3-052-488 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Completion of the St. Gothard Tunnel: arrival at Airolo of the first train coming through the tunnel, 1880. 'The great work of boring a railway tunnel, nine miles and a quarter long, through the St. Gothard clump of the Alps, from Göschenen, in the Swiss Canton of Uri, to Airolo, on the Italian side, was accomplished on Sunday week. Our Illustration...[shows] the arrival of the first train that passed through to Airolo...As a convenience for English travellers to Italy, this new railway through the Alps will be much preferred to the Mont Cenis Railway...the boring of the Alps has...been completed in seven years and a half; but it will be some months before all the works along the approaches to each end of the tunnel are finished and the permanent railroad is made ready for traffic...The plans were originally prepared by M. Helwag, as chief engineer, and M. Louis Favre was the chief contractor, who sublet the work of the tunnel, estimating its cost at two millions sterling, to several part-contractors. They have employed nearly 2000 people, miners, smiths, carpenters, and engineers, to perform this work, assisted by the perforating machines and water-power supplied by turbines outside the tunnel at each end'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.