Pajares Base Tunnel
The Pajares Tunnel ( kast.: Túneles de Pajares ) is an under construction railway tunnel in the future high-speed line LAV León - Asturias between the Spanish cities of León and Oviedo. The opening was originally planned for 2009 but had to be moved first in 2014 due to water entering the tunnels, a further shift because of the Euro crisis on 2015 or 2016 is likely.
Location
The Cantabrian Mountains is due to its complex geographical conditions are very difficult to overcome. The existing rail link between Castile and León and Asturias through the Pajares Pass is very curvy and only one lane. With a nearly 25 -km-long twin-tube base tunnel 83 km long mountain route is to be relieved and Asturias are developed with a high-speed line. With the completion of the Pajares tunnel, it will be possible to reduce the journey time between Oviedo and León at a fraction of the previous time required.
History
On 4 March 1994, the Pajares tunnel was added to the infrastructure master plan 1993-2007. The preliminary project was created by the Association Ineco - Geoconsult and approved on 29 January 2003 by the government.
The tunnel was broken with five tunnel boring machines, two worked from the south ( Lot 1 ), two from the north ( Lot 3 and 4), the fifth started from an intermediate attack of Buiza and broke out the escape tunnel before each 4.2 km of each tube in geologically challenging area towards the north broke out ( lot 2).
Building
With a total length of 24.6 kilometers, it is the second longest railway tunnel to the Spanish Guadarrama Tunnel. The tunnel begins in the Spanish region of Castilla y Leon in La Pola de Gordón, traverses the Cantabrian Mountains and ends at Telledo in the neighboring region of Asturias.
The tunnel consists of two individual tubes at a distance of 50 m. Every 400 meters there are junctions that can be used as shelters. Further features of the tunnel 11 km beyond the southern portal via a 400 m long emergency stop ( kast.: Punto de Parada Preferente ), which can be reached via a 5.5 km long access tunnel of Buiza from. Another 2 km long access tunnel leads from Folledo to a point 7.7 km downstream of the south portal. This tunnel was used for the construction of the tunnel, especially, but received as an emergency.
Future of the existing mountain route
It was originally planned to equip the Pajares tunnel with a three rail track and stop the operation on the mountain route completely .. The three-rail could be used by both the standard-gauge high-speed trains as well as freight trains with Iberian broad gauge. Lack of money led to the first decision to appeal only with the limits for a future three-rail, but only to mount the rails of standard gauge, and then to move to the decision, the thresholds for the standard gauge track.
The tunnel is therefore only used by standard-gauge trains. The existing line will remain for the time being for the purposes of freight traffic, to prevent slow freight trains interfere with the high-speed traffic on the new line.
The small-time operators feve calls on the existing line to install a third rail to produce a gap closure between the railway Ferrocarril de La Robla and the various narrow gauge lines in Asturias. But it turned out that the project would be feasible only with a four -rail track and also feve has no suitable locomotives for the cover of the planned coal trains on the mountain line.