Gotthard Line

Hi All,

In September last year, I was fortunate enough to be able to travel on the original Gotthard Railway line just before the new Gotthard Base Tunnel opened two month's later. The views were awesome and in some instances I was speechless looking at the rolling green hill-sides, little towns, churches but above all the mighty Swiss Alps. Over the years before taking this journey, I'd heard various rumours about what the SBB CFF FFS might do with the old line once the new Base Tunnel opened for Traffic.

One such rumour was to reduce the old Gotthard Line to single track working, another was to close it altogether. I would hope both of these are untrue and just rumours, but in a world dominated by economics, I fear that this historic line might go the same was as the Tennessee Pass Line. Surely not!!!

Can anyone please enlighten me on the future of the original Gotthard Railway?

Cheers

I was there in July, unfortunately only one train each direction an hour now. That and the Gotthard Panoramic Express, I think thats how its going to be for a while. But I had heard rumours of them converting it to single track too, I hope not! On a side note - Is there a DEM map available anywhere for the area in trainz?

Thanks Scratchy. They'd be nuts to convert it to single track operation, I mean what would happen if a terrorist group blew up several trucks on a train inside the new Base Tunnel? Traffic would grind to a halt and then they'd be up the spout as the old Line could only handle one way traffic and would itself become a bottleneck.

having never been there, Im guessing its double tracked from one side to the other. But if that's the case I can see case's for keeping it both fully double tracked and taking section out and having passing sidings. obviously the aforementioned shutdown of the new tunnel (for a myriad of reasons) and general redundancy is in favor of double track (rock or snow slide blocked 1 track/ is easier to clear from 1 track). however if they are running 1 train an hour it wouldn't be difficult to take out some of the second track and install passing siding's at points where the trains meet, I mean this is Switzerland, home of the watch we are talking about :hehe:. its all depends on how expensive it is to maintain any mile of track and if the pro's out-weigh the cons.

I really hope they think hard about removing the Rails, let me put it this way, we made that subtle move in California a long time ago, (remove hundreds of miles of Rail Road Tracks)!

Everyone thought it was great, then Decades later, it cost close to and more than a million dollars a mile in 1980 or so we rebuilt our commuter and Subway lines,

Guess who paid for it, yup, us, the taxpayers......What a sucker deal, and we are still paying for stupidity and Greed of a few who thought they knew better, and then to add fire to it, there are those special folks called Nimby's (not in my back yard) who prefer not to have anything that might inconvenience their lifestyle..........So the price goes up higher to please the public and get the Project done.

I read about the Gotthard Tunnel last year, amazing feat, however, you always want a good backup as well said by others here!

And the uninformed wonder why things costs us so much?

I too would hate to see the old line get ripped up. There are some cab-ride videos of the line on YouTube, which are quite spectacular. Even at one train an hour, that's still a lot of traffic compared to what we have over here. The old B&M, for example, once hosted 98 trains an hour on the Fitchburg division through the Hoosac Tunnel. The line was double-track all the way to Mechanicsville, NY and to Troy, NY. Today it's single-tracked for a good portion of the route, and it now hosts only 6 trains per day.

I followed the Tennessee Pass line on Google Earth and I felt my soul leave my heart. There's so much potential for that line too, which is sadly falling apart in big chunks. When it's gone, as Blue says, the towns will want it back, but it'll become a discussion for decades, in various committees discussing the potential restoration, as the ROW washes away, or sadly it becomes a rail-trail because it's too expensive to rebuild and the NIMBYs don't want the trains because they might make noise and might smell.