Balfour Beatty wins £200m of work on world's longest railway tunnel

Balfour Beatty has won a £200m contract to install the rail systems in the Gotthard tunnel.

When complete, the Gotthard will be the longest railway tunnel in the world.

Balfour is part of the Transtec Gotthad consortium. There are three other players in the grouping and the total workload being shared between the four runs to £800m.

Work on-site is expected to start at Biasca, at the tunnel’s south portal, at the end of 2009. The construction period is set to run for seven years.

Commercial rail services are due to start through the tunnel in 2017. On completion, the current travel time from Zurich to Milan of 3hour 40min will be cut by 60mins.

Balfour’s responsibilities for the installation programme include:

• total project management
• logistics
• trackwork
• overhead catenary
• and part of the medium-voltage supply lines

The project involves the creation of two single-track tunnels, each 57km long, plus another 11km of new track to link the project with the existing rail network.