48 Fun Facts About The Channel Tunnel

Ferries sail from Dover, but which nearby town is home to the Channel Tunnel's English terminal?

Folkestone: drivers clear both British and French border checks at the terminal before boarding, so they roll straight onto the motorway on the other side.

Which Swiss bore has since overtaken the Channel link as the longest of its kind in Europe?

When it opened in 1994 the Channel Tunnel was by far the longest tunnel in Europe.

How long is the Channel Tunnel from portal to portal?

50 km. The strait above is only about 33 km wide at its narrowest, but the tunnel also runs under land at both ends to reach terminals set back from each coast.

As of 2025, what record does the Channel Tunnel hold among the world's tunnels?

Longest underwater section: nearly 38 km of it lies beneath the sea. The tunnel never touches the water, though, as it is bored through rock tens of metres under the seabed.

Besides Switzerland, which country had a main-line rail tunnel longer than the Channel Tunnel in 2025?

Japan: the Seikan Tunnel links the main island to Hokkaido. Plans for it were galvanised when a 1954 typhoon sank ferries in the strait, killing more than 1,400 people.

Since 2022, what has the Channel Tunnel carried between Britain and France besides trains?

Electricity: the ElecLink cable, in commercial service since May 2022, runs the length of the tunnel and lets the British and French grids trade up to 1,000 megawatts.

At which Paris station do Eurostar trains from London arrive via the Channel Tunnel?

Gare du Nord. Inside the tunnel the trains are held to 160 km/h, about half the 300 km/h they reach on the high-speed lines either side.

Which name did Groupe Eurotunnel, the tunnel's operator, adopt in 2017?

Getlink: by then the group also hauled rail freight within France and across the Channel under the Europorte name, so the tunnel was no longer its only business.

The first known Channel tunnel plan, put forward in 1802, would have moved travellers by what means?

Horse-drawn coaches, in a paved tunnel lit by oil lamps: French mining engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier even drew an artificial island in mid-Channel as a halt on the way.

The French call the Channel Tunnel 'le tunnel sous la Manche'; what does 'la Manche' mean in English?

The sleeve. The French have used the name since the 17th century, and it is usually said to describe the Channel's outline, tapering like an arm of a coat.

Why did the British government halt the Channel tunnel begun in the 1880s?

Army fears of an invasion route: generals campaigned against losing Britain's island defence, and work stopped in 1883 with nearly two kilometres already bored from the English side.

Who made the 1907 fantasy film Tunnelling the English Channel?

Georges Méliès has Edward VII and the French president dream the tunnel into being, from blueprints to grand opening, before it all ends in a wreck: the film's subtitle was 'the Franco-English Nightmare'.

Which British statesman argued in a 1924 newspaper essay that strategists should not veto a Channel tunnel?

Winston Churchill pressed the case for years, the opposite of his father Lord Randolph, who by Winston's own account had laughed a Channel Tunnel Bill out of the Commons in 1888.

Which British government cancelled a partly begun Channel Tunnel project in January 1975?

Wilson's Labour government pulled out as cost estimates doubled and the oil crisis battered the economy, although digging had already begun on both coasts.

Which French ruler joined Queen Victoria in approving a Channel tunnel scheme in the 1850s?

Napoleon III gave his blessing to engineer Aimé Thomé de Gamond's undersea design, later shown at the 1867 Paris exhibition, but digging did not begin until the 1880s.

Which two leaders agreed in 1981 to set up a working group on a fixed Channel link?

Thatcher and Mitterrand launched the study at a 1981 summit, though Thatcher made plain she would rather motorists drove across than took a train.

Flexilink, which campaigned against the Channel Tunnel in the 1980s, spoke for which industry?

Ferry operators: they argued that their ships already did the job. In 1986 the rail tunnel beat rival schemes that would have let motorists drive across, and the campaign went on.

Where was the 1986 Anglo-French treaty on the Channel Tunnel signed?

Canterbury Cathedral: the treaty signed there in February 1986 gave Britain and France a land frontier, drawn halfway along the tunnel under the sea.

Through which rock stratum was most of the Channel Tunnel bored?

Chalk marl: its clay content makes it almost watertight yet soft enough to cut quickly, so engineers steered the bores up and down to stay inside the layer.

Which spy film climaxes with a helicopter chasing a high-speed train into the Channel Tunnel?

Mission: Impossible (1996): Tom Cruise's agent climbs onto the roof of a Paris-bound express, and the helicopter chasing him is dragged into the tunnel on the end of a cable.

From which spot near Dover was the English side of the Channel Tunnel dug?

Shakespeare Cliff: Victorian engineers had bored from its foot in the 1880s and a government trial drive began there in the 1970s, so the modern tunnellers started from the same spot.

Unlike the British machines, the French boring machines that dug the Channel Tunnel were all named after what?

Women: each French machine was given a woman's name, and one of them has been kept as a monument on a roundabout in Coquelles, beside the French terminal.

What was done with the Channel Tunnel's British undersea boring machines when they finished digging?

Driven downwards and buried: once the crews met in mid-Channel the British machines had nowhere to go, so they were steered off the route and entombed, while the French ones were dismantled.

How did Eurotunnel sell off one of the Channel Tunnel's boring machines in 2004?

On eBay: a machine that had helped bore a multi-billion-pound tunnel was sold off on the auction site for £39,999.

On which side do vehicles drive in the Channel Tunnel's service tunnel?

On the left: although half the tunnel lies in France, its service vehicles keep to the British side of the road from one end to the other.

Which soft toy did British tunnellers pass through to the French when the two sides met?

Graham Fagg and Philippe Cozette broke through the service tunnel on 1 December 1990 with the media watching.

About how many years had Britain been cut off by sea before the 1990 Channel Tunnel breakthrough?

8,000 years, since seas rose after the last Ice Age, which is why a BBC commentator hailed tunneller Graham Fagg as the first man to cross the Channel by land in 8,000 years.

Who officially opened the Channel Tunnel in Calais on 6 May 1994?

Elizabeth II and François Mitterrand arrived by train from opposite directions, their locomotives stopping nose to nose, then rode Le Shuttle to England together for a second ceremony.

In 2017 a freight train reached London through the Channel Tunnel after a 12,000 km journey from which country?

China: the containers left Yiwu and crossed Asia and Europe by rail to Barking in east London, a journey sold to shippers as weeks faster than sending the goods by sea.

Who paid for building the Channel Tunnel, which ran billions of pounds over budget?

Private investors and banks: both governments ruled out public money. The debts proved so heavy that the banks later swapped billions in loans for shares to keep Eurotunnel afloat.

In 2024 the flame for which Games was carried from England to France through the Channel Tunnel?

The Paralympic Games: the flame is lit at Stoke Mandeville, the movement's English birthplace, and 24 British torchbearers handed it to 24 French ones halfway through the tunnel.

What became of the Channel Tunnel spoil dumped behind a seawall below the Dover cliffs?

A country park: nearly five million cubic metres of spoil made new land from the sea, opened in 1997 as Samphire Hoe, a name chosen in a public competition.

The passenger building at the Channel Tunnel's French terminal is named after which English novelist?

Charles Dickens gives his name to the French building, and the favour is returned in England, where the terminal building is named after Victor Hugo.

Which body named the tunnel one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in 1994?

Popular Mechanics published the list the following year.

What is pumped through pipes along the Channel Tunnel to carry away the heat of passing trains?

Chilled water: trains pushing through so long a sealed tube heat the air around them, so cooling plants on the English and French coasts feed pipes that run the whole length.

Why is the Channel Tunnel's service tunnel held at higher pressure than the rail tunnels?

To keep smoke out in a fire: the service tunnel doubles as the escape route, so passengers leaving a burning train step through a door into clean air.

Eurostar now leaves from St Pancras, but which London station was its terminus when services began in 1994?

Waterloo: for 13 years trains from Paris arrived at a station whose name recalls Napoleon's final defeat, until the high-speed line into St Pancras opened in 2007.

Roughly how long is the LeShuttle crossing, platform to platform?

35 minutes: each shuttle is about 800 m long with a locomotive at both ends, among the most powerful in Europe, to haul it up the long climb out from under the sea.

Why do Channel Tunnel shuttles loop clockwise in England but anticlockwise in France?

To even out wheel wear on the trains: turning one way at each end means every wheel spends half its time on the outside of a curve, so both sides wear alike.

Where do lorry drivers ride during a Channel Tunnel crossing?

In a club car behind the locomotive: the lorry wagons are open-sided, so instead of staying with their vehicles as motorists do, the drivers ride together in a separate carriage.

Why can LeShuttle trains never run beyond the Channel Tunnel and its two terminals?

They are too big to fit: the wagons are wider and taller than the British or French networks allow, built that size so that coaches and lorries can simply drive aboard.

What was on fire in the Channel Tunnel's first serious blaze, on 18 November 1996?

A lorry on an HGV shuttle: the fire was spotted as the train went in, and it did such damage that freight shuttles could not run normally again for six months.

Why did a burning train carry on into the Channel Tunnel in 1996 instead of stopping?

The rule was to drive on through and fight the fire in a siding at the far end. A fault forced this train to halt 19 km in, and Eurotunnel then changed the rule: stop and evacuate at once.

When Channel crossings are disrupted, lorries bound for France are held in queues on which motorway?

The M20: for years police simply parked the lorries on closed carriageways under Operation Stack, and since 2019 a contraflow called Operation Brock has kept the rest of the road moving.

What stranded 2,000 passengers in the Channel Tunnel overnight in December 2009?

Snow melting inside five Eurostar trains: Eurostar said fine snow had got past the trains' winter shields, then thawed in the warm air of the tunnel and shorted the electrics.

The Channel Tunnel forms a border between the Schengen zone and which other passport-free grouping?

The Common Travel Area joins the UK and Ireland, so passports are checked before boarding, with French officers working on the English side and British ones in France.

Where did the French Red Cross open a migrant centre in 1999, in a warehouse once used to build the tunnel?

Sangatte: riots and mass attempts to rush the terminal fences followed, and France ordered the centre shut in 2002 under a deal in which Britain took in some of its residents.

Which Scandinavian crime series was remade in 2013 with its opening body moved into the Channel Tunnel?

The Bridge: Sky Atlantic and Canal+ remade it as The Tunnel, swapping the original's sea crossing for the tunnel, pairing a British detective with a French one and filming on Eurotunnel's own sites.