Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg Railway

Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg Railway
Timetable field :	480
Route length:	24.78 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Maximum slope :	Adhesion 34  ‰ rack 105  ‰
Rack system :	Riggenbach
Hergiswil – Engelberg
Legend Brünigbahn from Lucerne 0.00 Hergiswil 449 m above sea level M. Junction Brünigbahn to Interlaken Lopper II 1743 m Acheregg Bridge 2.69 Stansstad 436 m above sea level M. Depot and workshop Stansstad ship station 435 m above sea level M. Gerbi 442 m above sea level M. 5.82 Stans 451 m above sea level M. 7.73 Oberdorf (repealed 2002) 464 m above sea level M. 8.94 Büren (repealed 2002) 477 m above sea level M. 9.50 Dallenwil 485 m above sea level M. 10.21 Niederrickenbach station 496 m above sea level M. 12.52 Wolf shooting 511 m above sea level M. 13.78 Dörfli (repealed 2014) 523 m above sea level M. 17.13 Grafenort 569 m above sea level M. 18.60 Mettlen 596 m above sea level M. Floor 4043 m (opening December 11, 2010, colloquially Tunnel Engelberg) Start of rack tunnel 19.50 Trapping bottom crossing point 20.33 Obermatt ZB start of rack old route 675 m above sea level M. 21.46 Green forest 885 m above sea level M. 21.73 Brunni crossing point End of rack tunnel 22.11 Ghärst end rack old route 970 m above sea level M. ground 24.78 Engelberg 999 m above sea level M.

The Luzern-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn is a narrow-gauge line in Central Switzerland . The company of the same name ( LSE ), which built the railway, was merged with the Brünigbahn of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) on January 1, 2005 to form the Zentralbahn , which operates the 25-kilometer meter-gauge Hergiswil - Stans - Engelberg route described here .

history

Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg Railway

Share for 500 francs in the Stansstad-Engelberg Electric Railway on August 10, 1897

LSE train coming from Stansstad at the entrance to Hergiswil station , 2007

In 1890 the concession for a railway line from Stansstad to Engelberg was granted. The line was opened on October 5, 1898 by the Stansstad-Engelberg-Bahn (StEB) company. It was electrified from the start, which made it the longest electrically operated railway line in Switzerland at the time. In accordance with the state of the art at the time, the decision was made to use three-phase current (750 V at 32 Hz), which also promised advantages for operation on the rack section between Grafenort and Engelberg with an incline of 246 ‰. In order to avoid crossing the road with a rack on the steep section near Grünenwald, a bascule bridge was built over the rails for road traffic.

The Stansstad-Engelberg-Bahn (usually shortened to Engelberg-Bahn ) made the older, electric Stansstad – Stans tram superfluous. The latter was shut down on September 30, 1903. The route originally ended in Stansstad on Lake Lucerne . A license was granted in 1956 for a continuation to Hergiswil with a connection to the SBB Brünigbahn , but its use was delayed due to financial difficulties.

After the financing was secured with loans and contributions from the public sector, construction of the connection between Stansstad and Hergiswil u. a. with the construction of the Acheregg bridge , the integration into the train station of the SBB-Brünigbahn and a complete renovation of the existing adhesion route according to the standards of the Brünigbahn. In this context, the overhead line was converted to the SBB's traction current system (15 kV at 16⅔ Hz AC voltage ) and in some places re-routing was carried out. After an interruption of several weeks, the railway went back into operation on December 16, 1964 and was able to offer direct trains to Lucerne using the Brünigbahn section. The StEB, which was also financially renovated, took on the name Luzern-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn (LSE) when it was put back into operation.

The Oberdorf and Büren stops were closed in 2002 and replaced by a bus route from Stans, where there is now a S-Bahn connection. The Niederrickenbach station request stop is also threatened with closure. In the case of S-Bahn trains, a stop on request is no longer provided.

On June 30, 2004, the Federal Council authorized SBB to sell the Brünigbahn (Lucerne – Interlaken Ost) to the LSE; SBB was compensated for this with newly issued LSE shares. The LSE license was extended to the Brünig Railway. Since January 1, 2005 , the merged railway company has been renamed Zentralbahn .

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  LSE in Engelberg

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  LSE train in the pouring rain on the old route near Grünenwald in the mountain forest

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  Start of the rack in Obermatt

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  Control car LSE ABt 30 (later ZB ABt 930 )

Rack and pinion operation

In three-phase operation, the 1579 m long rack and pinion ramp between Grünenwald and Ghärst in front of Engelberg could only be mastered at 5 km / h, the railcars (except for the most recently acquired car 103) were given a cogwheel locomotive on the valley side, which pushed the train uphill or braked it downhill. The BDeh 4/4 multiple units, which were purchased in 1964 and used exclusively until 2010 , reached 14.5 km / h uphill. They could move two cars on the rack and pinion track and pull an additional car once a day. On the other hand, double traction was not allowed on the steep ramp, which meant that the trains had to be split in Grafenort when there was a large crowd.

With the opening of the new tunnel with a gradient of only 105 ‰ (the rack entrances and exits are in the tunnel itself, shortly after the portals), normal continuous use of the trains is possible. HGe 4/4 II locomotives with up to seven wagons are in use, the length of the trains being limited by the length of the platform in Engelberg. The two railcars 6 and 7, which were subsequently procured in 1970, were also used for additional trains, but their reduced speed on the rack made it difficult to draw up the timetable. Since December 2013, only the faster HGe 4/4 II and the new multiple units have been in use.

2005 flood

Devastated track system after the 2005 flood

During the devastating floods on August 22, 2005, the railway line in the lower section of the Aaschlucht gorge between Obermatt and Grafenort was almost completely destroyed by mudslides, erosion, debris and sludge deposits. At the upper end of the Aaschlucht, shortly before the entrance to Engelberg, the viaduct, on which the railway line and the neighboring cantonal road rested, fell into the abyss. The rails remained hanging freely in the air and were no longer passable. For a few days Engelberg could only be reached by helicopter , then via an emergency road. After extensive reconstruction work, rail operations to Engelberg were resumed on December 15, 2005.

Engelberg tunnel

Tunnel portal in the lower Aaschlucht. On the right is the old, snow-covered route .

From 2001, a 4043 m long tunnel was built between Grafenort and Boden , with which the previous steep section is bypassed and the maximum gradient is reduced from 246 to 105 ‰. This makes it possible to travel to Engelberg with longer trains than on the rack and pinion sections at the Brünig Pass with 120 ‰. The completion of the project was originally planned for autumn 2005, but was delayed due to geological problems: In 2002, 2003 and 2005 there were severe water ingress in the tunnel with up to 1000 l / s. After completion of the shell in September 2009, the tunnel was opened with the timetable change in December 2010. As a result of the unexpected difficulties and inflation, the construction costs rose from 68.1 million Swiss francs initially to around 176.5 million francs.

The new building reduced the travel time from Lucerne to Engelberg by 14 to 47 minutes and the capacity was more than doubled from 400 to 1000 people per hour. However, the special attraction of a train journey through the mountain forest to Engelberg was not there. In 2006, railway enthusiasts launched the idea of ​​operating the mountain route as a museum railway. However, this idea did not become more specific.

On December 7, 2010 at 8:50 p.m., the last scheduled train ran on the mountain route from Grafenort to Engelberg. Replacement buses were used on the route until the timetable change on December 12, 2010. At the same time, the dismantling of the old line began.

On December 11, 2010 the new steep ramp tunnel was opened with a party. The abbot of Engelberg monastery blessed the tunnel.

Accident on August 11, 2014

On August 11, 2014, a minibus manned by eight Israeli tourists passed a level crossing near Wolfenschiessen when a train hauled by an HGe 101 approached. The level crossing branches off at right angles from the main road . The driver of the minibus could only have seen the train approaching in parallel in the rearview mirror . In the collision that followed, three bus occupants were fatally and the other five seriously injured. The renovation of the unguarded level crossing had been planned for years, but negotiations with the landowners turned out to be difficult. In addition, the Nidwalden district administrator had refused an additional loan in May 2014.

Renovation of the Engelberg train station in 2015

Construction work in Engelberg station

At the end of 2014, the construction contract for the renewal of the tracks, platforms, roofing, lighting and catenary in Engelberg station was awarded. Engelberg station was out of service from April 20 to May 17, 2015. During this time, replacement buses operated between Dallenwil and Engelberg, and on weekends between Stansstad and Engelberg due to further construction work. The work was completed in summer 2015 and the converted station was officially inaugurated on August 28, 2015.

literature

• Peter Berger, Hans Waldburger: Railways to Engelberg . Minirex, Lucerne 1998, ISBN 3-907014-10-3 .

Web links

• Zentralbahn website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Discontinued railways in Switzerland: Stansstad-Engelberg Bahn
2. ↑ ^{a b} Start of construction for the Engelberg tunnel . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International , issue 4/2001, ISSN  1421-2811 , p. 170 f.
3. ↑ Central Railway: Engelberg Tunnel
4. ↑ Structural work in the Engelberg tunnel completed. In: Bahnonline.ch. October 13, 2009, accessed October 16, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Faster to Engelberg in the steep ramp tunnel. In: nzz.ch. December 11, 2010, accessed October 14, 2018 . 
6. ^ Buffer stop 5/06: Save the Engelberg mountain route
7. ↑ To reach SF Tagesschau Engelberg in record time , December 12, 2010
8. ↑ e.g. Zentralbahn AG , media release of December 12, 2010
9. ↑ Discontinued railways in Switzerland: old steep section
10. ^ Mathias Rellstab: Three dead in a railroad crossing accident . In: Swiss Railway Review . No. 10 . Minirex, 2014, ISSN  1022-7113 , p. 488 .
11. ↑ Building tender at bindexis.ch, accessed on May 4, 2015
12. ↑ Reconstruction of Engelberg station, total closure with rail replacement . The Zentralbahn. 2015. Archived from the original on May 5, 2015. Retrieved on November 7, 2017.
13. ^ New Engelberg station officially inaugurated. . The Zentralbahn. August 28, 2015. Retrieved November 7, 2017.