Rail traffic resumes in Gotthard rail tunnel after fire

A view inside the Gotthard Basel Tunnel at Faido, 2015. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Freight trains have been circulating again in Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel since 2pm on Monday. Rail traffic had been suspended for six hours after a vehicle caught fire early in the morning near the tunnel exit in southern Switzerland.

Swiss public radio, SRF, reported on Monday that a vehicle belonging to a security firm had caught fire at around 8:20am at the end of the tunnel exit near Faido in canton Ticino.

In all, 29 workers were evacuated on a rescue train.

Ten of them had to be taken to hospital after inhaling smoke, the Ticino cantonal police said. Rail freight traffic was suspended for six hours. The cause of the fire is being investigated, the police told Keystone-SDA.

+ Gotthard Base Tunnel to fully resume service in September 2024

Since the freight train derailment inside the Gotthard Base Tunnel on August 10, 2023, access to the tunnel has been restricted. 

+ Why is the Gotthard Base Tunnel so important?

Typically, from Friday to Sunday evenings, only around 30 trains travel through the tunnel. Passenger trains were not affected by the incident on Monday, as during the week they pass via a longer Gotthard rail route until September 2024.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].