Sixteen freight carriages run off rails, tearing up eight kilometres of train track and leaving engineering marvel inaugurated in 2016 unable to take passengers
Sixteen cars that jumped the tracks in last Thursday’s derailment remained stuck inside the 57km (35-mile) long Gotthard base tunnel in the southern Ticino region, national railway operator SBB said on Wednesday.
In 2022, more than two-thirds of rail freight traffic through the Alps passed through the tunnel, according to the Swiss government.
The tunnel was opened in 2016 amid enormous fanfare and a lavish choreographed theatrical show involving scores of performers.
Leaders of France, Italy and Germany were at the inauguration ceremony for the Gotthard, an engineering feat deep under snow-capped Alpine peaks that took 17 years to build at a cost of Sfr12.2bn (US$12bn).
The tunnel was created to help cut travel times, ease roadway traffic and reduce air pollution.
Although Switzerland is not one of the 27 members of the European Union, the EU railway network gets a big boost from the shortcut through the Alps, and the tunnel fits into a broader freight network that runs from the Dutch port city of Rotterdam to Genoa, Italy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sixteen cars that jumped the tracks in last Thursday’s derailment remained stuck inside the 57km (35-mile) long Gotthard base tunnel in the southern Ticino region, national railway operator SBB said on Wednesday.
In 2022, more than two-thirds of rail freight traffic through the Alps passed through the tunnel, according to the Swiss government.
The tunnel was opened in 2016 amid enormous fanfare and a lavish choreographed theatrical show involving scores of performers.
Leaders of France, Italy and Germany were at the inauguration ceremony for the Gotthard, an engineering feat deep under snow-capped Alpine peaks that took 17 years to build at a cost of Sfr12.2bn (US$12bn).
The tunnel was created to help cut travel times, ease roadway traffic and reduce air pollution.
Although Switzerland is not one of the 27 members of the European Union, the EU railway network gets a big boost from the shortcut through the Alps, and the tunnel fits into a broader freight network that runs from the Dutch port city of Rotterdam to Genoa, Italy.
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