Lötschberg Tunnel

Last updated
Lötschberg Tunnel
Kandersteg - Lotschberg Tunnel.jpg
The Lötschberg Tunnel from the north portal
Overview
Official name German: Lötschberg Tunnel
Line Lötschberg Line
Location Circumventing the Lötschen Pass in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland
(Canton of Bern, canton of Valais)
Coordinates 46°22′08″N7°45′14″E / 46.369°N 7.754°E / 46.369; 7.754 – 46°28′41″N7°40′01″E / 46.478°N 7.667°E / 46.478; 7.667
System BLS, SBB CFF FFS
Start Kandersteg, canton of Bern, 1,200 m (3,900 ft)
End Goppenstein, canton of Valais, 1,216 m (3,990 ft)
Operation
Work begun 7 March 1907
Opened 15 July 1913
Owner BLS NETZ AG
Operator BLS
Traffic Railway
Character Passenger, Freight, Car Transport
Technical
Length 14.612 km (9.079 mi)
No. of tracks One double-track
Track gauge 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) (standard gauge)
Electrified 15 kV 16.7 Hz
Highest elevation 1,239.54 m (4,066.7 ft)
Lowest elevation 1,200 m (3,900 ft) (north portal)
Grade 3–7 ‰
Route map
Lotschberg Hohenprofil-N.svg

My please peace film clean ianilder kittern room people

Contents

bedroom vamumm clean panther daughter ianiler Disney stickers people thanks you

The Lotschberg Tunnel in the outline of the Lotschberg Line showing the planned straight and realized curved tunnel between km 75 und 90. Positions are indicated in travel distance from Bern in [km]. OutlineMapLoetschbergbahnSwitzerland.jpg
The Lötschberg Tunnel in the outline of the Lötschberg Line showing the planned straight and realized curved tunnel between km 75 und 90. Positions are indicated in travel distance from Bern in [km].

The Lötschberg Tunnel is a 14.612 km (9.079 mi) long railway tunnel on the Lötschberg Line, which connects Spiez and Brig at the northern end of the Simplon Tunnel cutting through the Bernese Alps of Switzerland. Its ends are at the towns of Kandersteg (2 km away) in the canton of Berne and Goppenstein in the canton of Valais. [2] The top elevation of the tunnel is 1,240 m (4,070 ft) above sea level, this is the highest point of the main Swiss railway network.

Tunnel An underground passage made for traffic

A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through the surrounding soil/earth/rock and enclosed except for entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube construction techniques rather than traditional tunnel boring methods.

Spiez Place in Bern, Switzerland

Spiez is a town and municipality on the shore of Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss canton of Bern. It is part of the Frutigen-Niedersimmental administrative district. Besides the town of Spiez, the municipality also includes the settlements of Einigen, Hondrich, Faulensee, and Spiezwiler.

Brig railway station

Brig railway station is an important railway junction in the municipality of Brig-Glis, in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland. Opened in 1906, it is adjacent to the northern portal of the Simplon Tunnel, and is served by three standard gauge lines and two metre gauge lines.

Construction began in 1907 and suffered delays by several severe accidents.

Avalanche sudden, drastic flow of snow down a slope

An avalanche is an event that occurs when a cohesive slab of snow lying upon a weaker layer of snow fractures and slides down a steep slope. Avalanches are typically triggered in a starting zone from a mechanical failure in the snowpack when the forces of the snow exceed its strength but sometimes only with gradual widening. After initiation, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they entrain more snow. If the avalanche moves fast enough, some of the snow may mix with the air forming a powder snow avalanche, which is a type of gravity current.

The tunnel is a single bore twin track.

The BLS AG company offers a car transport service through the tunnel, between Kandersteg station and Goppenstein station, for accompanied vehicles. The journey time of approximately 20 minutes, passengers remain in their cars in open sided car transport vehicles. At peak times, the car transport service operates in each direction every 7½ minutes.

BLS AG railway company in Switzerland

BLS AG is a Swiss railway company created by the 2006 merger of BLS Lötschbergbahn and Regionalverkehr Mittelland AG. It is 55.8% owned by the canton of Berne, and 21.7% by the Swiss Confederation. It has two main business fields: passenger traffic and infrastructure.

Kandersteg railway station

Kandersteg is a railway station in the Swiss canton of Bern and municipality of Kandersteg. The station is located on the Lötschberg line of the BLS AG, and is the first station to the north of the Lötschberg tunnel.

Goppenstein railway station railway station in the Swiss canton of Valais and municipality of Ferden

Goppenstein is a railway station in the Swiss canton of Valais and municipality of Ferden. The station is located on the Lötschberg line of the BLS AG, just outside the southern portal of the Lötschberg tunnel. It takes its name from the nearby hamlet of Goppenstein.

The new Lötschberg Base Tunnel, opened on June 15, 2007, has been constructed some 400 m (1,312 ft) below the level of the current Lötschberg Tunnel as part of the NRLA (New Railway Link through the Alps) project.

Lötschberg Base Tunnel

The Lötschberg Base Tunnel (LBT) is a 34.57-kilometre (21.48 mi) railway base tunnel on the BLS AG's Lötschberg line cutting through the Bernese Alps of Switzerland some 400 m (1,312 ft) below the existing Lötschberg Tunnel. It runs between Frutigen, Berne, and Raron, Valais, and was built as one of the two centerpieces of the NRLA project. Breakthrough was in April 2005 and construction ended in 2006. The opening ceremony was in June 2007 Full scale operation began in December 2007, and the link is currently saturated because a single-track section greatly reduces its capacity.

NRLA railway tunnel

The New Railway Link through the Alps (NRLA), is a Swiss construction project for faster north-south rail links across the Swiss Alps. It includes base tunnels several hundred metres below the existing apex tunnels along two axes, the Gotthard and the Lötschberg. The 57-kilometre (35-mile)-long Gotthard Base Tunnel and the 35-kilometre (22-mile)-long Lotschberg Base Tunnel are the centers of the axes. Swiss Federal Railways subsidiary AlpTransit Gotthard AG and BLS AG subsidiary BLS Alp Transit AG were founded for this project and have built the tunnels.

North portal south of Kandersteg (1200 m a.s.l.) Lotschbergtunnel Nordportal.JPG
North portal south of Kandersteg (1200 m a.s.l.)
South portal from Goppenstein (1216 m a.s.l.) Lotschberg Sudportal.JPG
South portal from Goppenstein (1216 m a.s.l.)
Car transport through the Lotschberg tunnel (Kandersteg) LotschbergCarTransport.JPG
Car transport through the Lötschberg tunnel (Kandersteg)

See also

Simplon Tunnel

The Simplon Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the Simplon railway that connects Brig, Switzerland and Domodossola, Italy, through the Alps, providing a shortcut under the Simplon Pass route. It is straight except for short curves at either end. It actually consists of two single-track tunnels built nearly 15 years apart. The first to be opened is 19,803 m (64,970 ft) long; the second is 19,824 m (65,039 ft) long, making it the longest railway tunnel in the world for most of the twentieth century, from 1906 until 1982, until the Daishimizu Tunnel opened 76 years later.

Related Research Articles

Transport in Switzerland

Switzerland has a dense network of roads and railways. The Swiss public transport network has a total length of 24,500 kilometers and has more than 2600 stations and stops.

Bern–Lötschberg–Simplon railway Swiss railway company

The Bern–Lötschberg–Simplon railway (BLS), known between 1997 and 2006 as the BLS Lötschbergbahn, was a Swiss railway company. In 2006 the company merged with Regionalverkehr Mittelland AG to form a new company called BLS AG.

Rail transport in Switzerland

The Swiss rail network is noteworthy for its density, its coordination between services, its integration with other modes of transport, timeliness and a thriving domestic and trans-alp freight system. This is made necessary by strong regulations on truck transport, and is enabled by properly coordinated intermodal logistics.

Lötschberg railway railway line in Switzerland, linking Spiez in the Bernese Oberland with Brig in the Valais

The Lötschberg line is a railway in Switzerland, connecting Spiez in the canton of Bern with Brig in the canton of Valais. It crosses the Bernese Alps, from the Bernese Oberland to Upper Valais, through the Lötschberg Tunnel in the middle of the line. Together with the Simplon Tunnel south of Brig, it constitutes one of the major railways through the Alps and an important north-south axis in Europe. The Lötschberg axis is backed by the lower and longer Lötschberg Base Tunnel, part of the New Railway Links through the Alps project.

The construction and operation of Swiss railways during the 19th century was carried out by private railways. The first internal line was a 16 km line opened from Zürich to Baden in 1847. By 1860 railways connected western and northeastern Switzerland. The first Alpine railway to be opened under the Gotthard Pass in 1882. A second alpine line was opened under the Simplon Pass in 1906.

Accompanied combined transport

Accompanied combined transport is a form of intermodal transport, which is the movement of goods in one and the same loading unit or road vehicle, using successively two or more modes of transport without handling the goods themselves in changing modes. More specifically, accompanied combined transport is one of the two types of combined transport, which is intermodal transport where the major part of the journey is by rail, inland waterways or sea, and any initial and/or final legs carried out by road are as short as possible.

Car shuttle train shuttle train used to transport accompanied cars, and usually also other types of road vehicles

A car shuttle train, or (sometimes) car-carrying train, is a shuttle train used to transport accompanied cars (automobiles), and usually also other types of road vehicles, for a relatively short distance.

Visp railway station railway station

Visp railway station is a junction station at Visp, in the canton of Valais, Switzerland. It has a modern station building completed in 2007, and is served by two standard gauge lines and a metre gauge line.

Lötschberg is an Alpine mountain massif in Switzerland.

Simplon Railway railway line

The Simplon Railway is a line that links Lausanne in Switzerland and Domodossola in Italy, via Brig. The 20 km (12 mi)-long Simplon Tunnel is a major part of it. The line between Lausanne and Vallorbe is sometimes considered to form part of the line, making it 233 km (145 mi) long.

Frutigen railway station

Frutigen is a railway station in the Swiss canton of Bern and municipality of Frutigen. The station is located on the Lötschberg line of the BLS AG, and is the junction point where the routes via the older Lötschberg tunnel and the more recent Lötschberg base tunnel diverge.

As of 2019, Switzerland has no high-speed trains of its own yet. French TGV and German ICE lines extend into Switzerland, but given the dense rail traffic, short distances between Swiss cities and the often difficult terrain, they do not attain speeds higher than 200 km/h (ICE3) or 160 km/h. The fastest Swiss trains are the ICN tilting trains, operated by the Swiss Federal Railways since May 2000. They can reach higher speeds than conventional trains on the curve-intensive Swiss network, however the top speed of 200 km/h can only be reached on high-speed lines. The former Cisalpino consortium owned by the Swiss Federal Railways and Trenitalia used Pendolino tilting trains on two of its international lines. These trains are now operated by the Swiss Federal Railways and Trenitalia.

References

  1. ↑ Röll, V. Freiherr von: Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens, Band 2. Berlin, Wien 1912, p. 256 on www.zeno.org/Roell-1912
  2. ↑ Eisenbahnatlas Schweiz. Verlag Schweers + Wall GmbH. 2012. p. 45. ISBN   978-3-89494-130-7.

Further reading

<i>Railway Gazette International</i> magazine

Railway Gazette International is a monthly business journal covering the railway, metro, light rail and tram industries worldwide. Available by annual subscription, the magazine is read in over 140 countries by transport professionals and decision makers, railway managers, engineers, consultants and suppliers to the rail industry. A mix of technical, commercial and geographical feature articles, plus the regular monthly news pages, cover developments in all aspects of the rail industry, including infrastructure, operations, rolling stock and signalling.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Lötschberg rail Tunnel at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 46°25′49″N7°43′5″E / 46.43028°N 7.71806°E / 46.43028; 7.71806

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.