Ofenbergbahn

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The Ofenbergbahn is a never realized railway project, which should have connected the Lower Engadine in Switzerland via the Ofen Pass with the Upper Vinschgau in South Tyrol . The idea was to connect the railway line through the Engadine with the Vinschgau Railway in South Tyrol , which at that time still belonged to Austria .

First project: Engadin-Orientbahn

Ofenberg Tunnel, first project in 1898

In 1895, the Zurich railway pioneer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the then Nordostbahn (NOB) , Adolf Guyer-Zeller , was the first to bring the idea of ​​a Ofenbergbahn into play. This Engadin-Orientbahn , planned as a standard gauge, was to connect Chur via Thusis and the Engadin to Trieste via the Ofen Pass and was planned before the narrow-gauge Rhaetian Railway , which was built from Landquart via Chur to Thusis in 1896 and from Thusis to the Engadin in 1903. Adolf Guyer-Zeller, who also realized the Jungfrau Railway, died in 1899 and was no longer able to put his vision into practice.

The planned route led from the Upper Engadin past Zernez towards the Ofen Pass. After three tunnels, the route would then have flowed into the 10.7 km long tunnel near today's Punt La Drossa, only to come back to the surface at Tschierv (then Cierfs). Above Müstair (then Münster), three spiral tunnels should have negotiated the much steeper southern slope. After the border, the route of the railway to Mals and from there down the Vinschgau valley to Merano was planned.

Second project: narrow-gauge railway

In 1906, the Bozen-Meraner-Bahn , which was also a co-owner of the Vinschgau Railway , submitted a license application for the 52 km long railway line from Mals to Zernez , together with the municipalities of Bozen and Merano , where it was based on the one that was still in the planning stage at the time Engadine route of the Rhaetian Railway would have hit. The Ofenbergbahn was a narrow-gauge railway project that should have been operated with electrical energy. The license for this was only granted by the Swiss Confederation in 1909 after a long hesitation. The railway department at that time initially gave the line down the Inn to Pfunds with a connection to the planned Reschenbahn from Mals to Landeck a higher priority.

As recently as 1911, there was a lively discussion on the South Tyrolean side about whether the railway should flow into the Vinschgau Railway in Mals or Schluderns and whether the Ofenberg Railway should run as a standard gauge railway to the Swiss border . The prospects for the economic success of the railway were not bad, because at that time there was still a driving ban for passenger cars in the canton of Graubünden , which was only lifted in a referendum in 1925 . However, the outbreak of the First World War and the annexation of South Tyrol by Italy ruined the plans for the Ofenbergbahn. In contrast to other follow- up projects on the Engadine railway line, such as an extension from Scuol to Landeck in Tyrol or a Maloja railway from St. Moritz to Chiavenna in northern Italy , only the railway project for the Ofenberg Railway reached the detailed planning stage.

New edition

The great success of the Vinschgau Railway, which reopened in 2005, also with the Swiss public, and the easier access to the Lower Engadine through the Vereina tunnel , brought the idea of ​​the Ofenberg Railway to life again. The canton of Graubünden and the autonomous province of Bolzano - South Tyrol initiated the development of a so-called Interreg III-A project entitled “Public transport in the three-country deck (Rhaetian triangle)”. Various variants of the route from the Lower Engadine to South Tyrol were considered and the possible traffic volume was estimated. Depending on the project, tunnel lengths of 23 to 43 km were to be expected and a time saving of up to 60 minutes when crossing the Alps.

As part of the EU- funded Interreg IV follow-up project “Italy-Switzerland 2007-2013”, three detailed studies were commissioned that took into account the various possible routes. The results of the studies were presented at a conference in 2013; the necessary investment sums were put at around one billion euros, depending on the route chosen.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rhaetian Railway meets Vinschger Railway. Press service of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano - South Tyrol, June 12, 2013, accessed on May 16, 2014 .