3-034-652 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the Mont Cenis Tunnel: the first train, 1871. Railway tunnel - 3.7 km (8.5 miles) in length - in the European Alps, linking Bardonecchia in Italy to Modane in France. 'The Mont Cenis Tunnel, as it is still called, from Modane, in Savoy, to Bardonnéche, in Piedmont, bored through seven miles and a half thickness of mountain,...by the science and skill of native engineers and the labour of native workmen, since 1857, was formally opened on Sunday week. The tunnel had been traversed by several previous trains a day or two before, so that the party from Turin, coming by the "inauguration" train, easily went through from Bardonnéche to Modane in less than half an hour, the train being actually in the tunnel only twenty-one minutes...The heat in no part of the tunnel exceeded 76 deg. Fahrenheit; its average was 65 deg.; there was no smoke, and all the carriages kept their windows open. The first special train, at half-past ten o'clock, conveyed the Italian Ministers of State, the Syndic or Mayor of Turin, and other high official personages, to meet the French Minister of Commerce, M. Victor Lefranc, M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, and other distinguished Frenchmen, at Modane'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.