tunnelling operations conducted simultaneously from both ends. The prime contractor for the construction was the Anglo-French TransManche Link (TML), a consortium of ten construction companies and five banks of the two countries. Engineers used large tunnel boring machines (TBMs, mobile excavation factories that combined drilling, material removal, and the process of shoring up the soft and permeable tunnel walls with a concrete lining).
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