A closer look
Progress is beautiful, unless you were a horse-drawn carriage driver whose entire livelihood vanished into a 12-mile hole in a mountain. When the Simplon Tunnel opened in 1906, it dramatically shortened the Orient Express route by bypassing the snowy alpine passes. Overnight, the bustling mountain towns that relied on desperate, freezing tourists needing food and transport were entirely bypassed. The grand achievement of tunnel-induced tourism essentially ghosted entire regional economies just so rich people could sleep through the Alps without waking up.
