Rickentunnel
| Rickentunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 South portal at Kaltbrunn
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| use | Railway tunnel | |||
| traffic connection | Uznach – Wattwil railway line | |||
| place | Rickenpass | |||
| length | 8604 m | |||
| Number of tubes | 1 | |||
| construction | ||||
| building-costs | 17 million francs | |||
| start of building | 1904 | |||
| completion | October 1, 1910 | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | SBB | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| North portal | 724884 / 238648 | |||
| South portal | 720723 / 231111 | |||
Map with all coordinates: 
The fabrics Tunnel is a 8.6 km long Swiss rail tunnel and is below the Rickenpass at the SBB - track Uznach-Wattwil .
The tunnel has a single lane , is 8604 m long, has a constant gradient of 15.75 ‰ and is dead straight. A weak light can be seen from the northern tunnel portal at Wattwil ( 614 m above sea level ): The south portal opening at Kaltbrunn SG ( 483 m above sea level )
prehistory
During the construction of the Bodensee-Toggenburg Railway (BT) from St. Gallen to Toggenburg , the desire to establish a connection over the Ricken to Rapperswil soon arose . On the part of the BT and the city of Rapperswil there were plans to build a railway line from Ebnat-Kappel over the Rickenpass to Rapperswil, but a «Railway Committee St. Gallen – Zug» was formed with the support of the cantonal government of St. Gallen, Uznach citizens and various Politicians for a base tunnel from Wattwil to Kaltbrunn. Engineer Lusser worked out a project, and on June 27, 1890, the committee for the St. Gallen – Wattwil – Rapperswil and Saturdayern – Zug routes received a concession . Since the canton of St. Gallen and private individuals could not or did not want to raise the high costs for the tunnel construction, after clever tactics by the cantonal government, the St. Gallen contribution to the construction of the Rickenbahn with the repurchase of the Toggenburgerbahn (Wil-Ebnat-Kappel) was made by the federal government offset. The nationalization of the United Swiss Railways in 1902 forced the Swiss Federal Railways to build the tunnel promised in contracts as a connection between Eastern Switzerland and the Gotthard Railway at their own expense.
construction
The tunnel construction started in January 1904 and it was carried out in the south with a base tunnel and in the north for the first 300 m in Belgian construction with a ridge tunnel . The geology did not pose too much of a problem, the tunnel almost only passed through the lower freshwater molasse , consisting of soft sandstone banks alternating with harder, stable, but also with soft marls interspersed with hard limestone banks , which generally have very little pressure. The largest overburden is 570 m. The water inflow was low and was up to 2 l / s in the north and up to 27 l / s in the south. The odorless methane gases escaping several times from the molasses (stored brown coal) had a disruptive influence on the construction work, which is why special precautionary measures were necessary. The conveyance took place on a 74 cm track in the tunnel with horses, in the finished tunnel with steam locomotives. The lining was made entirely of quarry stone with hydraulic lime mortar or cement mortar, and the wall thicknesses range from 35 to 70 cm. The breakthrough took place on March 30, 1908, 4400 m from the south exit and the tunnel was put into operation on October 1, 1910.
North portal Wattwil
Tunnel scaffolding with workers on the Wattwil side
Tunnel entrance at Wattwil
Construction manager poses with workers
Workers' train leaving the tunnel near Wattwil
South portal near Kaltbrunn, shortly before electrification
Railway accident of October 4, 1926
Since there was no artificial ventilation, the Rickentunnel was hated from the start with regard to its danger of gasification during steam operation and was nicknamed the "crooked chimney". The locomotive crew had to protect their nose and mouth from the toxic smoke gases with a damp cloth, although the main danger came from the carbon monoxide they contained .
On October 4, 1926, a freight train with an SBB B 3/4 locomotive drove uphill into the tunnel. Unsuitable briquettes that produced a lot of carbon monoxide were burned in the locomotive . The train got stuck in the tunnel and the personnel on the train suffocated. A rescue team from Wattwil wanted to come to the rescue with breathing apparatus , but also got stuck and three of the rescuers were killed. A total of 9 railway employees suffocated in this tragic accident in the tunnel.
On May 7, 1927, electrical operation began on the Rapperswil – Wattwil line and in the tunnel.
Redevelopment
In 2013, the Rickentunnel, which is part of the SBB infrastructure, was extensively renovated between March and September. The renovation costs amounted to around 18 million Swiss francs (as of March 2013).
The tunnel floor and the track bed were renewed over a length of 1.5 kilometers. In addition, new drainage pipes had to be built over a length of 900 meters.
During the school summer holidays in the canton of St. Gallen, the tunnel was completely closed; during this time there are fewer passengers. During the closure, the travel time between Rapperswil and St. Gallen was normally extended by around 30 minutes. In the pre- and post-phase of the total closure between March 17 and September 6, 2013, work on the tunnel began at around 9:40 p.m.
literature
- Encyclopedia of Railways (1917), Volume 2, pp. 215-217
- 3 × 50 Years - Swiss Railways in the Past, Present and Future (1997)
- Hans G. Wägli: Swiss Rail Network . Zurich 2010.
- Hans G. Wägli: Railway profile Switzerland, CH + . Zurich 2010.
- A. Heer: 100 years of the Rickenbahn. Strange and memorable things about Switzerland's first base tunnel . In: Toggenburger Jahrbuch 2011. Wattwil 2010.
- A. Bachem: The Rickentunnel . In: Memorandum, Bodensee-Toggenburg-Lake Zurich. St.Gallen 1911.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wattwil – Kaltbrunn: SBB is renovating the Rickentunnel. Media release on sbb.ch from March 14, 2013
- ↑ Zürichsee-Zeitung: Rickentunnel will be closed for five weeks. Article from November 23, 2012, accessed on March 1, 2013 ( Memento from October 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive )