Pajare variant It involved nearly two decades of work addressing an enormous challenge: Drilling through the Cantabrian mountain range equip a high-speed line from side to side and in the core It will allow trains to pass at a speed of 275 kilometers per hour.. This has been a great achievement of Spanish engineering, largely thanks to the Variante enjoying such great prestige around the world.
The total of Variante is approximately 50 kilometers separating La Robla (León) and Pola de Lena. 80 percent of the route passes through tunnelsSome are located more than 1000 meters deep. In total, it was necessary to build 11 viaducts and 13 double-tube tunnels; one of them, the Pajares base, is 24.6 kilometers long, making it the second longest in Spain, the sixth in Europe and the eleventh in the world. .
Variant according to engineering experts most complex railway job ever undertaken One of the most complex executions in Spain and on the planet. The Guadarrama high-speed tunnel, with a length of 28.4 kilometers, is the longest tunnel in Spain and the seventh in the world, always associated with the railway sector. It was built over five years, from 2002 to 2007, despite having a perfect environment with no major geological or technical challenges. Moreover, the work was carried out in times of economic prosperity, and the investment was much more limited: it cost $ 1,219 million; this was less than a third (almost 4,000 million) of the amount spent on Variant.
But how does it compare to other tunnels built in the rest of the world? Undoubtedly, the one who is most similar to Pajares is Saint Gotthard in the Swiss AlpsIt is the longest railway tunnel in the world, with a length of 57.1 kilometers (151.84 kilometers if all tunnels and galleries are included). It is also the deepest, reaching 2,450 meters below the surface. What were Saint Gotthard’s works like? After decades of research and preparations, excavations began in 2003 and the work lasted 13 years. It was also a very complex effort, costing 8.3 billion euros, more than twice the cost of Variant. It was inaugurated on June 1, 2016, and by August 10, approximately 260 freight trains were passing each day at a speed of approximately 100 kilometers per hour and up to 65 passenger trains at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour.
What happened in the Gotthard high-speed tunnel on August 10? HE Freight train derailed in tunnel and although there were no personal injuries, circulation had to be stopped for several days and then restricted to some freight trains. The rest of the cargo and all passenger routes have to go around the old traditional route, which has since been converted into a tourist route.
The complexity during construction of the Bypass and St. There are two other railway tunnels on the same level as Gotthard’s. one is that Seikan connecting two islands in Japan. It is the second longest lake in the world with a length of 53.85 kilometers, 23.3 kilometers of which is under the seabed. Work on the Seikan tunnel lasted 17 years (between 1971 and 1988) and cost 3.6 billion dollars in that period. It includes two underwater stations, a first in the world.
Another underground railway crossing that attracts attention with its complex structure is european tunnel, connecting France and the United Kingdom via the English Channel It is the longest underwater section in the world (39 kilometers) with a length of 50.45 kilometers and an average depth of approximately 50 meters. This is a double tunnel with one tube for conventional trains and the other for shuttle trains that can carry road vehicles. It opened on May 6, 1994. At that time, its cost was 16 billion euros. It was built by private companies and its management is also private. Fires in 1996 and 2008 caused the Channel Tunnel to close for several months. In 2015, another fire disrupted traffic for a day.
The “top ten” of the world’s longest railway tunnels are completed with the basic tunnel Lotschberg (Switzerland, 34.60 kilometers), coralm (Austria, 32.90 kilometers), New Guanjiao (China, 32.64 kilometers), high-speed tunnel guadarrama (Spain, 28.4 kilometers), taihang (China, 27.85 kilometers), Hakkoda (Japan, 26.45 kilometers) and Iwate-Ichinohe (South Korea, 25.80 kilometers).
This ranking will soon change, three very long tunnels are already planned or under construction: the Euroalpine Lyon-Turin main tunnel (France-Italy, 57.5 kilometers), which will surpass the Saint Gotthard tunnel and become the longest tunnel in the world; The 55 kilometer long Brenner base tunnel (Italy-Austria) and the 52 kilometer long Aconcagua Bio-ocean corridor (Chile-Argentina).
But railway tunnels are not the longest tunnels in the world. Many of those built for water or metropolitan transportation services far outnumber those dedicated to railroads. The five longest tunnels in the world are aqueducts. These are Delaware (United States, 137 kilometers), Päijänne (Finland, 120 kilometers), Dahuofang (China, 85.32 kilometers), Orange-Fish River (South Africa, 82.8 kilometers) and Bolmen (Sweden, 82 kilometers). .
When it comes to road tunnels, the longest tunnel on the planet is Laerdal in Norway, it is 24.5 kilometers long and cost “only” 125 million euros and was built in five years.