Swiss open longest, deepest rail tunnel

THE world’s longest and deepest railway tunnel has officially opened to link Switzerland’s north with its south, running an amazing 57km through the Swiss Alps at a depth in places 2.3 kilometres below the tips of the highest mountains above it.

Construction of the Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT), which is actually two parallel single-line tunnels, began in 1999 and took seventeen years to complete at a cost the equivalent of 16.5 billion Australian dollars.

And on December 11 it officially went into use with high speed passenger trains flashing through it at speeds of up to an incredible 250kmh on an almost-flat route from Erstfeld in the north to Bodio in the south.



And those trains take just 17 minutes to cover the whopping 57km length, with another tunnel to open in 2020 meaning for a reduction then of over an hour in current rail travel time between the major cities of Zurich, Lugano and Milan.

But the new GBT is not just a time-saver for rail passengers – Swiss Federal Railways say the tunnel will be used by new freight trains as well, saving an incredible 1-million lorry journeys a year on roads through the Swiss Alps, thus reducing environmental damage enormously.

FOOTNOTE: When the Swiss Federal Railways decided to offer 1,000 free tickets on the first official train through the Tunnel last Sunday, they held a lottery to pick the lucky 1,000 travellers – and over 160,000 locals rushed to buy tickets in the lottery in the hope of getting one of those 1,000 seats.

Blog post courtesy David Ellis.

AA Gill's final column for Gourmet Traveller

AA Gill's final column for Gourmet Traveller: The travel writer has become a destination – just when he needs it most, the world decides to pay AA Gill a return visit.

Getting high in Dubai

Next time you’re thinking to yourself how boring it is washing the home windows, give a thought to the blokes whose job it is to wash those of the world’s tallest building, the 830-metre high Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Because these 36 hardy souls face a daunting 24,348 individual windows covering some 120,000 square metres, or roughly six-and-a-half times the size of the Sydney Cricket Ground, and it takes them close to four months to clean the lot – after which they take a short break, then start the job all over again.

And they do it in often howling winds, temperatures reaching into the top-40s under a cloudless sky, sand storms that can swirl around the lower levels… and at their highest point with the ground more than three-quarters of a kilometre below them.

It takes these men close to four months to clean the 24,348 windows
f the world’s tallest building, and when they finish they start all over again. (Wikimedia)

These cleaners, who use nothing more than traditional squeegees and buckets of soapy water, dangle in harnesses from Australian designed and built cage machines that move horizontally and vertically on special tracks around the building, and wear “moon suits” for protection against the searing heat and winds.

And interestingly they say they never tire of the view from their lofty eyrie, in particular watching the 250 aircraft including some eighty-five A380s of the local Emirates Airlines, plus other world operators, as they fly below them into and out of the nearby Dubai Airport.



The world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, reaches more than 750m into the sky, and cost US$1.5b to complete and open in 2010. (Burj Khalifa Travel)

At 830 metres high, or nearly three times that of Paris’s Eiffel Tower and twice as high as New York’s Empire State Building, the Burj Khalifa was opened in January 2010 at a cost of 1.5-billion United States dollars.

Courtesy of Get Up & Go guest blogger David Ellis.

New Hotel Windsor Will Deliver Melbourne's First Six-Star Hotel

Work will begin on Melbourne's first six-star hotel in the New Year following the selection of a preferred contractor for the $350 million redevelopment of the Hotel Windsor.

Windsor director Mr Adi Halim announced today that the preferred builder was the Australian-based company Built, in partnership with the Japanese construction giant Obayashi.

“The Built and Obayashi partnership is the perfect addition to the Windsor project with their combined experience in heritage restoration and great hotel projects around the world,” Mr Halim said.

Mr Halim said the construction partnership brought the perfect team for a project that would bring new levels of service to Australian hotel industry and restore the Windsor to its position as one of the world's great Victorian-era grand hotels.

“They join the architects Denton Corker Marshall who have designed some of Australia's most iconic buildings and have been awarded the Jorn Utzon Award for international architecture twice for the Australian pavilion in Venice and the Stonehenge Visitors' Centre in the UK.

Also on board for interior design is David Collins Studio in London, who have been responsible for some of England's finest residences and hotels.

Mr Halim said the growing inbound tourism to Australia, particularly to Melbourne and Sydney, has created a significant demand for accommodation at the ultra-luxury level commonly found in Europe and Asia. “The Windsor will deliver that for the first time in Melbourne,” he said.

“The Windsor is an all-suite property and the definition of suite goes beyond the size of the rooms.  It is expressed through personalised service at every touchpoint of the guest's visit.”

Features of the redeveloped Windsor are:

• 279 luxurious suites across the heritage wing and the new contemporary annexes, all serviced by butlers.
• A two-bedroom, 439 square-metre Royal Penthouse which occupies three levels in the heritage wing with its own private lift access, private SPA and outdoor terraces overlooking Parliament House and the gardens.
• A three-bedroom Presidential Penthouse which occupies 745 square metres over the three top floors of the new tower. It features a private study/library, spacious living and dining space, home cinema, SPA and cellar.
• The entire precinct will be connected through fibre infrastructure.
• A Tea Lounge and Tea Bar to continue the Windsor tradition of High Tea – a Melbourne's institution for over 133 years.
• A “secret garden” in the Heritage wing is going to be revealed for the first time.
• A spectacular rejuvenation of some of the Windsor heritage gems, including the Grand Ballroom, the heritage stairwell and the colonnade on Spring Street.
• A dining and lifestyle precinct which include restaurants, lounges, bars and a unique SPA concept.
• Mr Halim said that while the new hotel's facilities would be superb, the real point of difference would be in the personalised service – inherent rather than obvious, understated rather than over the top, a seamless level of service from pre-arrival until long after guests depart.

“Our vision is to bring the grand hotel of Marvellous Melbourne back to the city that has been voted World's Most Livable City for 6 years in a row,” Mr Halim said.

Work on the redevelopment will begin in the first quarter of 2017 and be completed by the end of 2019.

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Halloween ghost story

Sarah’s haunting love for her brother

In his continuing search for the more weird and wondrous in this world, Get Up & Go guest blogger David Ellis says that bizarrely, people in London still claim today they’ve been asked by Sarah Whitehead the same repeated question: “Have you seen my brother?”

Bizarrely, because Sarah’s brother was hanged in London in 1812 for forgery at The Bank of England where he worked, and Sarah herself died 25 years later.

But to this day, people swear they’ve been stopped near the bank on Threadneedle Street by a little old lady dressed in widow’s weeds of long black gown and black veil from another era, and asked that question…

Knowing how close Sarah was to her brother Paul (often misidentified in the media as Philip,) family members withheld from her that he had been hanged, and she began going regularly to the bank to ask his whereabouts when he didn’t return to the home that they shared.

No one would say, until a clerk finally blurted out the truth, and at that moment Sarah’s mind snapped. She donned widow’s weeds and every day for six years returned asking to see Paul, ultimately also demanding money she said the bank now owed her.

In 1818 the bank agreed to pay her a significant amount on condition she not visit them again, and Sarah agreed. But after her death, her ghost – dubbed The Black Nun – began appearing regularly in the bank and along Threadneedle Street, with scores of sightings of her continuing to this day, 179 years after her death.

And each time she politely asks those she encounters the same question: “Have you seen my brother?” and when told “No,” simply vanishes…

This takes trains to new lengths

A freight train from Yiwu in eastern China to Madrid in Spain takes three weeks to cover more than 10,000 kilometres in eight countries – or over twice the distance from Sydney to Perth and back, making it the longest freight train journey in the world.

First run in November 2014 the YXE International Container Train has so far made more than thirty such trips, each time carrying around 80 containers packed with Chinese-made toys, tradesmen’s hand-tools, computer parts, kitchen gadgets, clothing, stationery and fashion trinkets for Madrid’s outdoor markets.

About to leave on the world’s now-longest freight train journey,
the Yiwu (eastern China) to Madrid freight train will
cover 10,000+ kilometres in three weeks.

And returning with Spanish-made olive oil, wine, sunflower oil and cured ham for an increasingly affluent Chinese market-place.

Passing through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany and France, the Yiwu-Madrid freight train is, in fact, four separate trains, as all 80-plus containers on board have to be moved to different freight wagons hauled by different locomotives on three occasions due to differing rail gauges in those other countries.

But despite this, the train still takes just half the six weeks it would take to move those containers by sea.

And Yiwu, where the journey begins, is the world’s biggest centre for fake goods –with Chinese-made counterfeits of countless of the world’s top names and brands on offer at its vast wholesale market-place.

Courtesy of Guest blogger David Ellis