The Marlengo tunnel on the Merano-Malles Venosta railway line in South Tyrol will be ready for electrification thanks to the use of the Ballastless system Arianna.
The Infrastructure Manager STA (South Tyrol Transport Structure) on behalf of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano has recently awarded to Wegh Group Spathe the tender for the adaptation work.
The current section of the tunnel doesn't provide the necessary height for installing the overhead line. Two possible solutions: the widening of the section, expensive and complex to make, or lowering the rolling plan, much easier to achieve by eliminating the ballast and replacing it with the Arianna platforms.
However, this is an important work because the Marlengo gallery is one of the most delicate points in the whole line. The gallery is a helix with a very narrow radius, just 200 meters and steeply sloping.
Works, that will start in January 2018, taking about 3 months, thanks to the adoption of Arianna's Wegh Group technology, require a much less expensive investment than the enlargement of the tunnel section and a shorter traffic interruption on the line.
The Arianna system developed by Wegh Group has been successfully used in Italy for over 30 years both in railway and tramway.
