A TOTAL OF 152KM OF TUNNELS, SHAFTS AND GALLERIES.
A total of 152 kilometers of tunnels and shafts need to be created for the Gotthard Base Tunnel project. The planners have divided the two main tunnels and the almost 180 cross passages into five construction phases. The overall construction time could be considerably reduced, because work on the five sections could be carried out simultaneously. However, extensive logistics provisions were also necessary. Access and supply tunnels had to be built, and enormous underground caverns had to be excavated to serve as bases for the tunnelling activities or drill & blast operations.
FIVE TIMES THE VOLUME OF THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA.
More than 85km of the main tubes have been excavated and secured with Herrenknecht tunnel boring machines. These high-tech steel giants from Schwanau, with a length of more than 400 meters and cutterheads measuring 9.5 meters, tunnelled their way through the tremendously hard rock, while the crowds of skiers enjoying the snow some 2,000 meters above in the Lukmanier Pass remain oblivious to the ear-splitting noise and the machine’s brute force. Since beginning their mountain-munching journey in 2003, the cutting wheels of the four Herrenknecht machines have ‘swallowed’ around 10.5 million cubic meters of rock. In total, 13.5 million cubic meters of material are excavated at the Gotthard Base Tunnel - about five times the volume of the Pyramid of Cheops in Giza. Around 75 % of the tunnel’s main route have been excavated by these ‘mega-moles’, as the tunnel boring machines (TBMs) are sometimes known. However, with the sum total of 114 kilometers of parallel tunnels, the project is far from being complete.
The Giga Jobsite.
There are three such access tunnel and supply caverns at the Gotthard giga site – at Amsteg in the north, at the Sedrun intermediate heading in the middle and at Faido in the south. Access to the tunnel is relatively easy from the mountain pass roads at the tunnel mouths near Bodio and Erstfeld in the north, while at Amsteg it is approached via a short tunnel of ‘only’ two kilometers’ length. The access tunnel in Faido is 2.7 kilometers long with a gradient of almost 13 percent. Work on the Sedrun intermediate heading was far more complex, as it involved first excavating a horizontal access tunnel with a length of around one thousand meters far above the tunnel level, and then sinking two vertical shafts from its end to a depth of around 800 meters down to the tunnel. A 450-meter-long ventilation shaft completes this spectacular construction.
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