The Swiss opened a new railway tunnel this week. The third longest in the world.

The Lötschberg-Tunnel is 34.6 Km long, which leaves it 15.87 Km shorter than the Channel-Tunnel and 19.27 Km shorter than the Sei-kan-Tunnel in Japan.
Strangely the Swiss also have the third longest road tunnel too - the St.Gotthard-Tunnel which is 16.92 Km long. The longest being the Laerdal-Tunnel in Norway with 24.5 Km.

Today, Saturday 16.06.2007, the public can ride backwards and forwards through the Lötschberg-Tunnel by train. It will be opened for general service in December 2007.
The tunnel was tested intensively as of December 2006 at speeds of up to 280 Kmh. Passenger trains will be scheduled to use the tunnel beginning in August so I presume 'open for general service' means the inclusion of goods-trains ...

The opening of the tunnel means good news for anyone who needs to travel from Germany to Milan or vice-versa - it will reduce their journey by a whole hour!
It is considered to be the safest railway tunnel in the world.

Some interesting facts:
The tunnel is 34.577 Km long, the whole system is 88.1 Km but only 57 Km of tracks have been laid?
If you take a stroll along the tunnel, you should be able to count 133 video cameras, 3200 fire alarms, 2500 emergency lights, 437 telephones but only 6 ventilators.
By the time the tunnel is completed it will have cost somewhere around 4.3 billion Swiss Francs, which is just 1.1 billion more than the original calculation.
They ran into unexpected geological formations along the way ...
... Oh, look! A mountain!!

Fed up of coming in third - on June 1, 2007, 103.672 Km or 67.6% of the total of 153.5 Km of tunnels, galleries and passages of the Gotthard Base Tunnel, had been excavated. When completed, the Gotthard Base Tunnel will be the longest in the world with 57.072 Km!