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New St. Clair Tunnel

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1993–1995, Hatch Associates, and Mott MacDonald
  • (Photograph by Dustin Tiemeyer)

In 1995 the new St. Clair Tunnel was dedicated, replacing the one opened in 1891. It carries the Grand Trunk and the Canadian National Railroads under the St. Clair River between Port Huron and Sarnia. It is North America's largest international underwater rail tunnel and is the same length as the earlier tunnel. To excavate the tunnel under the river, a consortium from the U.S., Canada, and Europe employed large-bore technology perfected in digging the Chunnel between Great Britain and France. The large diameter, three-story-tall boring machine, named the Excalibore, was built by Lovt Tunnel Equipment of Etobicoke, Ontario. The new tunnel runs parallel to the 1891 tunnel and is nine feet larger in diameter. Linking eastern and central Canada with Chicago, the new tunnel can accommodate stacked intermodal containers and auto-parts boxcars. Some 275,000 freight cars travel through the tunnel annually.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Kathryn Bishop Eckert
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Data

What's Nearby

First St. Clair Tunnel
John J. Jenkinson House
The Castle (John W. Thomson [Thompson] House)
Davidson House Bed-and-Breakfast (Wilbur F. and Margaretta Turner Davidson House)
St. Joseph's Catholic Church

Citation

Kathryn Bishop Eckert, "New St. Clair Tunnel", [Port Huron, Michigan], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MI-01-SC14.1.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Michigan

Buildings of Michigan, Kathryn Bishop Eckert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 351-352.

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