On 1st june 2016, the world's longest railway tunnel, the 57 kilometer (about 35.8 miles) long Gotthard Base Tunnel between Rynächt (north of Erstfeld, Uri) and Pollegio (south of Bodio, Ticino) was officially inaugurated. Now we have 14.07 h (2.07 PM) and train 31055 or "VIP 2" left the east bore of the south portal near Pollegio and stopped at the temporary platform, which was built here for this purpose. In the second car, a first class Apm, travelled the heads of the neighboring countries of Switzerland, Angela Merkel from Germany, François Hollande from France, Matteo Renzi from Italy, Christian Kern from Austria and Adrian Hasler from the Principality of Liechtenstein, accompanied by Johann Schneider-Ammann, President of the Federal Council, together with several other guests. The yellow car is the radio measurement car "MEWA12" of SBB Infrastructure, which served for optimized radio transmission from the train including live covering in TV out from the tunnel. In the other cars further guests, officials, journalists etc travelled through the tunnel. The push pull train is pulled by Re 460 #098 with special paint scheme "Gottardo 2016" and has 13 cars including a cab car in the rear. Clearly visible the Gotthard traffic axle with the freeway (Autobahn) A2, two tracks of the Gotthard Base Tunnel line, two tracks of the Gotthard mountain line (over the portal of the new tunnel) and the cantonal road (which was completely closed for several hours for security reasons). The old tunnel portal on the mountain foot is for the 1,2 kilometer long bypass work tunnel, bored from july 2000 to reach the solid rock zone ahead, for further boring towards Faido.
