1982: The Start of Operations for a Year-Round Rail Tunnel in Switzerland

June 25, 1982

In Switzerland, the Furka Base Tunnel connecting the village of Oberwald with the municipality of Realp was opened. At the time, this structure was the world’s longest narrow-gauge tunnel. This 9.6-mile (15.4-kilometer)-long rail tunnel, which took nine years to build in the face of formidable engineering challenges, has made it possible for the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn and other narrow-gauge railways to provide consistent year-round train service from east to west in that region of Switzerland; previously, heavy snowfall routinely ruled out such travel in that section of the Swiss Alps during the winter months. (Furka Pass is a high mountain pass in the area.)

A staunch advocate for the Furka Base Tunnel in its early planning stages was Roger Bonvin, (1907-1982), who was a member of Switzerland’s Federal Council (the federal cabinet of the Swiss Confederation) between 1962 and 1973. Along with serving as a federal councilor, Bonvin was head of the country’s Department of Transport, Communications and Energy (the present-day Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications) from 1968 to 1973. He died about three weeks before the opening of the tunnel that he had so strongly championed. A plaque commemorating Bonvin’s life and legacy was installed at the Furka Base Tunnel’s entrance in Oberwald.

Photo Credit: Kecko (https://www.flickr.com/people/70981241@N00) — licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

For more information on the Furka Base Tunnel, please check out https://structurae.net/en/structures/furka-base-tunnel