Railway
Railway tunnels are nearly as old as railways. The first one has been built in 1826 on the line between Liverpool and Manchester.
The development of railways in the late 1880's lead also to a development of railway tunnels.
In the recent years the development all over the world of High speed railway lines needed the construction of a large amount of new tunnels, rather long specially in mountaneaous regions, where base tunnel have to be built in order to obtain "valley" railway lines.
The most known tunnels are the two swiss base tunnel, the Lötschberg (34 km) already under operation and the Gothard (57 km) under construction. Two other long tunnels are planned in the Alps, one between Austria and Italy, the Brenner, and one between france and Italy, the Mont Ambin tunnel on the Lyon-Turin railway line.
In Spain, many tunnels have been built in the recent years, the longuest in the Guadarrama tunnel.