Mont Cenis Railway

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The Mont Cenis Railway is the name given to two railway lines on the border between France and Italy .

First Mont Cenis train

Steam train with Fell locomotive of the Mont Cenis Railway in the period 1868–1871
Tunnel mouth of the first runway on the Italian side

The first provisional railway line over Mont Cenis led over the 2084 meter high Mont Cenis pass. It was built by the private Ferrovia del Moncenisio during the work on the Mont Cenis tunnel . From 1868 until the opening of the Mont Cenis tunnel in 1871, the railway with a gauge of 1100 mm ran between Susa and Modane . It had a maximum gradient of 88 per mille, which was mastered with a middle rail based on the Fell system to increase wheel-rail friction. With the opening of the tunnel, the line was closed. Parts of the route and a passenger car are still preserved. The private investors had speculated on a longer construction period for the tunnel and thus a longer operating time of the line.

Today's Mont Cenis Railway

Route at the mouth of the tunnel near Modane

Today the 140 km long railway line from Chambéry to Bardonecchia is called the Mont-Cenis-Bahn, whereby the French part is also called the Maurienne-line , the Italian part is also called the Fréjus-Bahn . The entire route was completed in 1871 with the inauguration of the Mont-Cenis tunnel and has a maximum gradient of 30 per mille. The 99-kilometer section from Chambéry to Modane is operated by the French state railway SNCF , the remaining section is operated by the state-owned Italian railway company FS .

The north portal of the Mont-Cenis-Tunnel above Modane is reached by a hairpin curve east of Modane, which leads directly into the Mont-Cenis-Tunnel . After the terrain had subsided, the tunnel entrance had to be relocated in 1881. This increased the length of the tunnel to 13,657 meters. In 1925, the Chambéry - Modane section was electrified with a direct current of 1.5 kV; it was intended as a trial operation for the later electrification of the prestige line Marseille - Nice. The power was drawn on the open line and the main tracks of the stations through a lateral power rail , due to the risk of accidents, the other station tracks were spanned with a simple contact line. Suitable locomotives had to be kept available for the Maurienne line until the conductor rails were completely replaced by regular contact lines in 1976 . The Modane - Turin line was electrified from 1912 to 1920 with 3600 V three-phase current and 16 Hz, and the 3 kV direct current common in Italy has been used since the 1960s.

literature

  • Freiherr von Röll: Mont Cenis-Bahn In: Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens Volume 7, Berlin, Vienna 1915, p. 301
  • Ascanio Schneider: Mountain Railways in Europe , Orell Füssli Verlag Zurich, 2nd edition 1967, pages 109, 111

Web links

  • The Mount Cenis Railway and Tunnel. In: Harper's_Magazine . tape 43 , no. 254 ( html ).
  • Mt. Cenis line photos. In: Bahnbilder. Retrieved May 30, 2016 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Railway Atlas Italy and Slovenia, Verlag Schweers + Wall, page 18.
  2. ↑ Le troisième rail. In: Le materiel moteur PLM à 3ème rail de la ligne de la Maurienne. APMFS, accessed May 26, 2016 (French).
  3. ^ Nico Molino: Trifase in Italia 1902-1925 . Gulliver, Torino 1991, ISBN 88-85361-08-0 , page 39