The Swiss and many other European dignitaries celebrated the opening of the World’s longest and deepest tunnel last week, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, after 17 years of construction. The tunnel beneath the Swiss Alps is 57-kilometers long (35-miles long) reaching a depth of 2,300 meters (7,545 feet, almost 1.5 miles). The tunnel will create a high-speed rail link between northern and southern Europe. Trains will travel the tunnel, which runs between the towns of Erstfeld in the north and Bodio in the south, in only 20 minutes, reaching speeds of up to 250 kilometers an hour (155 mph), according to CNN. [Source: CNN via AGC SmartBrief. Image: Global Rail News]
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The latest information to come out of the collapse of a subway tunnel excavation in Cologne, Germany is that investigators are evaluating the ground anchors or tiebacks that were holding open the subway tunnel excavation. There doesn’t appear to be much information available to the public yet, and the New Civil Engineer article mostly quoted academics saying an anchor failure “could” have caused the collapse. Apparently at the time of the collapse, the excavation had reached the bottom depth after the slurry walls had been constructed along with the ground anchor system. Crews were supposedly working on the base slab which would have undoubtedly stiffened up the whole system. For what its worth, an anonymous comment left at the bottom of that article indicated that after half of the debris had been excavated, the diaphragm walls were still intact and without apparent displacement. So what other theories have been floated? Read on for more info. (Image Credit: New Civil Engineer)