Severomuysky Tunnel

Severomuysky Tunnel is a railroad tunnel on the Baikal Amur Mainline (BAM), in northwestern Buryatia, Russia. It is named after the Severomuysky Range (цепь) it cuts through.

The tunnel is 15,343 metres long, the longest in Russia. Its construction lasted for 27 years – from 1977 to 2003 – and ten thousand people took part in various jobs comprising the whole project. 57 of them were killed in various accidents occurred due to not well prepared geological background research.

The tunnel was built through very difficult rock with four major faults and a great deal of underground water, some at 35 atmospheres pressure. One method used was to pump liquid nitrogen into the rock, freezing the water until the cut could be sealed. In September 1979 workers broke into a fault connected to a 12,000 cubic meter underground lake. This required building a drainage tunnel and delayed work for eighteen months. When it became clear that the tunnel would not be completed in time, a 28 km bypass was built (completed in 1987). It had a 4 % grade and traffic was limited to 15 km / h. Passenger traffic was prohibited. A second bypass of 54 km was completed in 1989 which was safe for passenger trains. The tunnel was first used in 2003.

Now the Severomuysky tunnel is a highly sophisticated engineering structure. 1200 cubic meters of water per second are drained out of its space permanently; unique ventilation, firefighting and security systems are installed in there. Thanks to this tunnel, the train’s journey has been shorted from 2.5 hours to just 15 minutes. Today this tunnel is one of the biggest attractions along the western stretch of the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

Gotth a

Eastern portal of Severomuysky Tunnel

3.8. Match the words in a with their synonyms in b. Write down the answers.

A B

1. to combine	1. to finish
2. to proceed	2. maintenance
3. service	3. to continue
4. to complete	4. to link
5. sophisticated	5. specific
6. unique	6. hard, difficult

3.9. Read the text “Gotthard Base Tunnel” and give its summary using expressions (page 67). Gotthard Base Tunnel (gbt)

Switzeland has completed the construction of the world’s longest rail tunnel. The Gotthard Base Tunnel is actually two main parallel tunnels measuring a record-breaking 57km each, served by a maze of access tunnels, shafts and passages. In total there will be 153.5 km of tunnel through the Swiss Alps. The project has been conceived to solve the problem of heavy European road traffic on this major route through the Alps, while simultaneously developing Europe’s high-speed rail network.

Length, km	57
Full length (both tunnels, auxiliary passes, shafts), km	152
Tunnel diameter, m	8.8-9.5
Designed load, trains per day	200-250
Cost (October,2010) $ bln	10.2
Start of construction	1993
End of construction	2010
Commencement (начало) of service	2017
Number of tunnel boring machines	4
Max. excavation daily	25–30 m (in excellent rock conditions)
Total excavation length by TBM	about 45 km
Manufacturer	Herrenknecht, Schwanau(Germany)
Victims	8 workers have died during construction.

Addvantages of the tunnel:

- Cargo deliveries from north to south will go by rail instead of truck. This will ease traffic on the roads and help reduce air pollution in the Alps;

- The journey time from Zurich to Milan will be cut from 3 hours and 40 minutes to 2 hours and 50 minutes.

^ drilling with the use of ^ drilling and blasting ^ drilling with the use ^

^ a tunnel shield ^ operations ^ of atunnelshield ^

Comparison of length of the tunnels

Gotthard Base Tunnel	57 km
Eurotunnel	50.5 km
Serpuchovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line (the longest Moscow metro line)	41.2 km