Swiss East West Railway
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Federal Councilor Stämpfli (left), as a sponsor of the |
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light red: planned line of the Ostwestbahn (OWB) |
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The Swiss East West Railway (OWB) was a railway company in Switzerland . After its bankruptcy , it was taken over by the Bernische Staatsbahn (BSB) in 1861 .
history
founding
The canton of Bern had signed a railway contract with the Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB) in 1852 , in which the Centralbahn undertook to build the Olten – Herzogenbuchsee – Bern and Herzogenbuchsee – Solothurn lines within four years . In return, she received tax exemption and the privilege of receiving preferential treatment in future concessions .
But soon there was tension between the SCB and the canton. The Centralbahn, which could count on the goodwill of numerous conservative Bernese politicians, had a concession for the Bern – Thun line . However, they delayed their construction and sought a concession for the Biel - La Neuveville line to protect themselves from competition . From 1859 Lausanne and Geneva could be reached by rail from La Neuveville .
The Schweizerische Ostwestbahn (OWB), founded in 1857 on the initiative of some prominent radicals , championed the so-called two - line system and planned a continuous line Neuenstadt – Biel– Bern - Gümligen - Langnau - Lucerne - Zug - Zurich with a branch from Zug to Rapperswil . The railway would have rivaled the existing routes from Olten to Bern, Biel, Lucerne and Aarau of the Centralbahn and the continuation from Aarau to Zurich of the Swiss Northeast Railway (NOB).
collapse
Already in 1857 the founding committee received from the cantons of Bern and Lucerne concessions for the section of New Town to Lucerne. While the canton of Bern took over shares in Ostwestbahn worth two million francs, Lucerne waived a stake. The receipts for otherwise already received 10 million francs of share capital soon turned out to be falsified. That had escaped the cantonal auditors, although politicians had pointed out signs of a poor financial situation on the Ostwestbahn. It was only thanks to an additional loan from the Bern government of 625,000 francs that the Ostwestbahn was able to open the 15-kilometer route from Biel to Frienisberg near Neuenstadt on December 3, 1860 . It connected the Vaumarcus – Frienisberg section of the Franco-Suisse (FS) company with the Biel – Solothurn –Olten line of the Central Railway to form a continuous Jura foot line . This made it possible for the first time to travel by rail from Geneva in the west of Switzerland to St. Margrethen in the east of the country.
With a mountain of debt of over 8 million francs, the bankruptcy of the society, now also known as the “Oh-Weh-Bahn”, could not be prevented. In order to enable the completion of the commenced routes, the canton of Bern had little choice but to buy and complete the unfinished routes. In this way, the canton unintentionally came to its Bernese State Railways (BSB) on June 1, 1861. On the sections from Bern to Zollikofen and Gümligen, the existing tracks of the Centralbahn could be used. Nordostbahn acquired the sections of the route between Lucerne and Zug under construction and founded the Zurich-Zug-Lucerne-Bahn (ZZL) subsidiary .
With the collapse of the Ostwestbahn, the two-line system that wanted to build a second main line from Bern via Lucerne to Zurich, independent of the Centralbahn and Nordostbahn, was inferior. The main sponsor of this project was the then Bernese Federal Councilor Jakob Stämpfli in Bern, supported by the Zurich District President and later Federal Councilor Jakob Dubs . Stämpfli was unable to assert himself against Alfred Escher , who successfully defended the monopoly of "his" Nordostbahn and the Centralbahn.
Rolling stock
The Ostwestbahn did not have its own vehicles. The La Neuveville – Biel line was leased to Centralbahn until 1864.
swell
- Beat Junker: The emergence of the democratic people's state 1831–1880. (PDF 286 kB) In: History of the Canton of Bern since 1798. Historical Association of the Canton of Bern, July 1998, accessed on February 2, 2014 (Volume 2, Chapter: The road to the state crisis of 1877/78 , digital edition).
- Placid Weissenbach : The railway system in Switzerland. (PDF 14.8 MB) 1913, accessed on February 1, 2014 (Part One. History of the Railway System ).
- Swiss East West Railway. In: bahndaten.ch. Thomas Frey and Hans-Ulrich Schiedt, ViaStoria, accessed on February 1, 2014 (data on the Swiss railways 1847–1920).
- Freiherr von Röll: Encyclopedia of the Railway System. Volume 8, Berlin and Vienna, 1917, pp. 461–462 (accessed December 15, 2011)
- Enrico Ghidelli: The Bernische Staatsbahn - the missing link. In: Bulletins. Scripophila Helvetica ( Memento of March 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Bern, p. 2 (PDF, 2.3 MB, accessed on December 15, 2011).
Remarks
- ↑ Property length according to the official railway statistics in bahndaten.ch