European Railroad Discussion > Gotthard Base Tunnel Opening?

Does anyone know what being planned to mark the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel in June 2016? I have heard that there will be a media event on 1 June followed by public events on 4-5 June.

See
http://www.gottardo2016.ch/en

Hartmut

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Thank you, Hartmut.  That is a very interestin and informative site.  Gerry

It will be interesting to see what other trains besides SBB class RABe503 Pendolinos and SBB unknown class EC250 Girunos will take over traffic there. ICN seems a bit slow in that crowd?

It there any word how the full speed test drives so far have progressed?

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/16 00:48 by McKey.

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On November 8, they reached 275 km/h, the designated speed limit, during a test run using the German ICE-S.

Test runs are continuing, they also successfully ran two intermodal connections, as could be read in the German language press.

I don't know about plans to run ICEs, but IIRC I read somewhere that the mixture of goods, regional and IC trains only allows one regular intercity connection between Zurich and Milano, which might indicate that no DB trains would be involved.

Hartmut

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Thank you for the report! This sounds great, except for the part that high speed (250 km/h in normal traffic) passenger services are dwarfed. I just wonder, how is this possible, are the priorities really on other traffic? Did you mean one connection each way hourly? That would be catastrophic with all the high speed passenger services intended there...

In the picture another Italo-Swiss catastrophe:

 

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McKey Wrote:
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> Thank you for the report! This sounds great,
> except for the part that high speed (250 km/h in
> normal traffic) passenger services are dwarfed. I
> just wonder, how is this possible, are the
> priorities really on other traffic? Did you mean
> one connection each way hourly? That would be
> catastrophic with all the high speed passenger
> services intended there...

All what High-speed passenger services? Yes, the existing passenger services can go faster in the Tunnel, but when they exit on either end the speed drops. Currently there are two passenger trains per hour between Erstfeld and Biasca in each direction, with additional commuter or local trains beyond those two points. One of those two trains is the InterRegio to or from Locarno. Currently the other train is a InterCity to Lugano or Chiasso, which five times per day is extended to Milano. Perhaps all the InterCity trains will be extended to Milano, perhaps not. Ferrovie del Stato is hard to deal with. Passenger trains will never pay the cost of the new tunnel, it is the freight trains which will carry the load of paying for the new Base Tunnel as they pay higher track access charges in Switzerland than passenger trains. The Interregio will continue to run after the Base Tunnel opens and will be powered by Re460 locomotives with conventional haul stock for the time being. 

That was eyey opening SOO6617, thank you!

It looks like SBB acquiring even more additional Pendolinos and a fleet of EC250 plus all the options on those fooled me totally this time :/

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What will happen to the original line? Will it be retained? I had hoped to get there before the new tunnel opened but will not be able to.

Cheers,

Rob Bennett
Fairview, PA
http://youtube.com/user/SirDopeyTheBear/featured

Original line will be retained, but the summit tunnel will be closed. No track, including that in the summit tunnel, will be removed for now. The local train service that runs to Erstfeld will be extended to Göschenen to connect with the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn. In my opinion the InterRegio should continue to use the old route.

Until December 2017, hourly trains will be running on the old Gotthard mountain line, what happens after that is yet to be decided. Maybe the service will be changed to regional, which might open some more channels for funding by the Kantons and adjacent towns.
A complete closure of the summit tunnel is not planned as of now, but might be on the table when major repairs are needed, around 2025.

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