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Safety is prioritized from start to finish: Dräger expertise is essential to build the world's longest rail tunnel—breathing and rescue apparatus is needed, as are new, comprehensive safety concepts. This includes the design and equipment of rescue trains, as well as providing evacuation, transport and
emergency containers.
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The scale of the project is gigantic: a tunnel 57 kilometers long, to be built over 10 years. The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is not only Switzerland's most ambitious construction project, but, as the world's longest rail tunnel, sets new standards on an international level too.
Dräger Safety is involved in every phase of the project,
from beginning to end: it supplies respiratory protective devices and gas detection instruments, as well as acting in a consultative capacity for technical solutions aimed at protecting workers during construction and, later, when the tunnel is in service.
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This is currently the biggest rail tunnel project in the world. The planned double tunnel with its two parallel and adjacent tubes will link the major business centers of Switzerland and Italy, establishing a direct route through the Alps between Zurich and Milan. From 2013, this will cut the journey time by several hours. At the northern end, construction has started in the village of Amsteg, while in the south, tunnel boring machines made by South German manufacturer Herrenknecht have started
making inroads into the Alpine rock at Bodio. The 13.5 million tons of rock, rubble, debris and mud that will have to be removed are equivalent in volume to five Cheops pyramids.
Paving the way for construction of the tunnel took years. The Gotthard Base Tunnel project was only given the green light once every conceivable step had been taken to ensure that the tunnel would be as environmentally compatible as possible, meeting an enormous variety of regulations and conservation requirements. "Our construction sites boast recycling systems that allow us to
convert the rock excavated from the mountain into the gravel and road metal that we need to build the tunnel", explains Beno Lohnke, Senior Site Manager at the northern "point of attack." "We installed our own water purification system to clean up the water from the rock before discharging it into the adjacent river", he continues. In recognition of this achievement, AlpTransit Gotthard AG, a subsidiary of Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), received the Environmental Protection Award in 1999. AlpTransit has overall responsibility for the project.
The huge construction project requires extensive safety measures, both to protect workers in the tunnels while they are being built and to ensure that the tunnel is safe when it goes into service. Naturally, safety concepts were drawn up long before construction work actually began, and the project planners engaged the services of Dräger Safety at an early stage to help them with design and implementation. Dräger Safety was delighted to be involved so early on in such an ambitious project:
"Just a few years ago we would have only supplied equipment to this type of project", explains Urs Weder, General Manager of Dräger (Switzerland) AG, "and today we are already being engaged in a consultative capacity, too."
Weder's colleague Dr. Philippe Schneuwly presented AlpTransit with a feasibility study entitled "Mobile Sealing Gates to Generate Air Flow During Maintenance Work in the Gotthard Base Tunnel." The Dräger product specialist for the strategic segment "Mining, Supply and Disposal" is already working on the question of safety during maintenance work in the tunnel, despite the fact that this will
not be an issue until the tunnel is put into service in 2013.
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