World Record along the Route:
4^th Herrenknecht TBM successfully concludes the final Gotthard Drive

With the final breakthrough in the western bore the two 57 km long main bores of the Gotthard Base Tunnel have been completely excavated. On Wednesday March 23, 2011, the tunnellers proudly and noisily celebrated the occasion after “Heidi” broke through the last centimetres of rock at 12.20 pm (title picture). They reached their target with the TBM S-211 (Gripper-TBM with 9.43 m diameter) on the 11.1 km long section from Faido to Sedrun with the utmost precision. The vertical deviation only amounted to 3 mm whilst absolute accuracy was attained with 0 mm from the horizontal.

The breakthrough...