Reliably Open Even under Critical Loads

The Lötschberg tunnel of the BLS railway opened 100 years ago. After the groundbreaking on October 15, 1906, countless miners risked their life daily in the dark and dusty tunnel. Muggy 32 °C temperatures were the norm within the mountain, and the booming noise of the drills and the subsequent explosions took their toll on health. Haggard bodies, illnesses and often early deaths: Work under extreme conditions was no picnic a century ago. The situation was quite different in 2014. Today, state-of-the-art machines drive the tunnel construction. However, one thing has stayed the same: Tunnel construction still makes extreme demands on workers, machines and electronic devices– in the form of vibration, dust, dirt, heat and dirty electricity grids – often for years at a time. These circumstances are especially hard on machines controlled by state-of-the-art electronics.