Main Rail Line of Channel Tunnel Linked
French and British workers digging the undersea Channel Tunnel exchanged helmets and champagne toasts Wednesday after cutting through the last inches of rock to link up the main rail passage.
The meeting marked an important milestone in the world’s largest engineering project. When finished in 1993, the so-called Chunnel will let high-speed trains travel between London and Paris in 3 1/2 hours.
The linkup of the northbound Paris-to-London tunnel lacked the historical drama of the connection last fall in the smaller maintenance tunnel serving the two main passages. That juncture gave Britain its first land bridge with mainland Europe since the last Ice Age 8,000 years ago.
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