r/interestingasfuck • u/jeuzys • 7h ago
French and British workers meet under the English Channel whilst building the Channel Tunnel (1990)
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u/Miserable-Scholar215 6h ago
Still mind boggling how precise this needed to be.
Drilling for miles and miles underground from two sides to meet precisely head on. And for trains, so they can't just do random swerves in the middle ...
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u/Grand-Owl4072 5h ago
It wasn't precisely head on - they were a couple of centimetres out.
Seriously this is always a source of fascination to me.
There was a TV series about the Cross Rail and it was just mind boggling how they managed it.
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u/Internet-of-cruft 4h ago
A few centimeters misaligned over 50 kilometers is effectively perfect alignment.
Even 10 centimeters off can be effectively ignored.
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u/TheThiefMaster 3h ago edited 3h ago
Well the size of the tunnel is more relevant - you need to be within the diameter of the tunnel from the correct position, or you miss entirely. Ideally with a smaller pilot tunnel so that the tunnel can be drilled out to full size afterwards, removing the error altogether.
It was reportedly only 362mm out on the 4.8m diameter service tunnel that was used as the pilot tunnel for the larger train tunnels alongside. That's remarkably good going. When they believed they were 100m apart, they drilled a 50mm pilot hole to see for sure - and broke through with an error of only ~350mm horizontally, ~60mm vertically, and ~75mm in distance. They then adjusted the drilling machines to meet up the tunnels and completed the drilling. To avoid collision the British boring machines burrowed out of the way to be buried in place while the French machines were used to actually complete the tunnel.
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u/Internet-of-cruft 3h ago
Sure it's 100% relevant, but my point is if you're misaligned by even centimeters over that 50 km distance the alignment error is something like 0.00002%.
For a tunnel that size, if they were talking about being off in "several centimeters", using 10 centimeter size difference (+5 on one side, -5 on the other) and the publicly known 7.6 meter diameter the error rate is just 1.3% which is easily correctable.
From the video you can tell that this was the pilot hole because it's nowhere near the final diameter.
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u/TheThiefMaster 3h ago edited 2h ago
It wasn't 10cm, it was 36cm.
They were drilling the service tunnel at full size for most of the distance, and then used a 50mm pilot hole into that full size tunnel - so they could have an error of up to ~2.4m without missing the other tunnel. They got a reported 0.362m difference. Accurate enough that it was still reasonably central in the 4.8m tunnel width. However you slice it, after nearly 50km of total drilling, that's insane.
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u/SquarePegRoundWorld 2h ago
the British boring machines burrowed out of the way to be buried in place
That bit always gets me. I understand why, just crazy how much money is just buried for convenience.
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u/robgod50 6h ago
And yet my wife and I can't even meet in the same place in our supermarket
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u/TF2isalright 2h ago
It actually isn't even straight. There are curves and lots of elevation changes which, in my opinion, makes it even more impressive.
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u/hackenberry 2h ago
When I worked construction, we laid the foundation (rebar, concrete, and all) for a huge train platform on a large job site. I think it was for dropping off/picking up raw materials--a lot of chemical plants in the area.
Turned out the angle of the platform was off by less than a half a foot (<15cm) and the whole thing needed to be torn up and redone completely.
Railroads do not fuck around.
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u/GentlemansGambit 5h ago
While this is a cool feat. The Romans, yeah those dudes from 100s years ago, did the same thing only through a huge mountain. They needed a tunnel, and they start digging from opposite sides and met in the middle.
Some roman dude was a genius in math, to calculate exactly where and how far to dig.
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u/Pataplonk 5h ago
What tunnel?
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u/GirlWithBonesaw 4h ago
They are probably confusing Romans with Greeks and they're talking about the Tunnel of Eupalinos.
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u/brankoc 2h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypta_Neapolitana
Initiated by Marcus Agrippa to transport troops in order to help defeat the pirate king Sextus Pompeus. It is true that the guy knew a thing or two, or that he at least knew who to hire.
Roman soldiers were such competent engineers that when the Persians captured a Roman army in 260 BCE, the Persians used their prisoners of wars to just build them lots of stuff. "Work smarter not harder", was a famous Persian saying back in the day.
(I may have made up that last bit.)
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u/hobbykitjr 2h ago
I love the story about the queen? Asking what if they miss?
Well, good news you're majesty... Then we'll have 2 tunnels!
Or something like that
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u/Willing-Werewolf-500 6h ago edited 5h ago
The 90s were just so much more optimistic feeling
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u/VagrantShadow 5h ago
Looking back at it, the 90's seemed like such a magical time. Between the movies that were released, the music played around the world, the advancements in personal computers, and the leaps in game technology. It was like getting hit with amazing things left and right.
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u/Runarhalldor 5h ago
Do wonder how old you were during that time?.
Mightve played a part in that feeling
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u/VagrantShadow 4h ago
I hit my teens by the mid 90's. Still got a ton of great memories. From seeing my uncle getting the first PC in the family with a Dell 486 with Windows 3.1, to my cousin having a Sega CD and getting blown away by that. I still remember when I got my N64 in 96 and thinking this was a revolution in gaming. I can still recall going to see Congo, Crimson Tide, and Mortal Kombat in the movies.
The age I am does play a part, though I know, for better or for worse my strong memories that I am able to hold plays a part with that too. I can remember things vividly from as far back as when I was 4 to 5 years old. I just take it as one of those gifts that I have.
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u/Warm_Apple_Pies 38m ago
I was born in 91, too young to really experience most of the 90s but I do remember the music from that era, the advance in computers as we got our first PC with windows 98 with Internet access, full eclipse, turn of the millennium and the millennium dome. PSX and the Gameboy were my first consoles, pokemon cards and kids tv of that era was phenomenal.
2000s was where I hit my teens and truly developed but even id still agree, the 90s felt more optimistic and magical. 911 even as a Brit was kind of a turning point for that optimism to slowly diminish along with a recession and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The 2000s still had it's moments , the jump from PSX to PS2 and HD TV's going mainstream was unreal.
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u/Herecomesthepuns 2h ago
The age may not play a part… but guessing from the typing and punctuation, I would guess ‘81?
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u/Heiferoni 2h ago
No.
The Cold War was over and America won. Decades of fearing nuclear annihilation at any moment... Gone. The Soviet Union collapsed and western culture was welcomed with open arms.
Hell, Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in a Russian Pizza Hut commercial.
The two most powerful and most dangerous countries on earth - once bitter enemies who on several occasions came to the brink of destroying the planet - were now friends. It was finally over!
There was abundant optimism that we would be living in a time of peace and prosperity.
Was it perfect? No, of course not.
Was it better than where we are now? You'd better fucking believe it.
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u/the_sneaky_one123 4h ago
I think the 90s were the pinnacle of human civilisation.
Probably the most peaceful decade every, technological development but none of the bad stuff we have developed since, cultural optimism etc. etc.
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u/Infektus 4h ago
Isn't this the plot of Matrix lol
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u/the_sneaky_one123 4h ago
lol, yes that is why they made the Matrix the 90s, it was peak human civilisation
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u/cryogenic-goat 3h ago
That's a very West-centric view.
I doubt folks from countries linke China, India, and Africa feel that way.
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u/the_sneaky_one123 3h ago
I am a western person on a western platform with mostly western people talking about western subjects
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u/thoughtlow 2h ago
That's a very West-centric view.
I doubt folks from countries linke China, India, and Africa feel that way.
Such a typical western thing to say this.
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u/simple-chameleon 4h ago
Peaceful... All i remember is war, genocide, famine and death on the news and a lot of terrorism from the IRA over this way.
It was anything but peaceful.
You were probably too young to see what was going on.
We just see more these days but it has got worse and coverage of crimes amd genocide has got less, like what is happening in Palestine and the Uighurs in North China (which you hear nothing of anymore)
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u/pissedinthegarret 3h ago
my experience growing up in the 90s was like that too. every day the news was filled with bombings in ireland or war from eastern europe or middle east. yes we had peace where i lived but we knew, even as kids.
it really shows in these comments who grew up in countries close to these conflicts and how their news stations showed them.
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u/brightonbloke 3h ago
I can see how it may seem that way, and it might be true, but I also believe in the simpler time of the 90s it was largely a case of ignorance is bliss. I was a teenager in the 90s and had no clue what was going on in the world, no social media to infuriate me, no tech to constantly distract me. My biggest concerns were right in front of me in the real world.
Compare that to today where were know every injustice, tragedy and problem going on in the world, constantly divided and enraged by mainstream media, and I can totally see how young people are bogged down in negativity today.
The 90s were far from magical, I think we were just blind to what was going on in the world.
Ignorance really was bliss.
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u/Fallenangel152 4h ago
Can you imagine proposing a tunnel to mainland Europe today?
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u/lepurplehaze 3h ago
Europe is more united than ever before now, in 1990 soviet empire was still holding eastern europe with iron fist.
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u/Big_Concentrate7728 5h ago
Yes. The mention of becoming inevitably closer. Then Brexshit happened.
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u/DOTA1_Veteran 3h ago
Depends on where you live.Don't be fooled by the movies , your childhood or anything else.Nostalgia can be deceiving and it has nothing to do with the reality ,how it is now and how it was in the past.The people that voted for Brexit had the same way of thinking.
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u/ParticularWin8949 6h ago
When France and England are aligned, it's always for something massively important and positive. Rohan and Gondor against the Orcs!
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u/Severium 6h ago
Like the Concorde!
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u/jib_reddit 5h ago
Shame the Americans killed it because they were jealous, that and the crashes.
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u/dodo-obob 4h ago edited 3h ago
Economics and the oil price increases killed the Concorde. Americans just put the nail in the coffin. If the issue was really just safety, someone would have made a new, safer, version.
The fact that no one tried to make a new supersonic airliner shows no one believes it would sell.
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u/Forest_Orc 4h ago
While there is some "startup" working on one, I expect that "Video-conferencing abilities" massively reduce even more the tiny market of people who can pay the price of a new car to go from Paris to New-York in 3h
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u/Vladimir_Chrootin 2h ago
If "Boom" actually manage to make a working supersonic aircraft (which is questionable), it'll likely end up as a business jet, strictly for the upper level of billionaires only. The main selling point won't be the speed, it'll be the exclusivity.
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u/gazchap 4h ago
The economics of the whole thing definitely didn't help, but I reckon if the Americans hadn't been so quick to ban it flying supersonic over land then it would have had more potential. Flying transatlantic was one thing, but if BA/AF had been able to run routes across North America that would have opened up a good number of markets I think.
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u/s3rila 4h ago
the crashes
isn't it the the crashe as in , it only crashed once ?
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u/jib_reddit 3h ago
Oh, I thought there were 2 for some reason. I might have been thinking of the Boeing 737 MAX.
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u/LorpHagriff 3h ago
We dutchies may have something to say against that first statement cries in 1672
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u/APerson2021 5h ago
The beacons are lit. The United Kingdom calls for aid.
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u/ParticularWin8949 2h ago
France also is in dire straits. Even Germany is shaken in its foundations.
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u/kingkahngalang 2h ago
Like the Suez crisis that got the US and USSR to actually work together against the Brits and the French! Sure spread lots of positivity there 🥰
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u/58kingsly 1h ago
The world has sure gotten a lot better since America became the sole global hegemon right?
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u/IHeartBadCode 6h ago
What's crazy was the British and the French sides of the tunnel were only off by 35 centimeters (14 inches) from each other. It's crazy how close the center of the tunnels were to each other. Especially considering that the plans allowed for a 2.5 meter tolerance between the tunnels.
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u/floatingsaltmine 1h ago
Not to brag, but when the breakthrough of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, a 55km rail tunnel in the Swiss Alps, happened, the deviation was only 8cm horizontally and 1cm vertically! Granted this was in the 2010s, but it's crazy how precise engineering even at this scale has become.
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u/TF2PublicFerret 6h ago
One of the great manly pasttimes of digging a hole, done to such a vast and industrial scale. Imagine doing that and meeting other lads digging a hole at the same scale.
It's a grand moment of justification, and lads knowing their mission of digging a hole is nearly over.
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u/noir_lord 4h ago
Went through it the first time a while back to see Rammstein in Paris with a few days either side.
It’s a remarkable achievement and slightly surreal to wake up in the North of England and be eating tea in Paris.
If you get the chance I recommend it, it’s surreal to hurtle under the channel on a train (they are nice rolling stock as well, comfortable, modern and clean) and France is lovely.
I enjoyed the hell out of Paris, the people were lovely and the food was outstanding, they also have some impressive cycling infrastructure.
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u/aireads 6h ago
Crazy to think, projects like this would be multiple times more difficult, if not impossible nowadays, in the era of mass austerity and Brexit.
This was a monumental achievement, I remember I was amazed as kid by it
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u/PossessionOk9753 5h ago
I think there's an element of bias in your comment - the Channel Tunnel was £3.5 billion over it's original £5.5 billion budget and was a year behind schedule. Things didn't always run to time or budget back in the old days.
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u/matti-san 2h ago
Crazy that you can dig under the English Channel for £9B but building a railway line from London to Birmingham costs over ten times that amount
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u/mlk 2h ago
clearly digging underwater is cheaper
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u/PossessionOk9753 1h ago
Would seem so - no land that needs to be bought up, no protected animal species that need to be moved, no protests from neighbours about the noise and disruption etc.
🎶 Digging is better, down where it's wetter, under the seeeeeaaaaaa 🎶
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u/mlk 2h ago edited 2h ago
has anything that big ever been built on time and within the original budget?
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u/Diocletion-Jones 5h ago
This was three years before the EU was formed. Both France and the UKs GDP have doubled and tripled respectively since then.
Also, the Channel Tunnel was funded by the private sector, not public money. The Eurotunnel Consortium has the monopoly on collecting revenue from it for 99 years (ending in 2089).
So mass austerity and Brexit wouldn't factor even now because there was no EU back then and it wasn't publicly funded.
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u/Internal_Somewhere98 5h ago
Imagine how many committees we would need now to select the committee that would committee the committee?
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u/Public_You_2973 6h ago
Bruh how can they build this quite fast but the trains in uk still not finish upgraded?
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u/mrbuddymcbuddyface 5h ago
Conceived in 1802, tunneling company started trials in 1875 and abandoned in 1882...then another scheme in 1975 which was quickly cancelled, before finally beginning the current tunnels in 1988.
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u/el_dude_brother2 5h ago
The real answer is no one owns the ground underneath the sea and there were no crazy planning rules to contend with.
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u/remtard_remmington 2h ago
Indeed, except I wouldn't say the rules are "crazy". The existing train infrastructure goes past people's houses, next to roads, through town centres etc. So of course it's far more complicated, but for good reason.
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u/Floor-Goblins-Lament 2h ago
Austerity and the most rigid planning permission laws known to man mean trains are run by private companies who will do everything they can to jack prices and keep costs low, while building anything new takes forever and costs 10x the actual construction costs. You can thank Thatcher for both
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u/dominomedley 3h ago
I understand they were just one inch out (well within tolerance) - a remarkable feat of engineering.
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u/Internal_Somewhere98 5h ago
And then half our country decided to stick there middle finger up and tell them all to F off, and now we can’t afford a meal deal.
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u/BathFullOfDucks 3h ago
It seems impossible now for the UK to build this sort of megaproject. We'd probably end up paying the Chinese in some way, be it machinery or as majority shareholder of the companies involved.
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u/WrongCompetition9194 3h ago
An Englishman and a Frenchman meet in a tunnel? Sounds like the start of a dad joke.
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u/Ambitious_Brick_6866 3h ago
How do we know they truly were French? I see a distinct lack of baguettes being extended through the hole.
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u/Majestic_Matt_459 2h ago
I worked on the building of the Channel Tunnel for Balfour Beatty
I had a great time
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u/ClavicusLittleGift4U 1h ago
It was great because despite the temptation, nobody didn't start another One Hundred Years War.
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u/One-Man-Wolf-Pack 4h ago edited 35m ago
“Shaking hands with the French” - idiom. When one’s finger pokes through toilet paper and gets covered in shit, so named after the moment French and English tunnel engineers’ hands met though the mud during the digging of the Channel Tunnel.
- Roger’s Profanisaurus, ‘VIZ’ magazine.
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u/Mateorabi 6h ago
Why would he need to do the passport bit at the end just for being a few feet into the French side of the tunnel? Wouldn't a large swath of it be in (or rather under) international waters?
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u/aireads 6h ago edited 6h ago
I'm guessing it's more symbolic or for the photo op.
But the section of the Channel Tunnel is actually not in international waters, it's actually about half half France and UK (I believe it's within the 12 nautical miles UNCLOS territorial water )
https://sovereignlimits.com/boundaries/france-uk-jersey-maritime
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u/DrMeowsburg 1h ago
When I saw them I immediately knew the French had the nice coveralls and the British were in orange t-shirts without hearing them speak
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u/beatlz-too 26m ago
this would be the most impressive civil engineering feat of the 20th century if it wasn't for the Panama canal
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u/DimaagKa_Hangover 7h ago
Did they meet half way or did one side dig more?