Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya

Logo FGC

Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya or FGC for short is a Catalan railway company that operates a network of electrified suburban lines in Barcelona and Catalonia . The network consists of 140 km of meter , 42 km of regular and 89 km of broad-gauge lines as well as two meter-gauge rack railways .

Suburban transport to Barcelona

All routes served by the FGC are electrified with overhead lines. The standard and meter-gauge lines have so far only been connected to each other by TMB lines. In the foreseeable future (around 2020), both networks are to be connected directly by extending the 8 underground line from Plaça Espanya to Gràcia.

Metro de Vallès

Metro de Vallès
Class 112 at Baixador de Vallvidrera station
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	1500  =
Legend Sabadell Parc del Nord Sabadell North La Creu Alta Sabadell Plaça Major Sabadell-Rambla (until 2016) Can Feu | Gracia Sant Quirze Autònoma University Bellaterra Sant Joan Volpelleres Castellbisbal / El Papiol – Mollet railway line Terrassa Nacions Unides Terrassa Estació del Nord Vallparadís University Terrassa Rambla Les Fonts Rubí from / to the Rubi depot Castellbisbal / El Papiol – Mollet railway line Hospital General Mira-sol Sant Cugat Valldoreix La Floresta Les Planes Baixador de Vallvidrera Peu del Funicular Reina Elisenda Sarrià Les Tres Torres La Bonanova Muntaner Sant Gervasi Avinguda Tibidabo El Putxet Pàdua Plaça Molina Gracia Provença Aragó tunnel Meridiana tunnel Plaça Catalunya

The Metro del Vallès are the standard gauge lines (1435 mm) that start at the centrally located Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona. They lead via Sarrià to Passeig Reina Elisenda (L6 / L12), Avinguda Tibidabo (L7), Terrassa (S1), Sabadell (S2) and Sant Cugat del Vallès (S5). In the urban area of ​​Barcelona, ​​most of the trunk line runs underground and has the character of a subway . At the station Peu Funicular starts funicular Funicular de Vallvidrera to Vallvidrera , which is also part of this system.

Metro del Baix Llobregat

Metro del Baix Llobregat
FGC series 213 at Aeri de Montserrat
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system :	1500  =
Legend Manresa-Baixador Manresa-Alta Freight route from / to Súria / Sallent Manresa-Viladordis Sant Vicenç - Castellgalí Castellbell i el Vilar Monistrol de Montserrat Aeri de Montserrat Olesa de Montserrat Abrera Igualada Vilanova del Camí La Pobla de Claramunt Capellades Vallbona d'Anoia Piera Masquefa Can Parellada La Beguda Sant Esteve Sesrovires from the depot Martorell-Enllaç Martorell Central Martorell Vila-Castellbisbal El Palau Sant Andreu de la Barca Pallejà Quatre Camins Can Ros Sant Vicenç dels Horts Santa Coloma de Cervelló Colonia Güell Molí Nou | Ciutat Cooperativa Sant Boi Freight route to the port of Barcelona Cornellà-Riera Almeda L'Hospitalet-Av. Carrilet Sant Josep Gornal Europe | Fira Ildefons Cerdà Magòria - la Campana Barcelona-Plaça Espanya

The Metro del Baix Llobregat is meter-lane and runs from Plaça d'Espanya to Moli Nou-Ciutat Cooperativa (L8), El Palau (S7), Martorell-Enllaç (S8), Olesa de Montserrat (S4), Manresa (R5) and Igualada (R6). At Cornellà-Riera, another meter-gauge freight line branches off to the port of Barcelona.

The numbering scheme of the lines is as follows:

• L-lines (Línia) are considered part of the underground Barcelona considered
• S-Linien (Suburbà / S-Bahn) are suburban lines (comparable to the S-Bahn in German-speaking countries), which end in zones 2 and 3 of the ATM transport association
• R-Lines ( Rodalies ) are suburban lines that end beyond Zone 3. Lines R1 to R4 and R7 are operated by Renfe (Cercanías), lines R5 and R6 by FGC.

Mountain railways

The FGC operates two meter-gauge rack railways :

• The Cremallera de Montserrat from Monistrol on the R5 line up to the monastery on the Montserrat mountain . It opened in 1892, closed in 1957 and reopened in 2003.
• The Cremallera de Núria from Ribes de Freser up to the Vall de Núria in the Pyrenees . It was put into operation in 1931 and has no connection to other meter gauge lines.

Broad gauge lines

On January 1, 2005, the FGC took over the non-electrified broad-gauge line from Lleida to La Pobla de Segur from Renfe . It was the worst condition in Catalonia. Although the section between Lleida and was Balaguer in recent years with altbrauchbarem material entertain , but north of Balaguer the condition of the track was questionable. The FGC increased the offer from three daily train pairs to ten, of which six run from Lleida to Balaguer and four run the entire route from Lleida to La Pobla de Segur. In 2016, the previously used diesel multiple units were replaced by new multiple units. The number of passengers has quadrupled since then, and the route is starting to become profitable again. The tourist train "Tren dels Llacs" with rolling stock from the 1960s (two diesel locomotives of the Renfe series 308 and four four-axle passenger cars) has also been running on the route, which runs through picturesque areas in the northern part, since 2016. . A Garratt steam locomotive is also available for special occasions. There are even plans to extend the line to the Pyrenees and possibly connect it to the rail network in France .

history

The subnetworks in the suburban traffic of Barcelona emerged from two independent railway companies.

The Metro del Vallès and the Linia de Balmes are the legacy of Ferrocarriles de Cataluña, SA (FFCC) , which went bankrupt in 1977 . Its railway line was first built in 1863 as an overhead line from the center of Barcelona, ​​where later the Plaça de Catalunya was built, to Sarrià , where the depot and workshops were located until the end. It was laid underground, initially between Plaça de Catalunya and the Muntaner station, around 1929, and in the 1950s the remaining section under Via Augusta to Sarriá was also laid underground.

The Sarriá station itself only disappeared under an extension of the Via Augusta in the mid to late 1970s. A branching off inner-city underground route under the c / Balmes (structural: from Plaça Molina, for passengers: from the Gracia station) to the foot of the Aivinguda Tibidabo was built around 1950.

A remarkable achievement was the extension through a long tunnel under the Serra de Collserola , to which the Tibidabo also belongs, because for about three quarters of a century this was the only tunnel from Barcelona into the hinterland, which is why this railway was also indispensable for commuters who owned a car - the drive over the mountains took considerably longer. The rail tunnel was created through the expansion of an earlier aqueduct that had made the small reservoir behind Vallvidrera usable for the drinking water supply of Barcelona. The expansion of the railway line through the tunnel towards Sant Cugat as well as the electrification is attributed to the American Frederick Stark Pearson , to whom a town that is now part of Sant Cugat del Vallès was given its name as an addition: La Floresta Pearson .

In the small town of Vallvidrera up on the Serra de Collserola above the tunnel, which is connected to this railway line by a cable car at Peu Funicular , Willy Brandt lived for a while during the Spanish Civil War and worked as a war correspondent.

Some of the wagons of the Ferrocarriles de Cataluña resembled US open-plan cars with open end platforms until the end of the 1960s, with the difference that they were electric railcars. They had pneumatically remote-controlled sliding doors, but their mechanics were poorly lubricated and the air pressure was low, so that the conductor had to hammer the button "cerrar" ('close') many times until the doors slammed with difficulty and he finally hit the button " timbre ”('bell') could prompt the driver to leave. There was no first class, only a second class with upholstered seats and a third class with wooden seats. The Ferrocarriles de Cataluña hardly transported any cargo , a train with a freight compartment was used only a little more than once a day, mostly for mailbags and milk cans . There were also express trains that only stopped in San Cugat, Rubí and Terrassa, which the conductor announced by shouting “va directo”. The Ferrocarriles de Cataluña used to transport large numbers of people on Sundays from the poorest strata of the population of Barcelona out into the countryside and back, to Les Planes (then Las Planas ), where they could rent large paella pans and fire pits.

The Metro del Baix Llobregat emerged from another company called Compañía General de Ferrocarriles Catalanes (CGFC) , founded in 1912 through the merger of various companies. This route was not electrified. Along the lower reaches of the Llobregat , the national trunk road No. 2 (NII) between Barcelona and Madrid runs parallel to this railway line. That is why she was in competition with the two bus companies Canals and Alsina Graells , which, unlike her, drove to the center of Barcelona. In contrast to the Ferrocarriles de Cataluña , the Ferrocarriles Catalanes also operated freight trains. This company also collapsed in 1977.

After their collapse, both companies were run in trust by the state-owned Ferrocarriles de Via Estrecha (FEVE) until they were taken over by the Catalan government as the state-Catalan railway.

Accidents

On April 9, 1925, a train derailed in a tunnel in Sarrià. 25 people died in the accident and more than 100 were injured, 46 of them seriously. The electrically powered train was very busy with day trippers. It was the week after Easter .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NN: 24 Killed, More Than 100 Injured In Spanish Rail Wreck . In: The New York Times v. April 11, 1925; Peter WB Semmens: Disasters on the rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 76.

Web links

Commons : Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• FGC website
• Interactive map of the Línia Barcelona-Vallès (Metro de Vallès)
• Interactive map of the Línia Llobregat-Anoia (Metro del Baix Llobregat)