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The Chunnel: The Amazing Story of the Undersea Crossing of the English Channel
Provides a definitive account of the building of the Channel Tunnel that links England and France under the English Channel, detailing the engineering accomplishments, financial intrigues, and construction that created a triumph of human technological ingenuity. 15,000 first printing.
- GenresHistoryEngineeringTrains
404 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 7, 2020
Fetherston eagerly delves into the immense problems of an immense project. A bridge or a tunnel under the English Channel had been long imagined. But meshing French and British mentalities, proved nearly as difficult as finding the gargantuan financing required. The author excels at revealing the constant dramas that threatened the project, particularly the tension between contractors and a shaky bi-national management team. Enormous entry chambers needed to be dug under the scenic white cliffs of Dover, without ruining tourism and the views. First approved in the Thatcher era, the project had to be privately funded, although on the French side the entanglement of government and big business meant but lip service to the "private" character of the TransManche-Link. Meanwhile, xenophobic Brits imagined rabid foxes trotting through to Britain, as ferry interests lobbied against their big rival. The French national railroad SNCF maneuvered behind the scenes to get its new signal system adopted, a costly decision, which illustrates just one dimension of the interplay between construction, finance, management and national politics.
Although finance can easily bore the civilian, Fetherston narrates a story of roller-coaster negotiations with banks which would make loans based on timelines and profit projections. Since nobody really knew how the tunneling would go, schedules were fictions at best, and every month of delay would gobble potential profit. Scientists could insert probes that were not guaranteed to drive straight down, in order to test the layers of seabed beneath the choppy surface of the Dover Straits. Geology offered some advantages there; the Weald-Artois anticline for most of the British side had laid down a layer called the Lower Chalk with a high clay content. The clay made this chalk marl water resistant and relatively easy to cut. But heaving, folding and erosion over millions of years had distorted the layer. So engineers had to plan a path with curves to route the passage through the best underwater terrain.
The logistics were formidable and engineers from around the world participated in the many phases of work. A work tunnel had to be built to allow work on the two route tunnels. The French rallied political support for the project by promising to hire unemployed workers in the distressed Nord-Pas de Calais region. This meant extensive training programs and technically led constructions methods, that involved problem solving by elite graduates of France's engineering schools. The French side did not benefit from the favorable chalk marl where the British were tunneling. So, the French designed rings to be built and sealed on site, after alignment, gaskets and grout were finished.
On the British side, experienced tunnelers dug and built behind the tunnel-boring machine. They assembled the tunnel rings with a keystone piece of a circle which then was forced into the clay to seal and embed. These skilled miners worked with air spades and mining tools, deployed according to customs honed in projects worldwide. But the work traditions spawned many little kingdoms of skill, governed by elaborate union work rules.
The story of the planning of this project is funny and frightening, as warring forces pressed for speed and then for modifications that slowed things down, and safety measures that propelled costs into the stratosphere. For example, debate and redesign mandates dogged the train cars themselves. They were meant to resist fire for 30 minutes, because the steel would melt and wedge a solid block in the tunnel if allowed to burn for long. But this meant using alloys that were space shuttle level strong, and made the cars 50% heavier. This then called for bigger locomotives, which affected the mandated speeds of 160 km that the link was supposed to achieve. A controversy over the width of fire doors between cars, led to millions of cost overages.
Fetherston makes this a fun read, although it is difficult to keep track of the shifting roster of top managers, and the intricate negotiations with a very large consortium of banks. Anyone who has sped through the tunnel, avoiding the notorious stomach-churning waves of the Channel passage,ought to appreciate the crazy up and downs of the project which seemingly only a miracle allowed to come to fruition.
Although finance can easily bore the civilian, Fetherston narrates a story of roller-coaster negotiations with banks which would make loans based on timelines and profit projections. Since nobody really knew how the tunneling would go, schedules were fictions at best, and every month of delay would gobble potential profit. Scientists could insert probes that were not guaranteed to drive straight down, in order to test the layers of seabed beneath the choppy surface of the Dover Straits. Geology offered some advantages there; the Weald-Artois anticline for most of the British side had laid down a layer called the Lower Chalk with a high clay content. The clay made this chalk marl water resistant and relatively easy to cut. But heaving, folding and erosion over millions of years had distorted the layer. So engineers had to plan a path with curves to route the passage through the best underwater terrain.
The logistics were formidable and engineers from around the world participated in the many phases of work. A work tunnel had to be built to allow work on the two route tunnels. The French rallied political support for the project by promising to hire unemployed workers in the distressed Nord-Pas de Calais region. This meant extensive training programs and technically led constructions methods, that involved problem solving by elite graduates of France's engineering schools. The French side did not benefit from the favorable chalk marl where the British were tunneling. So, the French designed rings to be built and sealed on site, after alignment, gaskets and grout were finished.
On the British side, experienced tunnelers dug and built behind the tunnel-boring machine. They assembled the tunnel rings with a keystone piece of a circle which then was forced into the clay to seal and embed. These skilled miners worked with air spades and mining tools, deployed according to customs honed in projects worldwide. But the work traditions spawned many little kingdoms of skill, governed by elaborate union work rules.
The story of the planning of this project is funny and frightening, as warring forces pressed for speed and then for modifications that slowed things down, and safety measures that propelled costs into the stratosphere. For example, debate and redesign mandates dogged the train cars themselves. They were meant to resist fire for 30 minutes, because the steel would melt and wedge a solid block in the tunnel if allowed to burn for long. But this meant using alloys that were space shuttle level strong, and made the cars 50% heavier. This then called for bigger locomotives, which affected the mandated speeds of 160 km that the link was supposed to achieve. A controversy over the width of fire doors between cars, led to millions of cost overages.
Fetherston makes this a fun read, although it is difficult to keep track of the shifting roster of top managers, and the intricate negotiations with a very large consortium of banks. Anyone who has sped through the tunnel, avoiding the notorious stomach-churning waves of the Channel passage,ought to appreciate the crazy up and downs of the project which seemingly only a miracle allowed to come to fruition.
October 7, 2019
If you are looking for examples of high-powered negotiations or extreme budgets, this is the book for you. I was not. I was looking for how an incredible underwater railroad tunnel was built. Certainly there was some information on that, but most of the content focused on political and financial challenges of this project. By no means am I diminishing these very real conflicts and troubles and the dominance they took in accomplishing the physical feat. It was more like—I get it, the British and the French don’t get along; this is an expensive project. Definitely began to skim around page 200.
So as far as a building project book goes, this was a disappointment. I learned just enough to admire immensely the crew who carried out the project, but I wish I knew more about the process and the troubleshooting.
So as far as a building project book goes, this was a disappointment. I learned just enough to admire immensely the crew who carried out the project, but I wish I knew more about the process and the troubleshooting.
April 15, 2018
I'm an engineer, and I read this book thinking it would be about the engineering of the chunnel, or at least the engineering would be a significant part of it. I would say the engineering was all of 25% of this book. The first part of the book was the history of all the different ideas and attempts to cross the English Channel. I thought that was interesting. However the vast majority of this book is about the venture that finally led to the tunnel be built, and when I say venture, I mean essentially the contract and management of it. It involved so many people I could not remember who was who, and the vast majority of these people seemed to fight with each other all the time. Basically it was the contractors building the tunnel versus the owners (which was partially the contractors). There seemed to be constant turnover with people involved because none of them got along. If you want a book about business negotiations and contracts, you may like this book. If you want a book about the technical parts of the English Channel Tunnel, this is probably not the book for you.
December 4, 2009
The first underwater tunnel was 900 meters long and was dug under the Euphrates at Babylon in 2180 BCE. The second underwater passage was 365 meters and was finished in 1843, more than 4000 years later under the Thames. Chunnel by Drew Featherston describes the history of underwater tunnels noting that there have been numerous tunnels excavated to deliver water, but few built to traverse under the water. The tunnel recently completed under the English Channel was dug simultaneously from both the British and French sides. As they neared each other, tension mounted for it was crucial their meeting point be almost exact. They could not afford to be as much as a meter out of alignment. They had to take hundreds of sightings to measure the angles and sides of the many-sided polygon that provide the reference points. to describe a straight line. In a tunnel that's not possible so special techniques had to be developed. A beam of light could not be used because the light is refracted by the differences in air temperature and the tunnel was not straight; it turned and curved up and down to follow the good layer of rock. One reason the tunnel was not built for cars was the hypnotic effect light in a tunnel can have on some drivers. In long Alpine tunnels police motorcyclists remain ready to help those who have stopped in panic from the sensation that the walls are moving in on them. " they have to peel a driver's rigid fingers off the wheel."
British engineering was the antithesis of the French cult of the "" The British engineer was an acknowledged master of finding practical solutions to most any problem — except how to hoist himself to the social plane that his skills merited. " English upper crust was roundly technophobic, driven by a profound nostalgia for a bucolic Britain that had disappeared from the earth." The two countries had vastly differing organizational structures, too. Besides the cultural differences, the banks, personalities, and governments, all dictated various styles at one point or another. (And remember, the Chunnel was privately financed.) Research conducted by one of the companies on hundreds of major projects revealed a set of seventeen metaregles or general principles. They discovered that the delegation of broad powers to the project director was essential. The director could summon corporate resources but had to have substantial independence. They were to be ' freed from the mechanistic procedures of Frederick Taylor whose theories the report concluded led to rampant bureaucratization. The overall philosophy that should be adopted was " matter how large the project, it must never crush individuals."
Unfortunately, that' what the Chunnel project began to do. One reason was the interlocking structure of all the competing organizations. The contracts reveals the basic flaws. Much like a marriage that has a contract which is itself a predictor of failure, not a way to organize love. Soon the lawyers became too important. As one executive put it, " the overall policy is to manage by lawyers rather than managers. . . . They have opinions; it's their job. But they are not to decide what is to be done. . . . The project has created a great deal of tension between the individuals, because it's not geared to solving problems. It's geared to placing blame."
Procedures were created by managers for every conceivable possibility. Despite evidence that many of the tunnel workers could not read, the procedures continued to be created. " It came to a point, I think, where everyone became punch-drunk with it, certainly in regards to things like writing procedures. There were procedures for everything. There were people being employed just to write procedures. The quality of the procedure — whether it was necessary, whether the guys understood it — didn't matter as long as they signed for it."
British engineering was the antithesis of the French cult of the "" The British engineer was an acknowledged master of finding practical solutions to most any problem — except how to hoist himself to the social plane that his skills merited. " English upper crust was roundly technophobic, driven by a profound nostalgia for a bucolic Britain that had disappeared from the earth." The two countries had vastly differing organizational structures, too. Besides the cultural differences, the banks, personalities, and governments, all dictated various styles at one point or another. (And remember, the Chunnel was privately financed.) Research conducted by one of the companies on hundreds of major projects revealed a set of seventeen metaregles or general principles. They discovered that the delegation of broad powers to the project director was essential. The director could summon corporate resources but had to have substantial independence. They were to be ' freed from the mechanistic procedures of Frederick Taylor whose theories the report concluded led to rampant bureaucratization. The overall philosophy that should be adopted was " matter how large the project, it must never crush individuals."
Unfortunately, that' what the Chunnel project began to do. One reason was the interlocking structure of all the competing organizations. The contracts reveals the basic flaws. Much like a marriage that has a contract which is itself a predictor of failure, not a way to organize love. Soon the lawyers became too important. As one executive put it, " the overall policy is to manage by lawyers rather than managers. . . . They have opinions; it's their job. But they are not to decide what is to be done. . . . The project has created a great deal of tension between the individuals, because it's not geared to solving problems. It's geared to placing blame."
Procedures were created by managers for every conceivable possibility. Despite evidence that many of the tunnel workers could not read, the procedures continued to be created. " It came to a point, I think, where everyone became punch-drunk with it, certainly in regards to things like writing procedures. There were procedures for everything. There were people being employed just to write procedures. The quality of the procedure — whether it was necessary, whether the guys understood it — didn't matter as long as they signed for it."
April 6, 2013
This book frustrated me to no end. I've always been curious about the complete story behind the building of the Channel Tunnel so buying this book was a no brainer. However, I was disappointed with it. The author perhaps spends a little too much time on the bureaucratic mess that was Eurotunnel and TML. There were so many people involved with building this tunnel that the author felt it necessary to include them all in the book. I couldn't keep anything straight. There were so many acronyms and opposing parties I felt like I was reading Anthony Beevor's account of the Spanish Civil War - so many acronyms they all just blend together to the point where you're completely lost and just don't care. I just didn't find the tussles over contracts, treaties, promises, share offerings, financing, etc that interesting and I struggled to get through this book. You can't accuse Drew of not being thorough. There are nuggets of interestingness in the book but overall, I would have preferred a book that focused on one or two 'characters' to drive a narrative of the construction of the tunnel. This just feels too much like an engineering textbook to interest me. That said, my one takeaway from this book is that it's amazing the damn tunnel was ever actually built judging by all the behind the scenes drama that took place before and during construction. The Chunnel is an amazing engineering achievement and an amazing human achievement.
June 20, 2016
This book provides an indepth discussion of the general technical issues with the tunnel, but its not an in-depth detailed discussion. This will still appeal to an engineer or technically minded reader. The text also provides an overview of the general political, business and project management aspects. Overall a very good overview of a very complex project.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews