Coming out of the Chunnel

CALAIS, France--For many Americans, the idea of taking the train from England to France, or vice versa, means one thing: the Eurostar. But actually, Eurostar is just one customer of a much larger operation: the Eurotunnel, otherwise known as the Chunnel.

Since the 31-mile-long tunnel opened in 1994, more than 265 million passengers, and more than 53 million vehicles--including 16 million heavy goods vehicles--have traveled across its tracks.

Each day, 50 Eurostar trains take passengers between London and either Paris or Brussels, but that's just a fraction of the 450 trains a day that pass through the tunnel carrying trucks, containers, cars, buses, and more. And because it takes trains just 35 minutes to go between the Continent and England, the tunnel has become serious competition for the ferries that used to dominate such transportation.

While the Eurostar is by far the most well-known customer of the Eurotunnel, many companies are customers of the Paris-based organization that runs the tunnel. And it also runs its own trains, selling space to passenger cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicles.

Here, we see one of Eurotunnel's own locomotives emerging from the tunnel, a view that is not available to the public. CNET got a special look behind the scenes as part of Road Trip 2011.

• CNET Road Trip 2011

June 30, 2011 4:00 AM PDT

Photo by: Daniel Terdiman/CNET

| Caption by: Daniel Terdiman