looking north from the gotthardtunnel

each tunnel's portals will be custom made when necessary.
thus the northern portal of the gotthard tunnel itself has two tubes at the entrance which join and become one after a very short distance.

if so inclined, you can watch a cab ride video of the journey through the whole 15 km long tunnel on alpentunnel.de.
the video called "Führerstandsfahrt Amsteg - Airolo" of course not only covers the ride through the tunnel, but also the climb up from erstfeld to göschenen.
here is a direct link if you do not speak german, be careful its 362 mb.

göschenen

the trackwork north of the tunnel is finished!

's chileli vo wasse

wassen is the smallest station yet, but probably one of the most peculiar ones. sitting in between two tunnel loops, the trains go past the station three times on different heights and gain around 150 metres without even leaving the village.

the loops brought extraordinary fame to the small church of wassen, which can be seen three times from different perspectives while the train wriggles itself around the village.

1 106 metres above the sea

after the track builders lost their sense of direction shortly in great fog, they reached göschenen at 1 106 metres above sea level.

track in gurtnellen is done

after i have rebuild the complete section between amsteg and gurtnellen twice due to slight height inaccuracies, i could finally put the track down in gurtnellen itself.

track reaches gurtnellen

and do you know what is being manufactured in the tiny remote village of gurtnellen?
this is...

no really, some parts of the rocket engines are being made there by the small company schmelzmetall ag.

as you'd expect from rocket scientists, they are based in an old and abandoned looking building and can't even be reached by truck. so the rocket engines (well, parts of them) leave gurtnellen on the gotthard railway!

the 26 o/oo climb to gurtnellen is under way

but over two hours were spent for just 4 kilometers of plain track, even though i'm following the real line with the help of aerial images!

track laid out in erstfeld

with the traverser figured out i could finish the trackwork at erstfeld. at least thats what i thought until i found out the hard way that traversers can, as of yet, only have 6 parallel tracks connected to them.
the erstfeld traverser however allows access to 12 tracks which, to make it even more complicated, are oddly spaced so i would need a traverser with around 23 connection points to realistically recreate the depot.

i decided to built it anyway and have the traverser only connect to 6 of the tracks and put the others in the right place to connect them if it ever becomes possible.


erstfeld depot is fairly important since its here that the steep climb up the north ramp begins, for which additional engines are put in front or behind the heavier freight trains.
therefor a lot of staff and engines are based here, even some foreign ones.

the steep track from here on is probably one of the few places in europe where you can observe up to 4 working engines in front of a train.
in this case the two re 6/6 and two re 4/4 develop 34.000 horsepower together, thats as much as around seven huge american dash 9 diesel engines.
although they can't use all their power in this configuration or otherwise they would just rip apart the couplers. therefore even today trains have to be split up in erstfeld or get help from an engine pushing from behind.

bruno lämmli who created the website lokifahrer.ch is a driver who was based in erstfeld a long time and has written a lot about his experiences driving over the gotthard. be sure to check his site out if you can read german.

erstfeld is also home to many historic engines like the ae 6/6 prototype "uri" with the number 11402, named after the kanton which is home to the north ramp.
the first prototype with the engine number 11401 was called "ticino" after the kanton in which the south ramp of the gotthard railway is located.

traverse...

its not as complicated as i thought! trackwork in erstfeld can be finished very soon.

trackwork in erstfeld is done...

...except for one small thing.

oh joy!

trackwork has been done in amsteg

erstfeld is half way done but has been skipped for now in favour of amsteg.



amsteg is home to one of the many SBB owned hydroelectric power stations, the picturesque kraftwerk amsteg, which supplies the trains on the gotthard line with electricity.

shortly after the station itself, the trains cross over the entrance to the maderanertal on the famous chärstelenbachbrücke, which looms over the tiny village of amsteg.

nowadays amsteg is also home to one of the major building sites for the gotthard base tunnel, for which an extra track has been build from erstfeld to remove the excavated material.

track extended to amsteg-silenen

hello,

the trackwork has founds its way past erstfeld and up the first steep parts of the north-ramp to amsteg-silenen. the station of erstfeld still needs to be done though, as well as the branch to the alptransit construction site which goes from erstfeld to amsteg along the floor of the valley.


besides, i have the pleasure to do the german translation for the great RWDecal tool which makes track building a lot more fun. be sure to check it out!

new tracks together with embankment

Altdorf Station

Hello,
the trackwork has been completed in the station of Altdorf, from which a short industrial spur heads to the industrial park of Schattdorf where a number of companys are served, including the government owned defense company RUAG or rubber-specialists Dätwyler Rubber.


Furthermore there are some tracks which lead into secret and mysterious tunnels in the mountains south-east of Schattdorf...
One can only speculate what they look like inside, but it shall make for interesting shunting opportunities nevertheless!

Track reaches Altdorf

Besides working on the heights between Brunnen and Sisikon, which had to be edited in afterwards due to the split up of the line, the track has been expaned to Altdorf, the capital of canton Uri.



Also the track layout of Flüelen Station has been created, including the siding of gravel and concrete plant Arnold & Co AG in the harbour of Flüelen.
Here some of the excavated material of the new Gotthard Base Tunnel was loaded onto ships in order to pour it into the lake and consequently creating a number of artificial islands around Flüelen for bathing as well as nature protection purposes.

To celebrate the islands they were illuminated in 2003, which made for a spectacular sight

Track Reaches Flüelen

The first tunnels have been dug on the section between Brunnen, Sisikon and Flüelen.

This is a very peculiar part of the Gotthard line because here the track is divided between a so called seegleis, which curls along the extremely steep shore of the urnersee part of the vierwaldstättersee and the so called berggleis, which goes straight through the mountains for the most part. While the Berggleis only goes through 4 tunnels, the older Seegleis goes through 9 tunnels of varying length in only 10 kilometres.

The track splits up here because there was not ernough space left along the shore of the urnersee for the double track expansion, which was undertaken about 60 years after the initial opening of the Gotthard line.
However, both tracks meet shortly at the village of Sisikon, where the Gotthard line also enters Uri, the oldest canton of Switzerland.

The air is full of history here. Directly under the Seegleis track one can make out the Tells-Chapel right on the lake, devoted to the mythical swiss national hero Wilhelm Tell who is said to have jumped ashore from a ship here. Then, on the other side of the lake the Rütli meadow is visible, where the Swiss Eidgenosschenschaft was founded according to the myth of the Rütlischwur.

Track laid in Schwyz and Brunnen

I didn't quite think it would be that much work, but even the smallest swiss villages have a substantial amount of sidings which allow for more shunting and local freight than i expected from the alpine transit line.


Here are the finished track layouts of Schwyz and Brunnen stations:

Gotthardbahn - Progress Bar

Hello,

the semester is over finally and work continues on the RailWorks Gotthardbahn. As this progress graph shows, track has been laid from Arth-Goldau towards Brunnen via Steinen and Schwyz.



After finishing the complicated switchwork in those stations, which will be laid out according to the latest photos and aerial imagery available, the first tunnels will have to be built on the spectacular section between Brunnen and Flüelen.

Arth Goldau

Arth Goldau is the starting point for my Gotthard project. Here the lines from Luzern and Zürich meet and continue through the valleys for a little while before the steep north ramp begins.
So far the trackwork has been accurately recreated with custom track and now some of the more important buildings are being made to outfit the station.