Alpine railroad tunnels

Switzerland
Switzerlands governmentowned, 3,100-mile 5,000-kilometer railroad network is world renowned for its efficiency, despite the difficulties imposed by the mountainous terrain. Two of the four major rail links that pass through the small, landlocked country to connect northern Europe and Italy cross the 13,000-foot-high 4,000-meter Swiss Alps. That access was made possible only by the remarkable engineering feats embodied in the construction, between 1872 and 1922, of the St. Gotthard, Simplon, and LR tschberg Tunnels, drilled through the rock thousands of feet underground. However, the Swiss were not the first to conquer the mountains. The earliest European alpine railroad tunnel, the Frejus Tunnel, was drilled through Mont Cenis to connect Bardonecchia in the Italian province of Savoy north of the Alps, through Switzerland, with Modena on the Italian peninsula. King Carlo Alberta of Sardinia championed the scheme in 1845, and his successor V ictor Emmanuel II took it up in 1849. Drilling did not begin on the 8-mile 13kilometer double-track tunnelover twice the length of any before attempteduntil late 1857, supervised by the engineer Germain Sommeiller 1815?1871, assisted by Sebastiano Grandis and Severino Grattoni. Sommeiller patented the first industrial pneumatic drill, which greatly expedited the work. Finished in 1870, the tunnel was opened, in 1871, just two months after his death. The following year, work began on a 100-mile 160-kilometer railroad, the Gotthardbahn, which crossed the Lepontine Alps in south-central Switzerland to link N urich, at the heart of the countrys northern commercial centers, with Chiasso at the Italian frontier. Before then the way across the Alps, used for 800 years, was over the 6,935-foot 2,114-meter St. Gotthard Pass. A road was built in the 1820s. Alfred Escher the founder of Credit Suisse, was the initiator of the Gotthardbahn, and as its president, with Emil Welti he negotiated German and Italian cooperation for the project in 1869?1871. Two feeder lines meet at Arth-Goldau from there the mountain section runs through Brunner, Fluelen, and Altdorf to Erstfeld. There it commences the steep climb to Goeshenen at the northern end of the St. Gotthard Tunnel. Designed by the Geneva engineer Louis Favre, the double- track tunnel is 9.25 miles 15 kilometers long, passing through the mountain 5,500 feet 1,700 meters below the surface. The southern ramp is even steeper, and at Giornico more loops take the line to Chiasso. The tunnel was drilled from both ends, and the bores joined in 1880. The railroad was opened in 1882, when the difficult approach lines were completed. Favre had accepted punishingly tight schedules for the contract. He drove his force of 4,000 immigrant laborers to cut almost 18 feet 5.4 meters a dayover twice that achieved in the Frejus Tunnelin horrifying working conditions: water inrushes, rock falls, dust, and because of the great depth temperatures up to 102P F 39P C. About 1,000 men suffered serious injury 310 were killed. Twenty years later, the safety record on the Simplon Tunnel, although far from perfect, was much better. From the thirteenth century, the 6,590-foot 2,009-meter Simplon Pass near the Swiss-Italian border was a key to trade between northern and southern Europe and in the beginning of the nineteenth century, probably for military reasons, Napoleon I ordered a road built over it. Begun around 1898, the Simplon Railroad connects the Swiss town of Brig with Iselle, Italy. Its 12.3-mile 19.8-kilometer tunnelin reality two tunnelsunder Monte Leone was conceived as a twin-tube single-track system by the German engineer Alfred Brandt separate galleries 55 feet 17 meters apart were linked with cross-hatches. Until the completion of Japans Seikan Tunnel in 1988, the Simplon Tunnel was the worlds longest railroad tunnel. Because of its depthup to 7,000 feet 2,140 meters below groundtemperatures exceeding 120P F 49P C were faced during construction. The first gallery, Simplon I, was completed by January 1905 and traffic commenced the following year. M arious problems, including the intervention of World War I, delayed Simplon II until 1921 it was opened in 1922. The LQ tschberg Tunnel, opened in 1913, is a 9-mile 14.6-kilometer double-track railroad tunnel between Kandersteg and Goppenstein in south-central Switzerlands Bernese Alps. It is part of the 46-mile 74-kilometer standard-gauge Bern-LQ tschberg-Simplon Railway connecting Spietz and Brig. The branch lines from Thun and Interlaken meet at Spietz, where the main trunk leads to Frutigen and begins a steep mountain section, much like the Gotthardbahns, to the LQ tschberg Tunnel at Kandersteg. South of the tunnel the line descends from Goppenstein to the Rhone valley, where it reaches Brig and the line to the Simplon Tunnel and Domodossola, Italy. Together, LQ tschberg and Simplon completed a through-route from Germany and France to Italy. In 1987, the Swiss government initiated further investment in its railroad network. The major part of the plan, estimated to cost EUR10 billion U.S.R 8.8 billion, is the largest construction project in Europe. Known as NEAT for Neue Eisenbahn-Alpen Transversale, i.e., New Alpine Railroad Crossing, it involves the creation of two new 30-foot-diameter 9-meter twin-tube alpine tunnels, suitable for high-speed trains, through the St. Gotthard and LQ tschberg Mountains, respectively. Built at lower altitudes than their predecessors, they will double rail-transit capacity and significantly reduce journey times between northern and southern Europe. The first axis is expected to be in service by 2006.