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
