Compagnie de l'Ouest Suisse

Ouest Suisse (OS)
54.85 Vaumarcus 39.13 Yverdon 6.93 Bussigny 4.51 Renens 0.00 0.00 Lausanne 12.50 Morges 29.34 Villeneuve 47.56 Bex 50.07 Les Paluds at Saint-Maurice 43.45 Celigny GE 47.00 Coppet VD 51.95 Versoix GE 60.26 Geneva Without intermediate stations and without connecting railways. Dashed: Sections of the GV or LFB

The Compagnie de l'Ouest des chemins de fer Suisse (OS), Ouest Suisse for short or German Westbahn , was a Swiss railway company that existed from 1852 to 1871.

The OS played a key role in building the railway network in western Switzerland and thus laid the foundation for connecting Switzerland to the railways in the direction of Mediterranean countries .

history

Foundation and construction

Ouest Suisse train between Lausanne and Renens , shortly after the line opened in 1856.

Ouest Suisse share

Morges train station with a waiting Ouest Suisse train

In 1852 the company was granted the concession to build a line between Solothurn and Aargau, but the project was soon given up and the concession canceled. In 1854, the Compagnie de l'Ouest des chemins de fer Suisse received the Vaudois concession to build a railway connection from Lausanne to Yverdon , which was to continue to Bern via Payerne and Murten . Because of the Oron Railway conflict , only the line to Yverdon has been built for the time being. In May 1855 it opened the line from Bussigny-près-Lausanne to Yverdon and on July 1, 1855 from Bussigny via Renens to Morges as part of the Jura foot line .

On May 5, 1856, the company was able to open two new sections: it connected Renens with the canton capital of Lausanne and handed over the Bussigny – Morges line to its operations. On June 10, 1857 of section followed by Villeneuve at the upper Lake Geneva end of Bex in the Rhone Valley . The ship had to be used between Lausanne and Villeneuve until 1861. On November 7th, 1859 the section from Yverdon to Vaumarcus was opened, with which the OS was connected to the network of Franco-Suisse (FS).

Now the railway was looking for a connection to the Paris – Lyon – Mediterranean Railway (PLM) in Geneva and opened the Morges – Coppet line on April 14, 1858 and that from Coppet to Versoix on April 21 . From June 25, OS found a connection to Geneva with the opening of the Versoix – Geneva line of the Genève – Versoix Railway (GV), which merged 6 days later into the Chemin de fer Lausanne – Friborg – Berne (LFB).

On November 1, 1860, the line followed from Bex to Les Paludes near Saint-Maurice with a connection to the line from Bouveret - Martigny of the Ligne d'Italie (LI), which is striving for the Simplon . On April 2, 1861, the gap on the shores of Lake Geneva from Lausanne to Villeneuve was closed.

Operating group Suisse-Occidentale

Locomotive No. 12 of the OS, built in 1857

The connection from Geneva via Lausanne to Neuchâtel was in the hands of three competing railway companies, which were often at odds with each other. The Lausanne – Friborg – Berne Railway (LFB) owned the short section from Geneva to Versoix, the line from Versoix to Vaumarcus belonged to the OS and the continuation to Neuchâtel was in the hands of Franco-Suisse. Because of their financial difficulties, after lengthy negotiations, the three railways in western Switzerland founded an operating group on January 1, 1865 called the " Association des chemins de fer de la Suisse Occidentale ". The company became the Laurent-Bergeron et Comp. transfer. The financial situation of the three railways in western Switzerland stabilized and from 1868 the operating group was able to pay a modest dividend every year .

On January 1st, 1872, the Suisse-Occidentale (SO) was formed as a stock corporation , in which the Ouest Suisse was fully integrated together with the LFB and the FS. With a network length of 315 kilometers, the then largest railway company in Switzerland was created.

Rolling stock

List of locomotives that were used by the OS:

designation	OS no.	Surname	SO no. from 1865	SO / SOS no. from 1871	JS no. from 1890	SBB no. from 1903	Manufacturer	Construction year	discarded	comment	image
- (B 2/3)	1-5 (26-30)	→ Main article: OS B 2/3 (St. Léonard)	-	-	-	-	St. Léonard	1854	1864
from 1881: IV from 1887: C3T from 1902: D 3/3	1'	La Vaux	51	101	501	3351	Cail	1858		1916 to Germany
	2 '	La Cote	52	102	502	3699			1913	see below
	3 '	L´ Yvorne	53	103	503	-			1901
	4 '	L'Industry	54	104	504	3368			1910
	5 '	L'Agriculture	55	105	505	3369			1913
from 1873: I from 1887: A2T from 1902: B 2/3	6-20	→ Main article: OS B 2/3 (Karlsruhe)	6-20	6-20	51-62, 801	-	Karlsruhe	1856-58	1888-1902
from 1873: I from 1881: II from 1887: A2T from 1902: B 2/3	21-25	→ Main article: OS B 2/3 (Cail)	21-25	1-5	69-73	-	Cail	1858	1890-1892

The D 3/3 No. 503 was the first composite steam locomotive in Switzerland.

The D 3/3 No. 502 was fundamentally rebuilt in 1888 by the SOS in the Yverdon workshop as the only machine in the series. It received a new boiler and was the first locomotive in Switzerland to be equipped with a compound drive. The open driver's cab, protected only by a small umbrella, was replaced by a driver's cab.

swell

• A century of Swiss railways 1847–1947 . Verlag Huber & Co. AG, Frauenfeld 1947; Volume I, pp. 79-80
• Placid Weissenbach : The railway system in Switzerland. (PDF 14.8 MB) First part. History of the Railway System. 1913, p. 66 , accessed February 1, 2014 . 
• Hans G. Wägli: Swiss Rail Network . General Secretariat SBB, Bern 1980.
• Alfred Moser: The steam operation of the Swiss railways 1847-1966 . 4th updated edition, Birkhäuser, Stuttgart 1967.

Remarks

1. ^ Journal de Genève, December 17, 1852
2. ^ Association of Western Switzerland Railways
3. ^ French: Industry
4. ^ French: Agriculture