The pictoral maze; actually a section of a tunnel boring machine’s drilling head. These jumbos munching their way through Swiss Alp rocks on their way to ……. Ticino.
The first tunnel opened 1882 and was “only” 15 kms long. When the Northern and the Southern engineering teams met half-way in the midst of the rock they were only 33 cms horizontally and 5 cms vertically off the blue print; a fantastic achievement in the days of no electricity, GPS, or computer-guided satellites. The picture to the left shows the full size of the drilling head (see the worker in the lower right corner). The picture right/below shows what happens, if the drilling head breaks through the last centimetres. Right-Click in the pictures for opening blow-ups in new windows. Today, with all those gizmos and gadgets it is still very hard work but the tunnel boys today are off the blue prints by millimetres!
If you need to know more then catch up with Mario or Martin - both regulars at our VespaBar - during their vacation in Thailand. You then can drill all sorts of questions as Martin maintains the jumbo drillers in Hong Kong (where they extend the subway) while Mario drills himself a private section of a tunnel around Biel/Switzerland as a part of the A5’s integrated part of the Swiss National Highways system. .
Corrects answers came in from Simone, zwei Ruedis, Fredi, Flüeme, em Maa vom Taal, Bernhard, Pascal and Sugi; the choice of any dish from our Pizze menu is theirs; Congratulations!
