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Switzerland's Mega Tunnel Sets Record
Anonymous Dupaeur writes "Switzerland, co-home of CERN and numerous other world organizations, has come closer to the completion of their recent megaproject: the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man. The project is due to be completed in 2017, and will host 200 to 250 trains a day with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams."
After the completion of today's work, the tunnel is now 57 kilometers long, surpassing Japan's 53.9-kilometer Seikan Tunnel. There are a few longer tunnels in existence, such as the 137-kilometer Delaware Aqueduct, but they all move water rather than people.
I'd love to see a story just about the drill itself and how in the heck they manufacture and transport it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man.
Is there a larger, naturally occurring train tunnel somewhere?
Gotthard? Hadron?
Who the hell is coming up with these names? Are they trying to sell Viagra?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Too bad they abandoned the planned station, if there ever was a "Khazad-dûm Central", that would probably be it.
its active more often than the LHC and has less down time.
Mentioning CERN because it's hosted in the same country as the tunnel? Comparing an entire train's kinetic energy to that of a fundmantal particle's kinetic energy? WTF?
Why don't they compare the number of trains going through it per day to the number of possible subatomic particles while they're at it?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams.
It's hardly surprising or noteworthy that a hundred-ton train moving at 200 mph has more kinetic energy than a particle accelerator, because the accelerator manipulates extremely small masses and doesn't rely on kinetic energy to propel them. As far as I know the only kinetic energy involved is that of the tiny masses moving under magnetic propulsion and then crashing into things (or each other) at really high speed. So why is the above statement relevant or interesting in the least?
Somebody here's already looked into this:
If instead of a highway from point A to point B, for travelers going all the way from A to B, what has more capacity: 4 +- lanes of asphalt driven by drivers, or a loading system at A and an unloading system at B? One would imagine multiple on and off ramps, and computer-controlled mux/demux of the carrying platforms.
I know, most people would rather pay $20 in gas + $20 in wear than a $20 toll, but, just supposin'.
Probably multiple stretches of tunnels would really be necessary with a 'pee break' station every 20 minutes or so. Sort of like the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel, but you get to play cards with your kids instead of driving.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep.
I don't mean to turn this into a slam against America, but I guess what I'm saying is, and so be it. It's a shame that countries around the world are spending billions on engineering such projects while America is spending trillions on war.
I remember reading something a while ago, about a train tunnel in Russia that was so long, the coal engine and the passengers used up all the oxygen on it's first trip through, and some bad stuff happened.
I would assume(/cough) hope a modern day train would carry it's own air supply with sufficient reserve supply and backup safety systems in case of a breakdown.
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
A third of the nation's highways are in poor or mediocre shape. Massively leaking water and sewage systems are creating health hazards and contaminating rivers and streams. More than 6,000 of our nation's 115,000 bridges that are part of the national highway system are structurally deficient, and we can't even get a new tunnel built to link traffic from New York and New Jersey to Manhattan.
Are we talking passenger trains, freight trains, or both? Will this (presumably) be an electrified train system, so no fumes in the tunnels, or something else? Any word on where the power is expected to come from if electrified (nuclear, coal, gas, hydro? I'm guessing you wouldn't run a train system on wind or solar, but perhaps I'm wrong)?
CERN's another LARGE TUNNEL PROJECT in the SWISSTZERTLANDS.
...to test elements of Supertrain Theory.
Mentioning CERN because it's hosted in the same country as the tunnel? Comparing an entire train's kinetic energy to that of a fundmantal particle's kinetic energy? WTF?
Why don't they compare the number of trains going through it per day to the number of possible subatomic particles while they're at it?
Or better yet, how many Library of Conresses (Conressi?) can be moved by all those trains.
Here in the United States, we say that the Delaware Aqueduct is 85 miles long. Get off my lawn!
with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams
So... are we going to be colliding trains here then? I don't think I'll be getting a ticket for that route...
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
In the meantime, we (as in the US) cancel the Hudson River tunnel. Hats off!
Yes. With any luck, they might actually observe the elusive "Gotthard Particle".
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
LHC's beams (when nominal) are more powerful than a flying airplane... But they're not more powerful than 200 trains.
Did you forget the Big Dig already?
Bay Bridge retrofit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway
and then of course there is the Bridge to Nowhere.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Looking at the image, one wonders why they didn't run the thing from Faido to Erstfeld, rather than from Pollegio to Estefeld. The Pollegion to Faido strech of the tunnel runs on basically the same route as the existing road - the only obvious advantage of a tunnel is reduce noise pollution and saved space in the valley. But, that strech seems like it will save little actual travel time at what is likely to be a great capital cost.
Maybe this is like a swiss watch - just a little too precise, and a little too efficient, with more consideration for aesthetics and - if we're honest - ego, than practicality.
In discussing the ARC project and the Gotthard Base Tunnel pundits have been asking why the 35-mile Gotthard tunnel costs $10 billion dollars while the ARC project (with it's much smaller tunnel) is projected to cost up to $15 billion dollars.
There are a few reasons:
Remember, the whole of switzerland is just around 220km N/S direction (maximum!), so a tunnel just four times that long would connect germany directly to italia with no transit through switzerland soil (OK, *under* it, but nobody should notice ;-))
OK, this would also tunnel through the whole of an still actively building up mountain range - but this are engineering details :D
Boring a very, very long tunnel alone does not strike me as that hard (the summary already states that there are water ducts longer than this tunnel). But making it a tunnel for people to go through means that there have to be vertical ventilation shafts at regular intervals along its length, fire-fighting measures and, i suppose, escape routes. Especially the vertical shafts must have been also hard to manufacture since the tunnel is under the Alps, which is not the most comfortable place to make a vertical hole at. Here is a nice picture : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Nrla_scheme.png
For some reason, I don't think they got to be Fortune 500 companies by being generous with their benefit packages. Number 1 on that list is Walmart, and they don't offer any benefits to the vast majority of their employees.
Both sides are right. But what nobody seems to be asking is: Why are important projects now unaffordable? Decades ago, when the federal and state governments were much smaller, they had the means to undertake gigantic new projects, like the Interstate Highway System and the space program. But now, when governments are bigger, they don't.
Answer: they weren't that much less expensive. Adjusted for inflation, the Lincoln Tunnel cost roughly 1/3 of the proposed budget for the Jersey Tunnel, and that tunnel is substantially longer and more complex (much of the cost comes from a huge terminus which has to be buried underneath the existing subway and skyscraper foundations near Herald Square in NYC.) And the Lincoln Tunnel diggers suffered appalling working conditions, with many dying in the process. And please don't get me started on the cost of the Interstate Highways.
We did this stuff back then because we were more willing to commit funds to obviously-necessary infrastructure projects: in the 1930s New York clearly needed another tunnel, so the money was found and it was done. Part of the problem is that nowadays the problems are much more complex. Most people don't really understand transportation planning, so they don't fully understand why NY/NJ need to dramatically increase their rail capacity in the coming years (but if you want a hint, go take an NJ transit train from Summit to Penn Station at rush hour and try to find a place to sit, hell try to find a place to stand.)
The more important problem is the poisonous strain of thought (evidenced by the David Brooks article you cite) that turns every wonky infrastructure project into some stupid fucking unproductive political argument. Does David Brooks think that reducing public sector benefits would make this tunnel affordable? He probably has no clue (in fact, it will have only a tiny impact). But instead of engaging with the much more complex cost/benefit analysis for this tunnel project --- which he is absolutely unqualified to conduct --- he gets to write stupid, facile articles blaming it on his favorite ideological boogeyman. And people cheer.
Then twenty years later they wonder why it takes three hours to get from Summit to midtown Manhattan.
The tunnel is 57,000 blocks long, and 13 million blocks were mines in the process, i.e the tube is about 15 blocks width by 15 blocks high.
It will use up 200,000 stone picks, or 12,683 diamond picks (= 38,049 pieces of diamonds). Using stone picks means needing 400,000 sticks, which means 50,000 blocks of wood, possible means cutting down 10,000 trees at 5 blocks per tree.
The rails will need 21,375 pieces of iron (=334 blocks of 64 pieces = 6.18 large chests full of them). Using boosters, going at about 8m/s, it will take 7,125 seconds ~= 2 hrs to run through (not bad), at 20 mins per minecraft days, it will take 3 minecraft days to travel the tunnel. Possibly needing a boosters about once 200 blocks to keep the speed ~= 285 boosters along the way, needing an extra 1140 tracks and 570 carts, needs additional 3,278 iron, about another large chest full. So total about 7.2 large chests full of iron.
I guess I played too much minecraft...
*fire up minecraft and start digging*, *wonders if I can build such a tunnel in minecraft...*
Someone should make a video of it....
Oliver.
If it doesn't go all the way through the mountain and come out the other side it isn't a tunnel. Isn't it? So, up until toady when they finally broke through, they had only succeeded in boring a very, very long hole in the side of a mountain.
Actually, this story should read, "Workers succeeded in converting a very, very long hole in the side of a mountain into a tunnel."
Seeing as we are using ancient and inconsistent measuring systems, can you tell me how many furlongs that is.
Do fax me your retort, I shall send my reply by the fastest royal mail steamer.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Sorry, someone else already beat you to it.