page_title: Schöllenen Gorge
section_title: Modern engineering
hierarchical_section_title: Schöllenen Gorge / History / Modern engineering
caption_attribution_description: English: Leaning bridge of the Schöllenen railway near the devil's bridge; Uri, Switzerland. Deutsch: Hangbrücke der Schöllenenbahn bei der Teufelsbrücke; Uri, Schweiz.
context_page_description: Schöllenen Gorge is a gorge formed by the upper Reuss in the Swiss canton of Uri between the towns of Göschenen to the north and Andermatt to the south. It provides access to the St Gotthard Pass.
  Enclosed by sheer granite walls, its road and railway require several spectacular bridges and tunnels, of which the most famous is a stone bridge known as the Teufelsbrücke.
context_section_description: A replacement cut stone bridge was planned and executed by Karl Emanuel Müller (1804-1869), the cantonal engineer in charge of the stretch of the new Gotthard road between Göschenen and Hospental. Construction took 10 years, and was the subject of a famous painting by Karl Blechen in 1830-32. The new bridge allowed (single-lane) motorized traffic, opening the Gotthard Pass to automobiles. The 1595 bridge fell out of use after the completion of the second bridge in 1830, and it collapsed in 1888.
  The Gotthard railway project of 1872 avoided the Schöllenen Gorge by building the Gotthard Rail Tunnel under it, but the Schöllenenbahn, a rack railway, was built through the gorge in 1917. The modern road bridge and tunnel date to 1958. It served as the main road across the Central Alps during the 1960s and 1970s, but since the construction of the Gotthard Road Tunnel in 1980 it has only been of regional importance, connecting Uri with canton of Valais and the Surselva.
caption: Schöllenenbahn railway bridge and tunnel
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