There is no reason why elephants cannot be placed in a freight train if they were to cross the Alps in a subterranean journey made possible by modern human engineering expertise and ingenuity.
There is no reason why elephants cannot be placed in a freight train if they were to cross the Alps in a subterranean journey made possible by modern human engineering expertise and ingenuity. The famous journeys the pachyderms made as a war corps through the Alps for the great Carthaginian military strategist Hannibal Barca would certainly have been more arduous and, in fact, only a few elephants survived the march in the 3rd century BCE to Italy. Today, the Gotthard tunnel, the world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel, promises a far cleaner environment and a lifeline for the Alpine region by replacing a million lorries in the carrying of goods across Europe.
The 57-km, twin-bore Gotthard, which surpasses Japan’s 53.9-km Seikan rail tunnel and the Channel Tunnel, which completely revolutionised how people travel by linking France and the United Kingdom under the English Channel, is yet another feather to the cap of human thinking. As a work in progress, this one was phenomenal as it took 20 years, $12 billion and nine lives, and there is some way to go yet before freight begins passing through.
Switzerland’s fame for precision engineering may be tested in popularising such environmentally-sensitive movement for a whole range of goods, from Italian wine to German cars, besides tourists from the Netherlands through to Switzerland and Italy more quickly. The tunnel also stresses European unity, which in fact may have inspired French President Francois Hollande to get his message across about the UK referendum this month in an aside during the tunnel inaugural when he said European unity is good for Britain too.
