Digital Issue 2010 trial preview 150 dpi

In March 2011, the world’s longest rail tunnel ever undertaken prepared to record
its final breakthrough deep beneath the mountains of the Swiss Alps. The final
breakthrough to connect all headings of the first tunnel into one long tube
through the base of the Gotthard Massive was recorded in October 2010.
Making history at Gotthard
History was made on Friday
15 October 2010 when the
first Bodio-Faido TBM broke
through into the drill+blast heading
from Sedrun to finish 57km of rail
tunnel through the base of the Swiss
Alps from Erstfeld in the north and
Bodio in the south.
Swiss politicians and dignitaries,
project directors and contract
managers as well as senior managers
of the leading suppliers and the
workers themselves all gathered for
an official breakthrough on Friday
afternoon when the TBM fired up at
2pm to cut the last 1.5m of rock and
mark this truly monumental feat of
civil engineering and endurance.
The crews of the TBMs and
drill+blast headings blazed a trail.
This last breakthrough occurred
TunnelTalk reporting
nearly 2,000m below the top of the
Alps and more than 8km from the
nearest exit through the 800m deep
shaft at Sedrun, and more than
13km from the access adit at Faido.
On a project of this magnitude -
the longest, largest, most ambitious
and most technically demanding
tunnelling project of this age - there
have been serious set backs and
delays as crews have tunnelled into
the unknown. Extreme geological
conditions buried a TBM heading
from the Amsteg adit for more than
six months and had another TBM
from the Faido adit at a standstill
for five months from March to
July 2010.
These and other challenges,
some not related to the excavation
work, have caused a slip of some
Celebration of an
epic achievement
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