Plans were conceived 68 years ago to build a rail tunnel linking the German-speaking Swiss canton of Uri with the Italian speaking canton of Ticino. Construction started 17 years ago, as the necessity to complete became more compelling due to EU dissatisfaction with Switzerland’s tough road freight regulations that severely limited the transport of goods across the Alps.

The train tunnel is scheduled to open on 1 June 2016. It will be the world’s longest train tunnel, longer than the Channel Tunnel and the Seikan Tunnel in Japan, which links the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokaido. The 200 km/h tunnel journey will take a full 17 minutes. Here are some interesting facts about this very impressive feat of civil engineering;

• The tunnel is 57 kilometre long. This distance, which is close to the trip from Lausanne to Geneva will be covered in half of the time it takes to train between these cities. 
   

• Boring of the tunnel created over 28 million tonnes of rubble, equivalent to the weight of over 60,000 fully loaded jumbo jets. Presumably Switzerland now has a new mountain, Mont Rubble.
   

• The machine used bore the tunnel was the length of four soccer pitches.
   

• At one point the tunnel is 2.3 km underground, which is roughly the same measurement as 8 Eiffel Towers. 
   

• When completed it will take 325 trains a day, shaving 45 minutes off the current travel time to and from Zurich and Lugano as well as Milan and other onward destinations. The  scenery will be nothing to write home about.
   

• Alp Transit, the company operating the tunnel, calculates the amount of freight that will be transported at around 40 million tonnes annually. That’s a lot of Toblerones.
   

• All 290 km of track for the new flat rail link are now laid.
   

• At a maximum altitude of 550m, the base tunnel is about 600m lower than the present line’s summit.
   

Planners have future-proofed the project and have anticipated likely advances in freight vehicle technology to allow for speeds up to 200km/h through the tunnel. They have also considered the need for longer trains and more of them, which would double the present freight capacity on the Gotthard route. 

The official countdown started on June 2nd and the festivals organised at each end of the tunnel attracted over 50,000 visitors. The Swiss Rail website, Gottardo 2016, dedicated to the countdown, opens with the strap line: “Swiss people like to arrive on time. That’s why they love shortcuts.” A fitting slogan?  Maybe raised eyebrows for the second half of that strap line. The Swiss are noted for precisely not taking shortcuts, as any one who’s fell foul of Swiss red tape will attest. I think someone will be getting fired in the morning!