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Opening the Gotthard Base Tunnel
The Swiss Alps have always posed a formidable barrier to European transport. For centuries, merchants and travellers navigated steep mountain passes, and later, early rail networks struggled against severe gradients. To resolve this bottleneck, Switzerland embarked on an unprecedented project: constructing a railway path directly through the base of the Saint-Gotthard Massif.
At 57 kilometres, the resulting Gotthard Base Tunnel is the longest railway tunnel in the world. Rather than climbing over the mountains, trains travel on a flat gradient only slightly above sea level. This design allows heavy freight trains to cross the Alps with far less locomotive power.
Boring through the Alps meant operating under as much as 2,300 metres of solid granite. At that depth, the pressure is immense, and the rock behaves unpredictably. What engineers had to control was not just the shifting stone, but the extreme subterranean heat.