Article on Euro-tunnels

[Anonymous]

Thought some of you might find this interesting. Remember, all this occurs under what is essentially an open access rail system in Europe. What jumps out at me is the mention of having freight trains travelling at 100 mph. I wonder if that is a typo, e.g. perhaps the writer meant 100 kph.

Nov 21, 2004

New Tunnels Under the Alps Augur a Traffic Revolution for Europe - Albeit a Delayed One
By Bradley S. Klapper
Associated Press Writer


GENEVA (AP) - In a few years train passengers will vanish into a tunnel just south of Zurich and emerge 30 minutes later blinking in southern European sunshine. They'll have missed the Alpine views but shortened their journey to Italy by half.
With mega-projects such as this one, the new, increasingly borderless Europe is knitting itself together by busting through ancient physical barriers - a tunnel from England to France, a Scandinavian bridge that makes it possible to drive from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean shore, and soon, running 36 miles under the Alps, the world's longest rail tunnel.

Not as soon as hoped, though. The drilling is going slower than forecast, meaning the tunnel under the St. Gotthard massif to Milan will only open in 2015 or 2016 - five or six years late - and will cost some $2 billion more than the $10.7 billion Swiss voters were told when they approved the dig in a 1992 referendum.

A second, shorter tunnel, the 21-mile Loetschberg, is being dug to link Bern, the capital, to Milan in northern Italy. It's on course for completion in 2007 as planned, the Transport Ministry says.

But for the Swiss, proud of their reputation for efficiently handling both time and money, the delay in drilling the Gotthard is a bit of an embarrassment.

"Geological difficulties are the main cause for the rising costs and delay," said Davide Demichele, a Transport Ministry spokesman. "It is normal with tunnel projects that you cannot always tell exactly where problems lie."

The Gotthard tunnel is even tougher because it has more mountain above it than any other in the world - a 7,500-foot-high mass of rock. Engineers have had to stop repeatedly because of fault lines as well as heat and dust churned up by the weight of mountain pressing down on drilling equipment.

Last year, for instance, engineers found an unexpected fault line near the tunnel's southern end. Steel arches were used to buttress the rock while drilling proceeded more slowly, and a planned maintenance point had to be moved to another area.

This problem alone set work back by a year. Attempts to speed the tunneling machines have so far failed to make up for lost time or cut costs.

"If there is a problem, then we have to solve it, but it is much more expensive when these come as surprises," said Demichele.

For the Swiss, the Gotthard and Loetschberg tunnels can't come soon enough. With the Iron Curtain gone and the European Union expanding, truck traffic across the Alps grew more than tenfold between 1980 and 1998, while rail freight rose just 37 percent, according to AlpTransit Gotthard AG, the company which is managing the whole project.

The Swiss, who aren't in the EU, have tired of traffic jams caused by big rigs and vacationers clogging their tunnels. The government has promised to halve the number of trucks on the highways, and the new rail tunnels, carrying trucks as well as passengers, look like the ideal solution.

The Gotthard will halve the present travel time between Zurich and Milan to two hours and 10 minutes. The Bern-Milan route through the Loetschberg tunnel will be shorter by an hour and take the same time as Zurich-Milan.

By running at low elevation, the tunnels are something like mouse holes at floor level, able to accommodate trains and cargo loads that cannot negotiate the long climb and switchbacks to existing tunnels nearly 2,000 feet higher. Freight trains will be able to more than double their speeds to over 100 mph, passenger trains to over 150 mph.

A grandiose plan still on the drawing boards is the Porta Alpina underground station, which would be the world's deepest. Halfway between Zurich and Milan, an elevator would lift passengers 2,600 feet up through Alpine rock to give them a view of the beautiful Surselva Valley, and return them underground to catch a later train.

But there's no money yet. A feasibility study put the cost at some $33 million to $42 million. "The construction is possible," said Alptransit spokesman Ruedi Suter. "But we need someone willing to order it and pay for it."

AP-ES-11-21-04 1244EST

This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBADD5IT1E.html

[daveklepper]

This duplicates an excellent article in TRAINS about 14 months ago, with excellent photos and diagrams.

The Swiss want to prove to the World that a rail transportation system can comliment a high standard of living without everyone always insisting on personal transportation.

[BaltACD]

I tend to believe the statement about 100 MPH freight and 150 MPH passenger was a mistatement of the continents normal Kilometer measuring system. 100 KPH is approximately 60 MPH.

[M636C]

Er .....No!

It clearly states that "freight train speeds will be doubled from their present level (of 50 mph) to 100 mph". You surely aren't suggesting that the present speed of freight trains in Europe is 50km/h (30mph), are you?

Peter

[Hugh Jampton]

I was in the Loetschberg tunnel in April, and they said that freight trains would be able to operate at up to 160km/h (obviously not all freight trains can go at that speed), and passenger trains at up to 250km/h (again, not all passenger trains will go at that speed). I'm told it's similar for the Gotthard tunnel as well.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Hugh Jampton

I was in the Loetschberg tunnel in April, and they said that freight trains would be able to operate at up to 160km/h (obviously not all freight trains can go at that speed), and passenger trains at up to 250km/h (again, not all passenger trains will go at that speed). I'm told it's similar for the Gotthard tunnel as well.

So on the Continent, speed does matter, both for freight and passengers. I believe that the axle loadings are less than the North American counterparts, and as far as I know clearances do not allow for double stacking ISO containers or swap bodies, but does that necessarily mean that gross load per wagon is also limited? What are the load limits in Europe, e.g. is it a max weight limit per axle or gross wagon weight?

What I'm getting at is this notion that you can have either heavy loads or high speeds but not both for freight movement in the U.S. We've touched on this in other posts, but some of us have maintained that freight cars in the U.S. should be load limited by axle loadings only, not gross car weight. It is this combination of 71,000 lbs axle loadings and relatively high speeds (60 mph or more) that is causing the greatest amount of track damage in the U.S.

It is possible for freight cars to handle 315k loads and at the same time limit axle loadings to 65,000 lbs. by doing what the truckers do, namely adding axles under the cars, either in the form of three axle trucks or the middle of the car sliding truck (same as the B-B-B locomotives described in yet another post). This would allow for higher track speeds without a corresponding increase in track wear, at least in theory. Higher freight speeds can have a positive impact on the bottom line, and not just in point to point delivery, but in keeping the mainlines more fluid (UP, are you taking note?)

It will be interesting to watch and see if the Europeans will be able to increase rail's share of intercity freight with these incredible infrastructure improvements and the corrresponding increases in freight rail services.

[daveklepper]

The January TRAINS answers some of these questions and you are absolutely correct. The European high speed (intermodal) trains do not double stack, have restrictions on weights, and use brakes and "bogies" (trucks) similar to passenger equipment. There are interesting comparisons, and from one set of graphs it looks like the typical European freight train has ONE FIFTH the tonnage of a typical UP freight train!

[Anonymous]

Speed in Switzerland is limited to 80 mph for passenger and 50 for freight. Train length is around 3000 feet limited because of their coupling strength. The new trans Alp tunnel will allow speeds up to 160 mph for pass and 100mph for freight again limited to new train sets equipped with electro pneumatic braking systems.
The Swiss like their peace and quiet in the evening and on weekends. Trucks climbing and descending the Alpine grades make a tremendous amount of noise. For this reason heavy trucks are not allowed overnight passage on Swiss Autobahns. Same holds true for Sunday. No trucks. This is a logistical nightmare for trucking companies. If they don't like the law they must drive extra miles via Austria (BrennerPass). There are special Swiss piggyback trains with low platform cars (and small wheels) to haul tractor and trailer and its driver (in a special coach) thru the Swiss Alps in the evening.. Regular European trains cannot handle TOFC due to overhead catenary.
The Gotthard line with is 9 mile long summit tunnel and numerous spiral tunnels on the approaches is a Tehachapi on steroids. More than one hundred trains a day make passage on this double track line under the great St. Gotthard Pass. The line is carrying 25million tons of freight and 5million passengers each year

[jchnhtfd]

Very different philosophies, really. In general, the various European countries have opted for speed, schedule reliability, and frequency, both for freight and passenger service, sacrificing weight in a single train, while the US and Canada have tended to go the other way. There are many many reasons for this -- not the least of which is that, as a group, the Europeans (oh! dangerous overgeneralization coming here!) do not have the love affair with the highway that the North Americans do; you can see evidence of this everywhere you go in Europe.