Eurotunnel unveils Chunnel wagons
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• On Monday (7 October) Eurotunnel will reveal the final design for the rail wagons that will carry trucks through the Channel Tunnel.
The company has promised that the wagons will be able to handle trucks up to 44 tonnes.
The design is expected to follow the open-sided prototype unveiled by Eurotunnel last autumn (CM 8-14 Nov 1990).
But the prototypes have been criticised by a leading safety pressure group.
The Italian-built lattice-sided wagon is a "serious fire risk", claims the British Safety Council The rail transporter is considerably lighter than an enclosed wagon, but its open sides could cause a fire to sweep along the entire shuttle and tunnel, warns the council.
However, it now looks as if they have been given the goahead by the Anglo-French governmental body which has the final say on safety. Eurotunnel said at the time of the launch that it was designing a system for the 21st Century and did not want to return to the drawing board to come up with a new wagon design.
Eurotunnel will also announce as part of its half-year financial results the latest freight traffic forecast for its first complete year of business.
It could be up on last year's estimates which predicted that the Chunnel would carry nine million tonnes out of a total market of 46 million tonnes of unitised freight crossing to France in 1993-94.
In the Chunnel's first two years of operation, three freight shuttles, each carrying 28 trucks, will depart every hour during peak periods.
Eurotunnel still maintains that rates will be "competitive with the ferries".
Livestock will be banned from the Chunnel. A policy on hazardous goods has yet to be decided.