Civil engineering work started as far back as 2002, although tunneling did not commence until 2016 and is expected to last 10 years. Ben Jones is a freelance railway and travel writer, senior correspondent at The Railway Magazine and regular contributor to numerous other railway publications in the UK. With the inauguration of the Ceneri base tunnel, the finishing touches are being put on the most colossal infrastructure project in recent Swiss history. Opened between 1848 and 1854, the current mountain railway was the first to traverse the Alps and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. When opened in 1882, the Gotthard Tunnel was the longest tunnel in the world. ... 2 hours ago. A winged baby, semi-naked dancers and a man with a bird’s nest on his head…[is] how Switzerland decided to mark opening of world’s longest rail tunnel.” TruNews.com provides more detail : "The Gotthard Base Tunnel cuts 40 minutes from the journey between Zurich or Basel and Milan, ensuring rail remains the mode of choice between Zurich and Italy," Mark Smith, a rail travel expert better known as "The Man in Seat 61," told CNN earlier this year. GBT is part of a wider project, officially known as Neue Eisenbahn Alpentransversale or New Trans-Alpine Railways, to provide flatter, high capacity rail links between Northern Europe and Italy. Neighboring Austria also finds itself in a strategic location between Europe's industrial giants and has embarked on a similarly ambitious program of tunnel building to liberate its Alpine valleys from heavy freight traffic. The museum is located in a 1834 building which used to … The situation is more complicated in southern Germany, where there have been considerable delays in the project to widen the Rhine Valley stretch to four tracks. Work on the Gotthard Base Tunnel was completed in 2016. After voters accepted it with a 63.6% majority in 1992, the project simply proceeded without further ado. Nov 13, 2003 AlpTransit Gotthard (ATG) has announced it will go ahead with opening the Ceneri Base Tunnel on 4 September 2020, but with more modest celebrations. Opening season for Gotthard Pass lasts from June through October because of the quite difficult driving conditions during winter and spring. Features. South of Lugano, trains will still have to slow down on a line dating from 1874, with nothing likely to change here before 2050. The GBT may be the current longest railway in the world, but it is a title the Swiss have held on three separate occasions. The "goat-man" that played such a key role in this performance bore a striking resemblance to Baphomet , which in recent decades has become one of the key symbols used to represent Satan in the occult community. The 17-mile, $3.65bn Semmering base tunnel will create a new, faster route from the Austrian capital and central Europe to the Adriatic when it opens in 2027. Translated from Italian by Terence MacNamee. With that in mind, a great deal has already been done to bring surrounding infrastructure up to scratch. The Gotthard base tunnel, the longest train tunnel in the world, is on track to open in exactly two years, the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) announced on Thursday. Secondly was the Simplon Tunnel measuring 19.8 kilometres (12.3 miles) which was completed in 1905. Features. Thousands of feet beneath the Swiss Alps, a massive engineering project years in the making is reaching its final stages after a huge new tunnel was opened. With the opening of the Gotthard base tunnel in 2016, the time taken for the journey was already cut by half an hour. Switzerland’s Gotthard Base Tunnel, the world’s longest and deepest railway tunnel, officially opened on the 01 June 2016, 17 years after the start of construction.. Switzerland is celebrating the opening of the 57 kilometre Gotthard Base Tunnel which will connect northern and southern Europe under the Swiss Alps. Aug 29, 2019 The original Gotthard Tunnel was first, opening in 1882 and measuring 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) in length. It has been nearly a year since the bizarre opening event, but the story lives on today. Shorter journey times meant that passenger numbers increased by 30% in the months after it opened. The transalpine tunnel in southern Switzerland will be inaugurated by the Swiss president on September 4, 2020. With cross passages between the main tunnels every 1,066 feet, access tunnels and shafts the total length of the tunnel system is more than 95 miles. The opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel therefore not only marks the inauguration of the world’s longest railway tunnel, but also a feat of engineering on a global scale that brings Europe closer together. A friend recently sent me a video to the Gotthard Tunnel opening ceremony in Switzerland that took place on June 1, 2016. Marian Horvat, Ph.D. The transport revolution might still take a while. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested in base tunnels and massive upgrades of the main rail routes linking them to Germany and Italy. Close. Measuring over 57 km and costing over 11 billion Euros, the Gotthard Base Tunnel is world’s longest and most expensive tunneling project in … For a long time, experts on Alpine road construction considered the Gotthard terrain to be impassable. 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