Gotthard rail tunnel opened today

It was THE national event today in the media. The official opening of the longest railway tunnel of the world. I am not important enough to have been invited to it :-), so I just blip a shot from a brochure describing the public festivities planned for the coming weekend.

Here the official website to read more about the tunnel, and a BBC article with additional links to some engineering facts and what BBC names the 'weird opening ceremony' (! - including the warning about partial nudity).

A few days ago I listened to radio broadcast, interviewing some of the engineers and it was fascinating to hear some facts:
- total length of 57 km, i.e. being a double tube it results in more than 150 km of tunnels, shafts and passages
- some engineers worked more than 25 years full-time on that project
- building time of 17 years (plus the planning phase before)
- for many problems there were no available solutions and had to be invented, e.g. for passing areas with unstable rock layers and high pressure from the mountain. One solution was to dig a broader whole in that area (12 meters, instead of 9 meters) and to let it squeeze down to 9 meters, before the shrinking effect was stopped by special, new construction gear. Really amazing.

Scheduled trains will start from December 2016 to use the tunnel.