Friday, October 15, 2010

Glacier Express, Switzerland

Well, after some whining, here comes my ultimately favourite kind of cards....and this time we will 'meet' the Glacier Express...which is called "The train to fall in love with"...hmmm, obviously, every train has something to fall in love with it....they are just so charming :P

The one on the card has an 'en route' from Zermatt to St. Moritz (the alternative is to Davos)...covering 290km...over 291 bridges and through 91 tunnels! Wow...tunnels...i love tunnels...a fascination ive been having since very very little...esp. those long long ones...coz once you enter them, it feels like you enter some other, mysterious world, veiled in the unknown...
Hey, have you heard the latest news?? that finally the longest tunnel in the world has been drilled through? Yup! After 14 years, the 57 kilometers have finally been completed...though the tunnel is not likely to open until 2017....
It goes under the Swiss Alps....and many geologists have claimed that it would be impossible to bore a tunnel through here, saying the rock was too unpredictable and warning of dangers to anyone working underground...but today they have been proven wrong!

The maximum capacity of the tunnel is 300 trains per day (?!) going 250km an hour.
With this tunnel it is expected that the journey between Zurich and Milan will be cut down by an hour and a half...

Really cool...and can you imagine...almost 60 km of going through a tunnel?? Boy, if i was a child, that would have been one of the greatest and most exciting experiences in my life...

the stamp is from a set of two Fauna stamps issued in 2009....this one shows a Rock Partridge...

1 comment:

Zasa Lein said...

welcome to the country of tunnels! for me its absolutely normal going through a tunnel when I'd like to go from a to b!
i.e. my boyfriend is originally from the south-part in Switzerland. When we visit his parents we have to go through the lötschberg tunnel. http://www.bls.ch/e/autoverlad/autoverlad.php
that's funny and a bit scary!

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