Post by washi on Jun 7, 2016 7:41:20 GMT
By --Cooper.ch 19:30, 12 August 2006 (UTC) - topomap: produced with NASA WorldWind 1.3 / overlay drawing by: Cooper.ch, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49203146
Only June 1, 2016, lucky lottery winners took the first train ride through the Gotthard Base Tunnel. On that date control was handed over from the construction company to the operator. The new tunnel connects Switzerland and other countries in the north with Italy in the south. Regular full operation is scheduled to begin in December, after an extensive testing program and other preparations are completed. The new tunnel is the longest and deepest in the world. It is some 57 km (35 miles) long, surpassing the Seikan Tunnel which connects the islands of Honshu and Hokaido in Japan by over 3 km (nearly 2 miles).
By Cooper.ch - translated from my already existing german scheme, Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=433931
It is called a base tunnel because it cuts through at the base of the Alps. The principal reason for its construction is that truck traffic over the route had reached saturation capacity. Freight may be hauled by rail over a nearly level track much faster, with the expenditure of much less energy, and much less damage to the fragile alpine environment. As an added bonus, high speed passenger service cuts 45 minutes off the travel time of the existing service, while leaving it in place for local traffic and those who wish to enjoy the mountain scenery.
In several places the overburden is over two kilometers (or a mile and a half) and the tremendous weight required some innovative design.
There are many videos on line. I tried to embed in this file several which have a variety of focuses. The one in the North Portal placemark shows a transit at a speed four times faster than the even the hyper fast tour of the route over the mountain tops. The one at the south portal compares the old and new rail lines. The one embedded in the route path is a bit shorter than other full length documentaries, but I felt it had a nice balance between the human perspective and the technological and engineering problems encountered in construction. The overlay map and the route path are embarrassingly imprecise, especially considering that the tunnelers always had to stay within a few centimeters of the exact planned position in space. I comfort myself by saying that it's always difficult to align a flat map over irregular terrain without distortion.
Gotthard Base Tunnel in Wikipedia
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