Individual passenger trains again through the Gotthard Base Tunnel

Passenger trains will soon restart services in the Gotthard tunnel. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

After the derailment of a freight train in the Gotthard Base Tunnel, individual passenger trains will be running through the tube again from Friday. 

There will be a train to the south on Friday and one to the north on Sunday, as the SBB announced on Thursday.

During the following three autumn peak weekends, two further connections will be added to the south on Saturdays and one to the north on Sundays. The courses on Friday evening from Zurich to Lugano and on Sunday evening from Locarno to Zurich through the tunnel will run until the timetable change.

The SBB is covering the autumn holidays in German-speaking Switzerland until October 15th with two trains from Zurich to Bellinzona on Saturday mornings and one from Lugano to Zurich on Sunday afternoons. SBB will be using double-decker compositions for these courses from Saturday, October 7.

The SBB is thus increasing the number of seats available. There are 900 more places on the autumn holiday weekends. The journey time is reduced by 15 to 30 minutes. The Federal Office of Transport granted approval for passenger traffic through the Gotthard Base Tunnel.

The first passenger train will depart Zurich again through the base tunnel on Friday at 5:33 p.m. For the time being, the SBB is restricting passenger traffic to weekends following the derailment of the freight train on August 10.

Then the number of passengers on the Gotthard axis is highest and fewer freight trains run. In addition, no repair work will take place over the weekends in the west tunnel that was damaged in the derailment. The work takes place in multiple shifts during the week. For safety reasons, no passenger trains are allowed to travel through the undamaged eastern tube during the work.

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