![]() ![]() Mont Cenis, after which the tunnel is named, lies about fifteen miles north- east of the Col de Fréjus. The road cost £300,000, and the tunnel almost exactly ten times as much. ![]() The tunnel runs between French and Italian territory under the Col de Fréjus, the pass over which a military road was built, at Napoleon’s order, by the engineer Fabbroni in 1802- 10. The Mont Cenis Tunnel is 8 miles 832 yards long and forms part of the direct rail route between Paris and Brindisi. With the mountains they pierce rising thousands of feet above the tunnel entrances, it seems almost incredible that there were men bold enough to conceive such projects, or patient and hardy enough to execute them. Driven through the solid fabric of mountains whose summits are crowned with everlasting snow, they run thousands of feet underneath passes whose steep, tortuous slopes had been painfully trodden, ever since the early centuries of European civilization, by pilgrims, merchants and armies. ![]() Gotthard, Simplon and Lötschberg - form a group which, for length and interest, is unrivalled anywhere. THE four great Alpine tunnels - the Mont Cenis, St. Electrically operated curtains close the entrances when trains have passed. Two parallel tunnels, about 56 feet apart, were driven, only one immediately being enlarged to full size, 13 ft 7- in wide at floor level and 18 feet high. The tunnel is about 12¼ miles long, and was begun in 1898. ![]() THE SWISS ENTRANCE to the Simplon Tunnel, which links Switzerland and Italy. Piercing the immense barriers of the Alps are four long tunnels - the Mont Cenis, St Gotthard, Simplon and Lötschberg - which were, at the time of their building, unprecedented triumphs of engineering skill ![]()
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