Chur – Rorschach railway line

Rorschach-Chur
EuroNight Lake Zurich between Buchs SG and Sevelen In the background Alpstein with the Kreuzberg mountains
Timetable field :	880
Route length:	90.75 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Maximum slope :	20  ‰
Legend SBB - route from St. Gallen S 2 S 3 S 4 SBB lake line from Romanshorn 65.05 Rorschach 399.0 m above sea level M. AB - route to Heiden 62.80 Staad 402.1 m above sea level M. 61.78 Siding Altenrhein 57.83 Rheineck 402.1 m above sea level M. AB route to Walzenhausen 53.82 St. Margrethen end point S 3 402.1 m above sea level M. to Lauterach 51.05 Au SG 405.0 m above sea level M. ehem. RhV - route from Berneck and Diepoldsau 47.93 Heerbrugg 405.6 m above sea level M. former RhV route to Altstätten Rathaus 44.29 Rebstein - Marbach 409.8 m above sea level M. 41.18 Altstätten SG end point S 2 429.7 m above sea level M. former RhV route to Altstätten Rathaus 35.32 Oberriet 420.7 m above sea level M. 30.23 Rüthi SG 425.9 m above sea level M. 24.57 Salez-Sennwald 436.3 m above sea level M. 20.39 Haag - Gams (formerly PV ) 440.9 m above sea level M. 15.87 Buchs SG 447.2 m above sea level M. ÖBB route to Feldkirch 13.76 Räfis-Burgerau 451.5 m above sea level M. 10.95 Sevelen 458.2 m above sea level M. 7.05 Width until 2013 468.8 m above sea level M. 6.59 Neugrüt 470.1 m above sea level M. 4.30 5.42 Trübbach (formerly PV ) 478.8 m above sea level M. Saar Canal (58 m) 1.62 Sargan's loop 483.8 m above sea level M. SBB route from Zurich S 4 -0.21 0.21 Sargans ( wedge station ) end point S 12 481.7 m above sea level M. 5.74 Bad Ragaz 502.1 m above sea level M. former Wartensteinbahn to Wartenstein (funicular) Bridge Rhine Ragaz (129 m), border SG - GR Bridge A13 Maienfeld (73 m) 7.17 Maienfeld 503.6 m above sea level M. 8.58 Rossriet 507.1 m above sea level M. Error profile -0.02 RhB - distance from Davos Platz 12.32 Landquart 523.6 m above sea level M. 16.26 Zizers SBB (formerly PV ) 534.4 m above sea level M. Siding at the Untervaz cement works 19.04 Trimmis 541.5 m above sea level M. Bridge A13 Haldenstein (76 m) 22.83 Haldenstein 562 m above sea level M. Connecting track RhB 25.72 Chur end point S 12 584.6 m above sea level M. RhB route to Arosa RhB route to Thusis (three- rail track)

The Rorschach-Chur railway is a 90.75-kilometer standard-gauge railway line in Switzerland . It belongs to the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and is located in the cantons of St. Gallen and Graubünden in the Alpine Rhine Valley .

Naming

The Rorschach-Chur railway line (also known as the Roschach-Chur railway line) is commonly known as the Rhine Valley Line or Rhine Valley Railway . It consists of the Rorschach-St. Margrethen , St. Margrethen-Sargans , and Sargans-Chur .

history

19th century

Photo from 1923 with the train station (right) and Heerbrugg Castle (left)

Steam train for the 150th anniversary of the Rhine Valley line with Ec 3/5 and E 3/3 between Au and St. Margrethen

With the construction of the Rhine Valley line, the Swiss Southeast Railway , which aimed to build a Lukmanier Railway , began . The beginning of the work carried out by English contractors was unsatisfactory. Due to a lack of financial resources, the Südostbahn was taken over by the United Swiss Railways (VSB), which continued the construction work without interruption.

The VSB opened the section from Rorschach to Rheineck on August 25, 1857 . From June 30th to July 1st, 1858 the section from Rheineck to Chur .

On February 15, 1859, the new Sargans station was opened as a wedge station , along with the section to Murg of the Sargans – Ziegelbrücke railway line . In the same year, the VSB began continuous operations via Ziegelbrücke and Rapperswil to Zurich. The section between Sargans and Chur has served traffic from Zurich and St. Gallen ever since.

The Rhine Valley Line would have become a lucrative access route if an Eastern Alpine Railway had been built.

20th century

On July 1, 1902, the VSB was nationalized with a route length of 269 kilometers and its routes have belonged to the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) ever since.

Wooden bridge over the Rhine near Ragaz

Until 1928, because of the unregulated Rhine , the railway crossed the Alpine Rhine between Bad Ragaz and Maienfeld with a covered wooden bridge ; it was the last bridge of its kind in the Swiss railway network.

On December 15, 1927, as part of the ongoing electrification program of the SBB, the Buchs - Sargans section was electrified with 15  kilovolt 16⅔ Hertz alternating voltage . About six months later, on May 11, 1928, electrical operation began on the Sargans – Chur section. On May 15, 1934, the section from Rorschach to St. Margrethen and on September 21 of the same year the last section from St. Margrethen to Buchs came under the contact wire.

On December 1, 1920, the second track between Rheineck and St. Margrethen was put into operation. The Rorschach – Staad section followed on May 15, 1930 and the Staad – Rheineck section on August 12, 1930. The section between Sargans and Bad Ragaz has been double- tracked since December 20, 1957 . Between December 15, 1970 and April 10, 1973, the line between Landquart and Chur was also expanded to double-track. The line from Weite-Wartau to Trübbach was extended to double track on September 17, 1982.

On May 29, 1983, together with the partial commissioning of the new safety system from Trübbach, a loop to Sargans station was opened, a new 5.3 kilometer loop. This connecting curve was built with freight traffic in mind and avoids a hairpin in Trübbach. It is also used by the St. Gallen S-Bahn (line 4), the Transalpin and its successors, and the Railjet .

On June 6, 1993 the Rossriet – Landquart section and on November 8, 1994 the Bad Ragaz – Rossriet section became double-lane. Since then, the section between Sargans and Chur has been completely two-lane. The line between St. Margrethen and Buchs is still single-track.

Accidents

Burned out cistern wagons after the train accident in Au SG

On October 30, 1975, a sleeping car train with which the SBB was carrying out braking test runs for the German Federal Railroad (DB) between Chur and Landquart collided with a freight train consisting of tank cars . The accident claimed a human life. Due to a misunderstanding, the entry signal for the test train was set to "Stop", although the braking force was not sufficient for a stop. The only two-year-old Re 4/4 II 11282 locomotive of the test train burned out and had to be scrapped.

On September 19, 1988, immediately after the exit signal from Au SG station, eight kerosene- laden tank cars derailed from a freight train traveling in the direction of St. Margrethen . Some of the kerosene caught fire, a large amount spilled into the Rheintaler inland canal and drifted down the canal while burning. The cause of the derailment was the broken hub of an overheated wagon wheel.

21st century

Rheintal-Express with the rolling stock used until 2013 between Trübbach and Sargans.

With the 2013 timetable change, the range of inter - regional and regional transport services was comprehensively expanded and the St. Gallen S-Bahn lines were fundamentally redesigned. The St. Gallen and Sargans nodes have since formed the basis for the S-Bahn timetable, which offers half-hourly intervals on practically all lines with densities in the core area. To improve the offer, schedule-dependent infrastructure expansions were necessary. The travel time of the Rheintal-Express (REX) has been reduced by ten minutes to just under an hour, so that better connections can be offered in Sargans and Chur. To do this, it was necessary to accelerate the Rheintal Express, to increase the speed in sections to 160 km / h and to dispense with intermediate stops. In addition to the stop in St. Fiden, there are also no stops in Rheineck and Bad Ragaz. In 2018, the InterRegio 13, which now continues to Zurich, dissolved the Rheintal-Express, but the driving position was retained.

Incidents

On August 13, 2016, a 27-year-old Swiss attacked several passengers on an S4 train near Salez station with a knife and a burning liquid, seriously injuring six people, including a six-year-old child. The perpetrator himself suffered severe burns and was dragged out of the burning car by a passer-by at Salez train station. Two passengers and the perpetrator died from their injuries in the hospital, the motive of the perpetrator is unclear.

Route description

Railjet passing through what was then the Weite stop

The Chur – Rorschach railway is an important rail link in Switzerland. It leads in the Alpine Rhine Valley through the Chur and St. Gallen Rhine valleys from Chur to Sargans via St. Margrethen to Rorschach.

The Rhine Valley line begins at Chur train station , where the standard-gauge line is connected to the Domat / Ems – Chur three - rail track of the Rhaetian Railway (RhB). The route initially runs parallel to the Chur – Landquart line of the RhB northwards to Haldenstein , from where the two routes to Zizers run between the Rhine and the A13 motorway . From Zizers, the SBB line leads directly to Landquart , where it meets the RhB line leading to Davos , which had made a detour to Igis . Between Maienfeld and Bad Ragaz , the Rhine Valley line crosses the A13 and the Rhine, which here forms the canton border between Graubünden and St. Gallen. The section to Maienfeld is the only standard gauge line in the Canton of Graubünden . From Bad Ragaz the trains run parallel to the A13 to the Sargans wedge station , where the route to Zurich and St. Gallen splits.

RABe 511 as Rheintal-Express Chur – Wil at the stopover in St. Margrethen.

In Sargans, the starting point of the kilometrage , the trains coming from Ziegelbrücke follow the A13 via the Sargans loop to Trübbach in order to avoid a hairpin. The short double-lane section between Trübbach and Neugrüt enables train crossings , otherwise the route to St. Margrethen is single-lane and no longer runs along the A13 and the Rhine, but has its own route between the motorway and the valley slope. In Buchs SG , the Rhine Valley line meets from coming Feldkirch range of Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB). The trains that continue from Sargans via the Arlbergbahn change direction in Buchs, which is used for freight trains to switch locomotives.

From Buchs to Oberriet , the Rhine Valley line more or less follows the Werdenberger and Rheintaler inland canals and to Altstätten the Hauptstrasse 13 . The Altstätten – Gais line of the Appenzeller Bahnen (AB) has ended in Altstätten Stadt since 1975, and the connection between the two Altstätter train stations has been ensured by a short bus line operated by the Rheintalische Verkehrsbetriebe . The Rhine Valley route leads in a direct line to Au SG to reach St. Margrethen along the inland canal and the motorway, where it meets the ÖBB route coming from Bregenz . Thanks to the same power system from SBB and ÖBB, there is often no change of traction for international trains in St. Margrethen . The EuroCity trains from Zurich via St. Gallen to Munich are hauled by a Re 421 approved in Germany and Austria as far as Lindau , DB Cargo runs its Kornwestheim –Rorschach– Wolfurt freight trains with its own class 185 locomotives that are suitable for Switzerland .

From St. Margrethen to Rheineck , the now double-lane Rhine Valley line follows the A1 motorway and the Old Rhine . In Rheineck, the Rheineck-Walzenhausen-Bahn enables the AB to take a detour to the Vorderländer mountain resort. The Rhine Valley line leads to Staad and along the shores of Lake Constance to Rorschach , where the SBB trains can continue on the route to St. Gallen or the lake line to Romanshorn and the AB route to Heiden .

business

For the ring line S4, the Südostbahn sets drive trains of the type flirtation a

Since December 13, 2009, two of the three daily Eurocitys to and from Austria have been replaced by a Railjet . All in all, this results in a 40-minute journey between Zurich and Vienna, among other things through a shorter turning time in Buchs. The third connection, the former Transalpin, was also switched to Railjet in June 2010, but in contrast to the first two replaced trains, it operates in double traction. Nine day and night trains a day now connect Zurich with Austria, all of which stop in Sargans and Buchs. The section from Rorschach to St. Margrethen is used by the Eurocity Zurich – Munich, which operates four times a day.

In long-distance traffic, the InterRegio 13, which runs from Zurich via St. Gallen to Chur, runs every hour on the route. In regional traffic , the S4 of the Südostbahn also runs every hour between Sargans and Rorschach as a ring line with stops at all stations. The route between Altstätten and St. Gallen is served by lines S1 and S2 of the St. Gallen S-Bahn . Overall, this results in two trains per hour between St. Gallen and Altstätten and even three between Heerbrugg and St. Gallen. On the Sargans – Chur section, the attractive connections from Zurich are supplemented with two InterCitys and a RegioExpress with the S12 Sargans – Chur.

Freight transport

The volume of goods traffic between Sargans and Buchs is high, as this is the transit route to Vorarlberg and on to Austria . The trains from France ( Mulhouse ) and the Swiss Limmattal marshalling yard to the Hall in Tirol marshalling yard use the route via the Buchs border crossing. The crossing at St. Margrethen is only used by trains to and from the Wolfurt marshalling yard . The Buchs marshalling yard serves the entire Swiss Rhine Valley.

Since 2004, DB Cargo has been running freight trains from Stuttgart Kornwestheim via the electrified lake line and on via Rorschach and St. Margrethen to the Wolfurt marshalling yard in order to avoid the use of diesel locomotives on the Friedrichshafen – Lindau and Ulm – Friedrichshafen lines .

See also

• Public transport in the canton of St. Gallen

Web links

• Data on the route on schienenverkehr-schweiz.ch

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ via Sargan's loop
2. ↑ The current community Bad Ragaz was called until 1937 Ragaz
3. ↑ Otto Frei, Dr. Benedikt Fehr, Hans Fehr: Widnau - past and present . Ed .: Political community Widnau, local community Widnau. Rheintaler Druckerei und Verlag AG, Heerbrugg 1982, Die Eisenbahn, p. 142-144 .
4. ↑ Commissioning of the new track on September 1st, subsequent renovation of the old Quelle track; EA 8/81 p. 560.
5. ↑ EA 8/93, p. 296.
6. ↑ L'accident de chemin de fer. (No longer available online.) In: Le Temps - archives historiques. Journal de Genève, Genève, November 1, 1975, p. 7 , archived from the original on December 2, 2013 ; Retrieved November 17, 2013 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ^ David Schiesser: Derailment of a kerosene freight train in Au (SG) on Sept. 19, 1988. A historical guest article. In: Blog 24 ÖV - Switzerland - Europe. Marcel Manhart, March 4, 2011, accessed April 1, 2015 . 
8. ↑ Canton of St. Gallen: For a faster train in the Rhine Valley ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/angriff-zug-schweiz-107.html
10. ↑ Southeastern Switzerland: 17-year-old Salez victim has died
11. ↑ 40 minutes faster in Vienna with the Railjet. In: Tagesanzeiger / Newsnetz. Retrieved November 13, 2009 . 
12. ^ Hermann Bürgi : Freight train traffic on the lake line Konstanz-Romanshorn-Rorschach. Interpellation in the Council of States . The Federal Assembly - The Swiss Parliament, December 8, 2008, accessed on June 1, 2017 .