The Channel Tunnel - Life on the Inside. Episode 1 - Going with the Flow.

it's march 2019 and the tunnel that runs under the sea between folkestone and england and calais in france is just weeks away from its 25th birthday and days away from the official deadline for brexit look how white those little ones are gorgeous how do i get them there why look at them well they're not like ordinary dogs are they hampered oh it's also the day after crafts the famous dog show yeah there's some money's worth out there so it's a mellow monday morning for staff at the foxton terminal a pause before winds of change blow through the longest undersea tunnel in the world [Music] the white cliffs of dover may soon be a sight missed by channel crosses it's possible that by 1976 there'll be a tunnel link the projected plan is for a rail link [Music] france could soon be 35 minutes and almost 300 million pounds away and a tunnel would rid us of weather worries like this if the tunnel is built and a final decision is unlikely to be taken for another two years high-speed electric trains could vary up to three thousand cars an hour between britain and france why'd it say france oh because that's where that's where it's going the channel tunnel is the only physical link between britain and continental europe and it's 25 years old you're 25 years old that's it [Music] it's older than me [Music] i didn't recognize you there nick what was once a futuristic pipe dream became a real life wonder of the modern world in the early 90s look there's the train after six years of tunnel construction from both ends how much do you reckon it costs to build 20 billion 25 4.65 oh really yeah that's 12 billion today it was 80 more than they thought it was going to cost it's run by an anglo-french company called euro tunnel and since the queen traveled through the tunnel on the 6th of may 1994 more than 400 million people have taken a train under the english channel are we gonna have to get out surely he does feel like the much on the vampire ride you know when it goes up and then it goes down i gradually start to feel a little bit sick that's because i'm really high [Laughter] to mark this quarter century milestone we're going behind the scenes and beneath the seabed for a once in a generation look at the parts of the tunnel we don't normally see to experience the never-ending challenge of running the biggest busiest and wettest train set ever built hello there are we going to be on time okay then i'm gonna get set up tash speed was one month old when the channel tunnel opened now she's one of eurotunnel's newest recruits my stoplight's extinguished my driving's allowed so i'm going to put my direct brake on and put my headlight on which lets everyone on the platform know that i'm ready to park and i'm now okay to release my brake on the train just a few weeks after completing her training in a shuttle simulator tash spends every working day at the controls of the most powerful locomotives in europe taking 800 meter long trains under the seat of france and back again to england three times every shift it does feel really good to be driving as you can feel today as it's wet with slipping a bit underfoot to feel the train's not gripping which is something that's really good to feel because in the simulator you're only simulated what's in front of you so it's good to actually get a feel for how the train moves got a man up there who's checking our lorries as we go in he's called an adf and he's checking that nothing on the train could potentially catch fire cause damage at which point if he thought there was a problem he would call us back and we would reverse back onto the platform today tash is pulling a freight shuttle loaded with 32 trucks and we've got 60 on tbm it weighs 2 500 tons and it's about to go down an extremely slippery slope going into the tunnel you get a speed of 60 but the gradient's so steep that the train could run away with itself so it's important to stay under the speed limit so what we're doing now is monitoring the speed that's now gotten up to 100 so i can now ask for more traction i'm just making sure the train gets up to top speed the first time i drove on my own through the tunnel i could say is probably one of the scariest things i've ever done in my life every noise sounds like the train is broken and actually they're quite substandard noises like a phone ringing and you think oh no what is it what's happened but at the end of the day the more time you spend down here the same with anything it you get used to the noises you get used to the bumps of the train the movement of the train and movement of the tunnel and how how it works and then you can start to recognize actually real faults not what i perceive to be a fault like a phone ringing [Music] a scary sensation that can affect train drivers in tunnels is something called segment flicker the relentless waves of lines and lights could hypnotize the driver so the windows of the shuttle cabs were designed to restrict the view but even if tash did become entranced the train would be protected by the dead man's pedal this has to be reset every minute and if it isn't reset within three seconds the emergency brake would come on the brake gauge would drop to zero and the train would do an emergency stop because in theory it thinks that the driver something's happened to the driver so you have to get used to tapping your foot and remembering to do it otherwise you get a sharp shock from the back command buzzer this is just the first of six toe tapping trips for tash today but at eurotunnel no one calls it a trip or even a journey every train is on a mission and every mission needs a mission control [Music] all the trains started with number seven are the hgv trains all the ones starting with the six hours of tourist train the passengers one starting with a nine this one is a eurostar and also we will have sometimes some freight train which are uh we would start with the fall this is eurotunnel's rail control center at folkestone most of the staff on shift today are french like chloe bitto and this big beautiful wall shows the whole channel tunnel system it's a big representation and we can see roughly where all the trains are it's really a giant figure of eight train set with a clockwise loop in the uk and an anti-clockwise loop in france and two 31-mile railway tunnels in between so on the top one is the north tunnel the one will run from foxton to cali and on the south one south tunnel the one who run from cali to foxton it's the busiest railway system in the world running up to 400 trains a day on its 62 miles of track most of those trains are euro tunnel freight shuttles loaded with trucks and euro tunnel passenger shuttles loaded with people [Music] i didn't know there wasn't upstairs the passenger shuttles have double decks at the back for low vehicles and single decks at the front for high vehicles and all euro tunnel shuttles are in a perpetual loop from folkestone to calais and back again but other trains use eurotunnel's tunnel too there are freight trains loaded with goods and high-speed eurostars that zip between london and paris and other cities on the european mainland so while passengers sit in vehicles inside the euro tunnel shuttles it's foot passengers only on the eurostars which shoots straight through at 160 kilometers an hour after 35 minutes tash is back in the living daylights and it's almost first freight shuttle mission accomplished all she has to do now is stop the train in exactly the right place on the platform so the trucks can drive off and straight up the routes to the motorway the good news is that if you get it wrong you only stop twice on this one i might be stopping a bit short yeah hence why they call me two-stop tash [Music] there we go that'd be quite a sharp break there sorry okay that's better got blue flashing light got buses hello two stopping again that's f9 blue flashing light and you got two buses thank you [Music] i'd like to have people stand on the platform and laugh at me before because of my true stop him i don't mind now i'll just set the train up for the next mission and my shift will unload all the passengers the buses will take them back to their lorries they'll drive off and they'll just literally drive around there and they're in france don't forget to put your watches forward one hour and to drive on the right okay driving on the right driving on the right [Music] euro tunnel shuttles have to unload and reload in 26 minutes this keeps a continuous flow of trains back and forth through the north and south tunnels but there's a third tunnel here where flow is even more important the service tunnel runs between the rail tunnels and if there's no flow here there can be no trains running in the other two [Music] the service tunnel needs airflow from big powerful fans on both sides of the channel at songgat near calais there are two fans beside the giant chasm where the french started their side of the tunnel back in 1988. senior technician jose cape has worked here for 27 years maintaining the ultimate wind tunnel in these tubes we have 70 cubic meters per second of air in the service channel all the day all the hour all the years that's enough air to fill 60 shipping containers every minute the fans are the lungs of the channel tunnel there are four in the normal ventilation system or nvs two at songgat and two more on the other side of the channel inside the white cliffs of dover at any time one french fan and one english fan sends high pressure air into the service tunnel from both ends this creates a fresh air zone for passengers and crew to escape to in an emergency but eventually a fan spinning at more than 1400 revolutions a minute will need some tlc so at songgat it's time for the seven year overhaul from the eurotunnel spin doctors [Music] here we are in the nvs block where we send the airflow in the service channel we will remove the funds and we will remove the motor it's a very big job but it's very important to do it first senior technician gary dixon needs to take control of the fans from the rail control center or rcc his team now has exactly eight hours to get the work done before the rcc takes back control next gary makes sure both songgat fans are switched off and stay off using a combination of old-school hardware and even older school software these fans were installed when the tunnel was being built so the technology here is the stuff of legend and it's refusing to give up it was put in when the fans were put in in the late 80s so she's getting old now but she does what she needs to do with both fans off at this end all the air in the service tunnel is coming from one fan in england and the team can get to work [Music] mike heath installed the fans here 30 years ago so he knows what a noisy job this can be [Music] and why it gets even noisier every time a train goes past in the tunnels 50 meters below air pressure that's coming up from the tunnel we get a small amount of leakage and that leakage creates some noise as the air passes through the seals just like an organ she's moving with the blades removed it's time to take out the heart of the fans here's why the impeller it'll be stripped cleaned inspected overhauled fully all new components and reassembled now a week of work lies ahead it'll take a team of specialist engineers and motor technicians to turn this big old fan of the 80s around and bring it up to scratch for 2019. i'm hopefully good for another seven years back at the foxton terminal there are some special passengers with some big fans of their own they're on their way back from world famous dog show crufts and feeling cocker hoot i got a second place with my orange mail a third place with my champion and with one of our gordon setters we got second in veteran class so we done very well yeah we are very happy [Music] now it's time for all these hounds to dash under the channel on the next leg of their journey home and up in the terminal control center it's tanya pettit and alison faire's job to manage the flow of cars to the trains as soon as they can get a break from watching the dogs that's a winner for these two dog fanatics this is the perfect way to pass the time when the traffic's flowing freely on the uk side of the tunnel it's just ticking over quite nicely um everything's more or less on time and everything's flowing through the system which that's a nice day for us because there's no pressure but that can change as quick as anything uh romeo two alpha i've got another low vehicle coming up 16 if we can put him through please it may be calm here but there are two sides to every tunnel and things are not so relaxed in calais strikes by french customs officers and a sudden urge to stockpile in the days before the original march deadline for brexit are causing massive lorry jams on all roads to the tunnel a lot of the trains are coming in partially loaded from france because we just can't get the vehicles onto the trains you know so we're trying to make the time up on this side so we can get the train back on time in france [Music] so the last thing they need now is a freight shuttle that's gone loco once you get it unchalked just give us a shout and we'll see well hopefully better put it straight on to another train we've got a train on the platform that um has a technical problem okay that's already fully loaded so it's been declared that it's not leaving the platform so we need to get the traffic off the train back around through the system and back onto another train so we can depart it's time for something called a recirculation getting all the trucks to drive off the broken down shuttle that they've just driven onto up the off-ramp back around to the down ramps and onto a platform where the next empty train is waiting 30 trucks 33 coming off that trail 33 33 trucks coming off the train they'll go around hopefully we can get them round in time to go straight into another train [Music] with 25 years experience eurotunnel staff are re-circulation choreographers excellence [Music] as they say in france oops we've had a train on b8 that we're recirculating so we asked the train on b7 not to unload but it looks like they haven't paid full attention to the request the danger is lorries that have just arrived in england could get themselves mixed up with the recirculating lorries heading to france so we've now got vehicles from ba and b7 coming off the train at the same time which could mean some of the vehicles from b7 could end up recirculated going back to france when they've literally just come from france although lorry drivers are renowned for their patience there is a danger that some might be mildly miffed at finding themselves heading back to france minutes after arriving in england so the traffic's now coming around dispatching ob1 allocation we're going to swing it around and up the platform back round again and then put it back on the next train [Music] so they've all been recirculated all on another train ready to head off again fingers crossed the recirculation has worked all the lorries that wanted to go to france are going to france and all the new arrivals in the uk are off to the m20 first research tom and tanya and new boy tom jordan can relax it's perfect doing lap of honor around the tcc next time he's on his own [Music] back in france it's a week since mike and gary's team removed the giant fan from the euro tunnel plant at songgat with the fan blades and the impeller back in place its first fan mission completed at the french end clamp it on the ring the other side but this is the easy part because next stop for the channel tunnel fanboys is on much more challenging english soil samphire hoe a 30 hectare nature reserve built from rock bored out of the seabed to make way for the tunnel this is where the trains go under the sea and the ventilation system is inside the white cliffs of dover so unlike sungat where the horizontal fans are easy to reach the fans here are vertical and 18 meters down a shaft it takes two days to lift every component to the surface this one ton rotor is the heaviest one slip up here and something nasty will really hit the fan [Music] on the floor we're happy any lift is exactly the same uh all the time it's um it's in lifting operations yeah we're parting them out it's on the floor we're happy and we're ready to do the bearing change scary part over jose has come to take a closer look at the black hole where the fan used to be this hole is the shaft normally this motor is air and the motor takes the air by this these tubes take the air outside the atmospheric air and sand it in this hole and that atmospheric air the stuff you and i breathe all the time leaves its mark after seven years of constant flow all the road traffic yes our traffic the desert the fine finest particles but what takes seven years to make dirty can be cleaned up in hours [Music] now the challenge is to extend the life of these revolutionary pieces of tunnel machinery everything's got to be just right you don't want to have to come back to it for at least another five to seven years every year 12 billion pounds worth of fruit veg comes to the euro tunnel so can i i don't want to get too much into brexit but isn't it isn't this isn't the whole brexit thing going to just make things really difficult to realize of course yeah so we've got to grow our own vegetables yeah that's what i've gone back to watertime samba that's what we all want [Laughter] it's the 28th of march and tv radio and newspaper journalists have blown into calais to see how eurotunnel plans to keep everything flowing after brexit so my name's john keith i'm director of public affairs for eurotunnel my name is john keith that's kwfe josue director of zafar public original today the company is showing how 13 million pounds has been spent getting ready for a hard brexit or a no deal having sued the uk government over the handling of extra freight contracts the pressure's on to show that the tunnel is ready for whatever brexit brings [Music] this is built for worst case scenarios we are ready for brexit today today is all about showing everybody what new infrastructure we've got and how that will help the traffic to keep flowing in the worst case of a no deal brexit whenever that might happen borders elsewhere around the world tend to be very paper based and very manual this is a fantastic opportunity to bring the border into the 21st century the plan relies on technology with number plate recognition and document scanners capturing information on every truck we'll take that scan here at the security controls whilst they're already stopped so doing the scan won't add any time into the process we're checking for the presence of illegal people on board the trucks and at the same time while the driver is stationary as we carry out those controls we will scan the customs documents and send them both to the export and to the importing countries with documents uploaded to the authorities on both sides of the channel the trucks are free to board their shuttles and trucks coming from the uk have a simple choice if they get a green light here they go on the green lane straight through to the motorway if they get an orange light here it means they follow the orange lane into the customs and ministry for agriculture selection zone in theory it's 13 million pounds well spent to keep things flowing in practice it might be 13 million pounds down the tubes this is the wonderful thing about brexit we've built all of this stuff that we don't need and we won't need it until we have a hard brexit or until we have a no deal if we have a deal this is pointless um but for a business like ours we just couldn't take the risk that we wouldn't need it the press stays gone well john's got his message out and no journalists were harmed in the making of this film i think between us we can say that journalists are not the most disciplined group of people in the world and so getting through this without anything going wrong has been a real success story back in england the overhaul of the ventilation fan is almost complete now it's time to put the impeller the guide vane and the rotor back in place and slide the entire mechanism back over the hole to the tunnel below and just in time because the second fan here has suffered a sudden electrical fault and won't restart with all the air coming from one fan in france it's crucial to get the reconditioned fan back up and running and jose is waiting patiently in the service tunnel below trying to catch the wind being invisible wind doesn't make great telly so we asked him to bring a whirly gig to work today to show how strong the airflow gets when the fans are running we've lost the control voltage so it's a good job we've got a backup fan a standby fan and it's back online just in time [Music] ah yes good perfect jose's whirly gig is at top speed and 40 meters overhead mike's slightly more high-tech equipment tells him the refurbished fan is spinning just as he hoped so jose can head back to france with the trains running and the fans spinning yes we have a 50 kilometer to uh and air flowing freely from both sides of the english channel but at the middle point uh we have a fresh air was come from france and it's better for me [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021