With its rolling hills and pretty towns and cities, Switzerland has some of the most astonishing scenery in Europe.
Below ground, however, the country is almost as impressive as it is home to the world’s longest railway tunnel. The
Gotthard Base Tunnel is an astonishing 35 miles, which is the equivalent of driving from Islington, London to Guildford.
At a cost of £8.2bn, the gargantuan tunnel was opened in June 2016 after nearly 20 years under construction. Six months later it entered regular service in December 2016 when the first train passed through an engineering endeavour designed to shave an hour off the Zurich to Milan train time.
The construction of the tunnel was so significant that the opening ceremony was attended by the then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then-French President Francois Hollande.
In the seven years after it opened, the tunnel proved an invaluable shortcut for passengers and cargo as they made their way under the Swiss Alps.
However, in August 2023 disaster struck when a cargo train derailed inside the tunnel.
According to the Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board, 16 cars came off the rails.
They said: “Sixteen freight cars of a train made up of 30 wagons, which were travelling north in the base tunnel of San Gottardo, derailed near the Faido multifunctional station.”
In a statement following the incident in August, chief executive of Switzerland’s National Rail Operator Vincent Ducrot maintained the tunnel was still one of the safest on the planet.
He said: “The fact that an accident like this could happen has hit us very hard. Fortunately, there were no injuries, though significant material damage was incurred.”
Despite this, the damage to the tunnel was severe and just under five miles of track needs to be replaced, a challenging endeavour in such a large structure.
In a subsequent statement released in November, they said the tunnel may not be fully operational until September 2024 and could cost up to £115million to fix. The reason for the stratospheric cost is that the damage was reportedly found to be “much more serious than it initially appeared”.
Despite the massive cost to repair the tunnel, it does not take away from what opening the tunnel did for Europe’s economy, engineering prowess, and willingness to adapt, an area where Switzerland has led the way.
