Company de la Ligne d'Italie
The Compagnie de la Ligne d'Italie (LdI), Ligne d'Italie for short , also known as the Walliserbahn , was a Swiss railway company that had existed since 1859. In 1874 the Ligne d'Italie was transferred to the Compagnie du Simplon (S). The Compagnie du Simplon or Ligne du Simplon , shortly Simplon , German and Simplonbahn called, came in 1881 by the merger of Suisse Occidentale (SO).
history
Ligne d'Italie
Although the construction of the St. Gingolph – Saint-Maurice – Brig line was technically easy to implement, the Valais government did not succeed in attracting Swiss investors to build the railway. The share capital came from France. The driving force behind the project was the speculator Count Adrien de Lavalette, who in 1853 received the concession for a railway from Le Bouveret to Sion .
The aim of the Ligne d'Italie company, founded in 1856, was to connect French-speaking Switzerland with Italy with a railway line through the canton of Valais and the Simplon . The connection to Geneva and France was planned along the southern shore of Lake Geneva .
Only after repeated requests did de Lavalette tackle the construction work. The Ligne d'Italie was able to open its first section from Le Bouveret at the southeastern end of Lake Geneva via Saint-Maurice to Martigny on July 14, 1859. From there, the track reached Sion on May 10, 1860. When the Ouest Suisse opened the last section of its route from Lausanne to Les Paluds near Saint-Maurice on April 2, 1861 , the Ligne d'Italie had a connection to the Swiss rail network.
Only after some time was the Ligne d'Italie able to open the next section from Sion to Sierre on October 15, 1868 , increasing the total length of its railway line to 79.5 km.
The company, which opened up the then very agricultural canton of Valais, was not a success. In addition, Savoy entered the French state in 1860, and with the opening of the Mont-Cenis tunnel in 1871, a direct rival line was created from Lyon to Turin . The Ligne d'Italie was liquidated in 1871 and a new company was formed under the same name.
Compagnie du Simplon
The LI had to be forcibly liquidated for the second time and went to the new company Compagnie du Simplon (S) on June 1, 1874 at the symbolic price of 202,422 francs plus 500,000 francs deposit . The shareholders lost all capital and the total construction costs of almost 25 million francs.
The Suisse-Occidentale (SO) took care of the Compagnie du Simplon . On June 1, 1877, the route was extended from Sierre to Leuk and on July 1, 1878 to the provisional terminus at Brig. The length of the line was now 116.9 km.
Although tunnel projects were repeatedly developed to extend the railway through the Simplon to Domodossola , the financing did not materialize for the time being. The line remained a branch line and operating results were insufficient to cover the interest obligations. Nevertheless, the Simplon Railway led to significant economic progress in the Alpine canton.
On July 1, 1881, the Compagnie du Simplon was bought by Suisse-Occidentale, which then changed its name to Suisse-Occidentale-Simplon (SOS). On June 1, 1886, the SOS handed over the short branch line Le Bouveret- Saint-Gingolph , which brokered the connection to the line of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean Railway in Savoy. In 1890 the SOS was merged into the Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS), which significantly promoted efforts to realize the Simplon Tunnel .
Rolling stock
List of Ligne d'Italie and Ligne du Simplon locomotives:
| designation | LI and S no. | Surname | SOS no. from 1881 | JS no. from 1890 | SBB no. from 1903 | Manufacturer | Construction year | discarded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| from 1873: A from 1874: I (SO VI) from 1881: I from 1887: A2T (from 1902: B 2/3) |
1 | - | 41 | 67 | - | Fives | 1858 | 1892 |
| 2 | 42 | 68 | 1896 | |||||
| 3 | 43 | 63 | 1893 | |||||
| 4th | 44 | 64 | 1892 | |||||
| 5 | 45 | 65 | 1895 | |||||
| 6th | 46 | 66 | 1892 | |||||
| II (SO VI) from 1881: II from 1887: A2T from 1902: B 2/3 |
7th | St-Maurice | 27 | 80 | 1080 | SACM | 1875 | 1903 |
| 8th | Sion | 28 | 81 | 1081 | 1903 | |||
| 9 | Brigue | 29 | 82 | 1082 | 1903 |
swell
- Hans G. Wägli - Swiss Rail Network; General Secretariat SBB, Bern; 1980
- Joseph Stockmar: Histoire du chemin de fer du Simplon. (PDF 41.0 MB) Librairie Payot & Cie, Lausanne and Geneva, 1920, accessed on April 2, 2014 (French).
- 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 .
- Ligne d'Italie In: bahndaten.ch. Data on the Swiss railways 1847–1920 . Thomas Frey and Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, ViaStoria, accessed on February 1, 2014.
- Beat Kaufmann: The development of the Valais from an agricultural to an industrial canton. (PDF 75.0 MB) Chapter 3: The Beginnings of Industrial Development (1850—90), A. Railway construction. In: Political Studies. 1965, pp. 18-21 , accessed April 21, 2014 .
- Alfred Moser: The steam operation of the Swiss railways 1847-1966 . Birkhäuser Verlag Basel and Stuttgart 1967
Remarks
- ↑ French language Wikipedia: Adrien de Lavalette