St. Clair Tunnel
| St. Clair Tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Entry of an electric train into the first St. Clair tunnel
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| Official name | Paul M. Tellier Tunnel (second tunnel) | |||
| use | Railway tunnel | |||
| place | St. Clair River | |||
| length | 1836 m (first tunnel) 1868 m (second tunnel) |
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| construction | ||||
| completion | 1891 (first tunnel) 1994 (second tunnel) |
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| business | ||||
| operator | Canadian National Railway | |||
| closure | 1994 (first tunnel) | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| Sarnia | 42 ° 57 ′ 31 ″ N , 82 ° 24 ′ 37 ″ W. | |||
| Port Huron | 42 ° 57 ′ 37 " N , 82 ° 25 ′ 58" W. | |||
Map with all coordinates: A former and a second operating single-track railway tunnel between Sarnia , Ontario, and Port Huron , Michigan, on the Toronto - Chicago railway line are referred to as St. Clair Tunnels . They run under the St. Clair River , which forms the border between Canada and the United States.
First tunnel (1891–1994)
The first St. Clair Tunnel was opened in 1891 by a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR). Before the tunnel was built, GTR was forced to use ferries to transport the trains across the river. The tunnel designed by Joseph Hobson was considered a miracle of engineering. The structure, constructed using shield driving , was 1,836 meters long, the tunnel tube had a diameter of 6.05 meters.
In the first years of operation, trains were transported through the tunnel with steam locomotives. Concerns about the dangers of steam operation led to the electrification of the tunnel with 3300 volts 25 Hertz , so that electrical operation could begin on May 17, 1908.
In 1923, the GTR was nationalized by the Canadian federal government and integrated into the Canadian National Railway (CN). The electric locomotives were scrapped in 1959. Since then, the trains have been transported by diesel locomotives, which is tolerable for the air quality in the relatively short tunnel.
After the Second World War, freight wagons were put into operation in North America that required a larger clearance profile and could not drive through the St. Clair Tunnel. Tall boxcars , certain auto transport wagons , double-deck container wagons and large tank wagons had to be transported across the St. Clair River by rail ferries.
In April 1993, the St. Clair Tunnel was granted National Historic Landmark status.
Second tunnel (from 1994)
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The North American Free Trade Agreement suggested a sharp increase in freight traffic in the early 1990s. In 1993, the CN began building the new and larger tunnel next to the existing tunnel. The new 1868 meter long tunnel with a diameter of 8.4 meters was opened in 1994. Tunnel 1 and the railway ferry were then decommissioned. Since 2004, the new tunnel has been named after the former director of the CN Paul M. Tellier, who initiated the construction of the second tunnel.
swell
- Charles K. Hyde: The St. Clair Tunnel: A Triumph of Canadian Engineering. (archived in JSTOR ) In: IA. The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology Vol. 21 No. 1. Society for Industrial Archeology, 1995, pp. 47-56 , accessed on July 1, 2016 (English).
- Joseph Nathan Kane, Steven Anzovin, Janet Podell: Famous first facts: a record of first happenings, discoveries, and inventions in American history . 5th edition. The HW Wilson Company, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8242-0930-3 (English).
credentials
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Michigan. National Park Service , accessed August 16, 2019.