Albula Tunnel

As the highest Alpine crossing of a standard-gauge railway at 1'800 metres above sea level, the Albula Tunnel, with its 5'864 metres, stands as an impressive testament to the pioneering era of railway construction. With the simplest of means, the rock and geologically sensitive layers of limestone and dolomite had to be penetrated. Construction of the tunnel took four years, and today it can be traversed in just four minutes as a matter of course.

July 1902

1'316 men were working on the Albula Tunnel — 984 inside the tunnel and 332 outside, where, in addition to the barracks, a hospital had been set up. And not without reason: the tunnel construction caused countless injuries. Twenty-one workers lost their lives due to explosions, falling rocks, and wagon collisions. Work on the Albula Tunnel lasted from 1899 to 1903. Since then, the tunnel has passed through the mountain as the highest Alpine crossing of a standard-gauge railway at over 1'800 metres above sea level. Up to 950 metres of rock still tower above the tunnel tube. But what does “rock” mean here? While solid Albula granite dominates the mountain’s interior, to the north it is preceded by a layer of wet clay and limestone shale about one kilometre thick. And for another geologically sensitive layer of cellular dolomite, workers with their drilling machines needed eleven months — even though the layer was only 110 metres thick. The workers advancing from the south also faced challenges: a rockfall zone required them to carefully support unstable rock fragments inside the mountain during excavation. Today, little of these difficulties is still noticeable.