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
Severn Tunnel Severn between Sharpness and Lydney opened to traffic during 1879. On 22 October 1884 laying the double tracks in the tunnel started. On 18 April 1885, the final brick was placed in the tunnel's lining. The tunnel was horse shoe-shaped in cross-section with a concave floor, its height was 6.1 meters above the rails with a maximum width of 7.9 meters. An enclosed 533mm high drainage channel, in the form of an upturned semi-circular tunnel, is built onto the tunnel invert, 1.4 meters below the rails. Around 76.4 million bricks were used in the tunnel's construction. The brickwork is between