After a hiatus of over a year, the first trains were deployed as a trial in the western tube of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, rebuilt after a derailment. Concerning freight, the first train, operated by SBB Cargo International, ran today in the early morning on the Ludwigshafen-Gallarate route.

The western tube is scheduled to fully reopen on 2 September. The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) said that the tests which have been and are being carried out are similar to those conducted in 2016 for the Gotthard Base Tunnel’s inauguration. “The test phase with measurement, test and service trains was successfully completed last week”, SBB said.

The derailment in the Gotthard Base Tunnel

The accident occurred in the early afternoon of Thursday, 10 August 2023 near the Faido interchange, a gate separating the western and eastern tubes. A faulty wheel on a wagon of a freight train operated by SBB Cargo caused a derailment that significantly damaged the infrastructure of the western tube.

Once a temporary gate was placed, freight traffic could gradually restart in the eastern tube of the Gotthard Base Tunnel. The repair works, which took about a year, cost over 100 million euros, with 7 kilometres of railway, including 20,000 sleepers and the ballast underneath, being completely replaced.