Channel Tunnel The project was abandoned in May 1882, owing to British political and press campaigns asserting that a tunnel would compromise Britain's national defences. These early works were encountered more than a century later during the TML project. A 1907 film, "Tunnelling the English Channel" by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès, depicts King Edward VII and President Armand Fallières dreaming of building a tunnel under the English Channel. In 1919, during the Paris Peace Conference, the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, repeatedly brought up the idea of a Channel tunnel as a way of reassuring France about British willingness to defend
Alderton Tunnel Alderton Tunnel The Alderton Tunnel sits on the South Wales Main Line in England, on a stretch of line between Swindon and Bristol Parkway. The tunnel, which is 506 yards long, was opened on 1 January 1903 along with the line between and , that being the first section of the South Wales & Bristol Direct Line of the Great Western Railway. Building of the tunnel commenced at least two years before 1903, as the rise in railway workers boarding in Alderton village can be seen in the 1901 Census. As part of the modernisation of the Great Western main