Why Railway Tunnels Are Marvels of Engineering
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What do you consider a marvel of engineering? Famous buildings, perhaps even bridges. Well, railways tunnels are also marvels of engineering.
Why? Because they represent mankind's determination not to give up in the face of obstacles. Indeed, tunnels are created to overcome geographical obstacles such as a hill.
They come from a decision to neither circumvent or give up but instead to go through the hill. In that sense, the tunnel is the epitome of man’s determination to overcome whatever nature throws at us.
It must also be added that tunnels are not easy to build. There are a few techniques that can be used such as explosives to blast out chunks of rocks and earth, raw manpower to hack all the way through, or specially designed machines like tunnel boring machines.
These are all fascinating techniques that require advanced hardware. But it's not just these techniques that make tunnel building a fascinating field.
There is also the amount of careful planning and information gathering that needs to take place in order to even begin thinking of building a tunnel. What is all this work and how does it get done? We answer these questions and more in our video.