After six years of building work, the Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel, finally opened in May 1994. It runs for 31.5 miles between Folkestone, England, and Calais, France, and 23.5 miles of this route is beneath the English Channel. Today, about 21 million passengers a year use its trains to travel from Britain to mainland Europe.
A brave idea
The Channel Tunnel dream began more than 200 years ago, in 1802, with an idea for horse-drawn carriages to run along an under-the-sea tunnel lit by oil lamps. An early attempt to dig beneath the sea was made in Kent, England, in 1880, using hand-held tools and a tunnel-boring (digging) machine. However, the project was too difficult and was eventually abandoned. Plans for the Channel Tunnel that exists today were finally agreed…
