Operation
The carriages used for the shuttle have a larger loading gauge than either British or French railways; consequently they cannot travel outside the tunnel and the two terminals at Coquelles and Folkestone. Each terminal is provided with a loop of track. After a train comes out of the tunnel, it goes round the loop and stops at the unloading / loading platform. It is then unloaded, and re-loaded with a new set of vehicles. It then starts the return journey through the tunnel.
The loop at Folkestone is clockwise, while the loop at Coquelles is anti-clockwise. This evens the wear on the wheels of the shuttle locomotives and vehicles, as each set (left or right) spends only half the time at the outer edge of the line.
Read more about this topic: Eurotunnel Shuttle
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)