Tunnels meet with slight error

On February 29, 1880, two teams of miners met at the heart of the Gotthard mountain after digging toward each other for 7 years and 5 months. Their tunnels, starting from Göschenen in the north and Airolo in the south, showed a discrepancy of 33 cm in width and 5 cm in height.

Site contractor's death

Louis Favre, the site contractor, had died seven months earlier, on July 19, 1879. A heart attack is generally considered the cause. He was 53 years old, and a Geneva-based entrepreneur born in Chêne-Bourg, self-taught without an engineering education, he had won the competition by promising the project would be completed in 8 years.

Celebration of the junction

At the celebration of the junction, he was only represented by a photograph accompanied by a text. The two fronts met on February 29, 1880, with a discrepancy of 33 cm in width and 5 cm in height.

Cost and casualties

The construction cost between 150 and more than 300 lives, according to the counts accepted. The tunnel remains a gallery of 15 km, the longest in the world until 1905. The Gotthard was supposed to connect Switzerland to Italy, which had been unified shortly before, and stimulate north-south trade.

Delays and resignation

The cost overruns and delays weighed on the railway company. Its president, Alfred Escher, had to resign in 1878. The work had started in 1872, on September 13 on the southern side and October 24 on the northern side.

Tools and progress

The miners worked with pneumatic drills and dynamite, tools very modern for the time. By late February 1880, the rock wall was so thin that blows from one side could be heard on the other.

Breakthrough and celebration

On February 28 at 6:45 p.m., a driller from the south finally broke through. The accounts differ on the date of the junction, but the majority accept Sunday, February 29, 1880, when the last wall fell around 11:10 a.m. According to the site tradition, the last charge returned to the northern team, the one that had not opened the first breach.

Symbolic date

The celebration took place in the tunnel once the passage was wide enough for a man to crawl through. February 29, a rare date, was considered a good omen in the press of the time. The northern and southern teams literally threw themselves into each other's arms.

Engineering challenge

The length discrepancy reached approximately 7 meters. What these 33 cm represent. This figure indicates where the uncertainty lay. The remaining length was calculated from the daily advances reported by each front, and doubts grew as the wall thinned.

Media coverage and surprises

Dispatches sent to newspapers followed the countdown, and the news of an air current passing through the wall surprised everyone on Saturday evening. A few days before the junction, the miners did not know exactly how far apart they were.

Variations in measurements

Some accounts give other values, between 33 and 50 cm in width and 5 cm to less than 10 cm in height, but 33 and 5 cm remain the most common. They were enough to make the breakthrough a reference in underground geometry, especially since the tunnel, with 15 km, was then the longest in the world, a title retained until 1905.

Later improvements

The engineers of the base tunnel of the Gotthard, 57 km long, did better. During a first breakthrough, the deviation was only 5 cm on the side and 2 cm in height. A section drilled in June 2009 showed 14 mm in width and 5 mm in height.

Contract and legal consequences

A contract without an escape clause. Favre had committed to deliver the work in 8 years, with a fine of 5,000 francs per day of delay and no clauses for unforeseen circumstances or force majeure. The tunnel was only inaugurated in 1882, a delay from which the company profited to sue the heirs of the contractor.

Budget overruns

The bill followed. The 187 million francs budgeted for the Gotthard line rose to nearly 300 million. On the tunnel side, the overruns are between 19 and 40 million francs according to the counts. Favre's company went bankrupt.

Worker deaths

Between 150 and more than 300 workers died on the site. A count stopped in late March 1880 lists 122, another cites 199 fatal accidents to which hundreds of deaths from disease are added, a third estimates about 200. The discrepancy probably lies in the fact that some count only the accidents, others also the diseases. No single number is accepted.

Tunnel length over time

15,002.64 m in 1938, a little more today. The tunnel is a single-track, double-track gallery between Göschenen in the canton of Uri and Airolo in Ticino. Its walls are masonry throughout the length, with up to 3 m of thickness in the most stressed areas, and the site removed 672,000 m³ of rock.

Legacy and memorials

Its length varies according to the era: 14,920 m on a medal from 1893, 15,002.64 m during a measurement in 1938. Today, it is a little longer, due to a road cover in Airolo. A bronze statue of Favre remains in Chêne-Bourg, where he holds a pickaxe, and a street in the Grottes neighborhood in Geneva.

Commemoration

For the bicentenary of his birth in 1826, a stamp with his image was issued in 2026. It reminds that he died a few months before the breakthrough that was supposed to crown his work.