Work starts on new European rail line

Work has begun on a new high-speed rail line through the Alps. The line between Lyon in southeast France and Turin in northwest Italy includes a 53 kilometer (34 mile) section of tunnel under the mountains.

French and Italian ministers and transportation industry executives attended a ceremony to mark the start of work at La Praz on the French side of the tunnel project. The tunnels must be bored before the main work on building the high-speed line can start.
The whole project is likely to take 15 years to complete, at an estimated cost of 12.5 billion euros (US$15 billion). Boring the tunnel through the Alps will account for 6 billion euros (US$5.5 billion).
Engineers will be using many of the techniques developed in the cutting of the Channel Tunnel between England and France, but the Alpine terrain and geology present new and complex challenges.
“It is certainly an enormous project,” said Jacques Ricard, who is in charge of the project for the builder and operator Lyon Turin Ferroviaire. “The geological complexity of the area required huge research. To give you some idea, we have around 3,500people working on that,” he said.
The rail journey from Lyon to Turin at present takes about four hours. The new high-speed route will cut travel time to less than two hours.
Italy already has a dedicated high-speed line between Rome and Florence which enables trains to travel at speeds up to 250 kilometers per hour (kph). New track is being built also to Milan and Bologna. Specially-built track is needed because conventional rail lines cannot cope with the top speeds of premium high-tech Pendolino trains operated by Eurostar Italia.
Japan pioneered high-speed rail services with its famous Bullet Train. France has been in forefront of high-speed passenger rail travel in Europe. The first high-speed line was opened in 1981 between Paris and Lyon, and the TGV (Train Г  Grande Vitesse) services have expanded into Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Great Britain and Italy. In Germany, ICEВ  trains reach speeds of 330 kph (260mph) on the Hanover-Waurzburg, Hanover-Berlin, and Mannheim-Stuttgart lines.
The European Union is backing projects that form part of a pan-European network of high-speed routes.
The technology of train building has advanced over the past 20 years and the new generation of TGV and Pendolino trains will run on articulated wheel modules, meaning that the train tilts as it takes curves on the route, ensuring greater stability and passenger comfort at high speed. The trains are also fitted with automatic train protection (ATP), which automatically applies the brakes if the driver does not respond to a red danger signal.

By David Browne

LONDON (eTurboNews)

October 18, 2005   Posted in: Airlines & Railways