(The Associated Press circulated the following on December 22.)
VISP, Switzerland — Officials say a train with a technical failure has stopped in the world’s longest overland tunnel and has been evacuated.
A spokesman for Switzerland’s Loetschberg Base Tunnel says the train halted inside the 21-mile (34.6-kilometer) rail link under the Alps.
Hans Martin Schaer says the cause of the failure is not known. But it is connected to the train and not the tunnel. He says all passengers have been ferried out on a substitute train.
Traffic through the tunnel remain blocked as of midday Monday. The blockage was causing short delays through central Switzerland.
The Loetschberg was inaugurated in 2007 after eight years of construction and $3.5 billion in costs. It trims travel between Germany and Italy by over an hour.