The reason I made the point about media overkill is that (at least in the UK) we all know that the media is heavily biased against railways and loves to have a dig whenever they can.
As a small shareholder I was regularly updated when the tunnel was being dug. I was expecting the BBC or one other TV media to make documentaries or give reports but there was total silence until something went wrong. The Base Tunnel project (the worlds longest tunnel currently been dug under the alps to short cut the Gotthard Line) must be going well as it is never reported in the media. They certainly seem not to have mentioned the new Lotschberg Base tunnel opening.
At first the British TBM (tunnel boring machine) encounted problems and expected difficult terrain lagging well behind the French machine. All duly reported. But when the British machine accelerated and started to outpace the French machine there was silence. There was silence when the British TMB reached the half-way point well before the French and continued to dig. The silence was broken when the builders ran into financial difficulty. In fairness there was more coverage of the construction of the channel tunnel link but then it did affect London.
Les