Safety
Safety regulations require two locomotives for all passenger trains through the tunnel (Shuttle and Eurostar), one at the front and one at the back, and both must be manned so that the train can be reversed out in case of a blockage. There are also attendants. In the case of the freight vehicle shuttles, the attendants ride in the passenger carriage at the front of the train with the lorry drivers; in the passenger vehicle shuttles, they patrol the train.
Passenger vehicle carriages are sealed off with fireproof doors and are pressurised. These doors are closed once all vehicles are loaded. They include smaller pedestrian doors that may be opened when the train is in motion to move from one carriage to the next but then close automatically.
Eurotunnel has been criticised for failing to implement measures to prevent or extinguish fires in the open framed large goods vehicle carrying wagons; recommendations made by the Fire Brigade Union in 1996 following a fire in the Channel Tunnel, that closed wagons should be used to prevent the spread of fire, were not acted upon.
Read more about this topic: Eurotunnel Shuttle
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“The high sentiments always win in the end, the leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)