All hail the Swiss, they make great cheese and they build record-breaking tunnels.

The Gotthard tunnel is the new champ, the 57km long construction having taken almost two decades to build.

Officials say the tunnel will transport goods previously taken by a million lorries per year, with these facts below from the BBC:

The project, which cost more than $12bn (£8.3bn) to build, was endorsed by Swiss voters in a referendum in 1992. Voters then backed a proposal from environmental groups to move all freight travelling through Switzerland from road to rail two years later.

The completed tunnel travels up to 2.3 km below the surface of the mountains above and through rock that reaches temperatures of 46C.

Engineers had to dig and blast through 73 different kinds of rock, some as hard as granite and others as soft as sugar. More than 28m tonnes of rock was excavated, which was then broken down to help make the concrete used to build the tunnel.

Here’s who it pipped to the title:

And a look at the glorious unveiling:

[source:bbc]