Enabling rail asset capture quickly and safely

When the Gotthard Base Tunnel officially opened in June 2016 as part of the New Rail Link through the Alps (NRLA), a construction project 20 plus years in the making at 9.8 billion Swiss francs yielded the world’s longest and deepest traffic tunnel. At 57 kilometres long and with a rock overburden of 2,300 meters, the tunnel increases the total transport capacity across the Swiss Alps while reducing passenger travel time between northern and southern Europe by one hour. With minimal gradient and wide curves, the route is also a flatter, lower-level journey at only 550 m above sea level. The whole tunnel system measures a total of 152 km, plus almost 50 km of newly built outdoor tracks.

When Grunder Ingenieure AG, a leading Swiss engineering firm specialising in rail surveys and long-time user of Leica Geosystems solutions, was sub-contracted by the Alptransit Gotthard AG, the firm knew it would be a challenging task but one for the history books. One of the main tasks, before the tracks opened for the test operation, was to capture all the infrastructure of the tunnel for as-built documentation.