Disgusterous

Author Topic: Nightmare? Ordeal?  (Read 789 times)

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Offline Snoopy

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Re: Nightmare? Ordeal?
« Reply #15 on: December 22, 2009, 09:49:38 AM »
I followed the chunnel from the early design competition (there were proposals that you could drive through it), through 'breakthrough', sadness that the boring machines were just dumped down there and finally the first services...

Naturally, all the media cared about was the mahoosive debts that the company had... they lost interest after that until there was a fire down there...  ::)

Finally, there is a meeja frenzy because a few trains broke down...

I think the amazing thing about it was that it was ever built at all... I just can't imagine the country managing such an engineering feat these days... what does that say about the shit hole that was a once great country that our parents fought for...?

See also: Concorde, VC10, Trident, Harrier, QE2, etc.

 rubschin: Didn't realise you had been around that long BM ...... 1880 is when the first serious attempt at building a tunnel was made  whistle:


I have core samples taken from the mid point of the tunnel. My eldest daughter was at the breakthrough in fact as she was the PA to the English team that made the final connection ~ So I have loads of photos etc (somewhere)
BTW at least two of the boring machines came out alive .... One is on show on this side of the channel and the other is on a roundabout just outside of Calais.

That is a relief... how many TBMs were there...?  rubschin:

From memory of Eldest D's tales they had several but they kept breaking and new ones were brought in to replace them. (Wiki says a total of 11 machines were used) One 'English' and one 'French' machine were indeed left under the sea and entombed in concrete but only after all usable parts were stripped out so in reality it is only the shells that remain.

The machines on display can be seen: on the English side from the M20 and on the French side on a roundabout accessed along Bleriot Plage.
I used to have a handle on life but it broke.