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S N A P C H A T WORLD’S LONGEST TUNNEL a triumph in engineering An absolute feat of engineering was finished in early June at a cost of over $US12 billion and nine lives. The Gotthard Base Tunnel is a railway base tunnel through the Swiss Alps. With a route length of 57.09 km and a total of 151.84 km of tunnels, shafts and passages, it is the world’s longest and deepest traffic tunnel. Some 2,600 people worked on the project and a drilling machine equivalent to four rugby fields in length was used to bore its way through the earth. The massive 10 metre diameter tunnel-boring machine could, on a good day, dig out 40 metres of tunnel a day - a world record. But the Gotthard is also the world’s deepest tunnel, and with 2.3km of mountain pressing down on it, gravity constantly tried to close up the space which had been excavated. And so, along the tunnel’s length, reinforced steel rings had to be inserted, to prevent it collapsing in on itself. The tunnel took 17 years to complete. 10 August 2016


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