Tailored Solutions for Safety-Installations in the Loetschberg Tunnel - A Project with Importance for the Trans-European Rail Traffic

The Loetschberg base tunnel was the largest project for the Swiss railway infrastructure in the last five years. With a length of 34,6 km it is the third longest tunnel in the world at present. The maximum speed allowed to drive is 250 km/h. The project comprised four interlocking stations, ETCS Level 2 and additional automatic functions to handle the traffic through this tunnel in an optimized way. To fulfill all the safety requirements and the challenges of reliability and maintainability of this very long tunnel a lot new functions were to be realized in each of the mentioned systems. Following a unified approach using certified hardware and middleware and enhancing the scope of test to a total system simulation these demands were met. This article focuses on the challenges for the interlocking system LockTrac 6131 ELEKTRA.