Zürich HB

About this audio guide

This guide to Zurich HB opens with a question: how do you build a second train station directly beneath the busiest one in Switzerland without stopping a single train? It follows the roughly one thousand workers, nicknamed the Orange Heroes, who spent seven years excavating the Durchmesserlinie project using the cover method, building the roof first so the historic concourse above kept functioning undisturbed. You'll hear about the tunnel boring machine grinding north toward Oerlikon through unstable, water-logged ground, and the shock-absorbing systems installed to keep passing trains from rattling the streets overhead. Look up at Jakob Friedrich Wanner's eighteen seventy-one arches while you listen; everything else described happened far beneath your feet.