Breakthrough in the Gotthard

5 September 2006
A historic moment
A historic moment

The main breakthrough at the Gotthard takes place beneath Sedrun on 15 October. It is an elaborately and artfully staged event. (2010, Alptransit Gotthard Ltd)

The first breakthrough by a boring machine in the Gotthard Base Tunnel takes place on 6 September 2006. The breakthrough in the second bore follows on 26 October. Miners from Bodio and Faido shake hands. The workers and around 1,000 guests celebrate in the tunnel. After four years of excavation over a distance of 13.5 kilometres, the horizontal deviation is five centimetres and the vertical two centimetres. The two boring machines are five times as fast as the miners building the first Gotthard Tunnel 125 years earlier.

« 410 metres long and an insatiable rock-muncher. »

AlpTransit Gotthard, Baublatt construction industry newsletter, 09.07.2010

Final breakthrough Faido-Sedrun, October 15, 2010

2010, Alptransit Gotthard Ltd

Final breakthrough Faido-Sedrun, October 15, 2010

Final breakthrough Faido-Sedrun, October 15, 2010, 2010 (Alptransit Gotthard Ltd)

410 metres

length of the machines boring the Gotthard tunnels, named Gabi I and II, Heidi and Sissi

51 tunnel-boring machines

machines in use to build the underground rail system in the Chinese city of Guangzhou

56 meters

of tunnel bored under the Gotthard on 19 July 2009, a world record for a hard rock tunnel-boring machine of this size

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