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
2008 Channel Tunnel fire tunnel at Folkestone at 00:08 BST and a limited service provided with trains travelling in turn in alternating directions in the one tunnel. By the end of September, two thirds of the north tunnel had reopened. Full service resumed in February 2009 after repairs costing €60 million. This fire was the third to close the tunnel since it opened in 1994, the first being the 1996 Channel Tunnel fire and, in August 2006, the tunnel was closed for several hours after fire broke out on a truck loaded onto a HGV Shuttle. The fire was reported on 11 September 2008,