Vereina tunnel

Club line

Timetable field :

910, 1985

Route length:

22.54 km

Gauge :

1000 mm ( meter gauge )

Power system :

11 kV 16.7 Hz ~

Maximum slope :

40 ‰

Legend

	from Landquart
32.44	Klosters Platz	1191 m above sea level M.
	Landquart Klosters (71 m)
	to Davos Platz
	Zugwald (2172 m)
34.95	Klosters Selfranga (only car transport)	1281 m above sea level M.
	Vereina tunnel (19,042 m)
37.20	Selfranga South Monastery	1312 m above sea level M.
43.55	Vereina North
45.65	Vereina South
47.70	Vertex	1463 m above sea level M.
52.17	Sagliains North
53.72	Sasslatsch North	1434 m above sea level M.
	Junction Sasslatsch II tunnel towards Susch


54.53	Sagliains (car transport)	1432 m above sea level M.
	according to Scuol-Tarasp
54.17	Sasslatsch II	1432 m above sea level M.
	to Bever

The 19'042 meter Vereinatunnel ( rätoromanisch tunnel dal Vereina ) is the core of the meterspurigen Vereina ( rätoromanisch Lingia dal Veraina ), also Vereinastrecke or Vereinabahn called the Rhätischen web (RhB). This connects Klosters in the Prättigau with Sagliains in the Engadine and is therefore the link between the RhB routes Landquart – Davos Platz via Klosters and Bever – Scuol-Tarasp via Sagliains. In addition, it creates means Autoverlad also a quick and safe winter road traffic connection of the Lower Engadine to the National Road 28 (Prättigauerstrasse) and thus to the main part of the Swiss national road network .

The Vereina tunnel is the world's longest meter-gauge railway tunnel .

prehistory

Since the road from Davos to Susch over the 2383 m high Flüelapass is exposed to a high risk of avalanches , the creation of a winter-safe connection between northern Grisons and the Lower Engadine has been under discussion for a long time. Either an expansion of the Flüela pass road (relatively complex under the given circumstances) or a solution with a railway tunnel and car loading between Klosters and the Susch / Lavin area came into question. On September 22, 1985, the decision in favor of the latter solution was made in a cantonal referendum. In the same year, the Federal Assembly agreed that the Swiss Confederation would share the costs after the Federal Councilor Leon Schlumpf , who comes from the Canton of Graubünden, had campaigned intensively for the project. The construction of the tunnel cost 812 million Swiss francs , 538 million had been approved in 1985.

construction

Tunnel breakthrough on March 26, 1997

After various objections, construction work could begin in 1991. The tunnel was excavated from the north with a tunnel boring machine , which had previously also built the access tunnel from Klosters to Selfranga, and from the south with the classic blasting method. The breakthrough took place earlier and significantly further north than originally planned on March 26, 1997, as the rock on the south side was unexpectedly easy to break down and enabled rapid advance. On November 19, 1999, the head of the Federal Transport Department , Federal Councilor Moritz Leuenberger , opened the new connection after eight years of construction. Regular timetable operations began three days later.

Route

North portal in Selfranga

The Vereina line begins at Klosters Platz station ( 1191 m ), where it branches off from the Davos line of the Rhaetian Railway and leads in the Zugwald tunnel to the Selfranga loading station ( 1281 m ). The car transport takes place in Selfranga, at the north portal of the Vereina tunnel .

Like the rest of the route, the Vereina tunnel is largely single-track. In the direction of Selfranga, the line will have two tracks about two kilometers in front of the tunnel portal and three tracks about 310 meters in front of the portal. The two north-eastern tracks 1 and 2 can be used for car loading, trucks are dispatched on track 1. In the opposite direction, the line becomes double-track about 1.6 kilometers before the tunnel junction. These two-track areas are each equipped with a lane change point with four points each. In the middle of the tunnel, there is still a fully automatic passing point, the Vereina intersection . With a top speed of 100 km / h, a train can technically drive through the tunnel in 17 minutes; The journey time is estimated at 19 minutes in the timetable.

The tunnel branches out at the Sasslatsch Nord service station (tunnel meter 18,759 from Selfranga). The main tube is double-tracked in a left-hand curve over a further 283 meters to the Sagliains car loading station ( 1432 m ), where it joins the Bever-Scuol-Tarasp railway line . The single-track Sasslatsch II tunnel branch was built for trains into the Upper Engadine, ending at the Sasslatsch II service station after a sharp, 277-meter-long right-hand bend (total length with the Vereina tunnel 19,036 meters) and also ending in the Bever-Scuol-Tarasp line.

business

Drive onto the DB Autozug

One to three car trains and one passenger train run on the main branch per hour and direction. The vast majority of passenger trains go to Scuol-Tarasp. In Sagliains there is a connection to trains to Pontresina .

The junction in the direction of the Upper Engadin was rarely used by scheduled passenger traffic after the "Engadin Star" connections were discontinued in 2002 due to insufficient demand. With the 2009 summer season, a daily pair of trains was again offered between Landquart and St. Moritz ; since the timetable change on December 12, 2010 reversed three direct trains from Landquart to St. Moritz and two in the opposite direction with connections to the IC of the SBB and from Zurich. In the meantime, all amplifier ICs that run every two hours from / to Zurich in Landquart have a connection to or from the fast connections via the Prättigau to the Upper Engadine.

During the construction site in the Lower Engadine, due to which the railway line from Sagliains to Scuol-Tarasp was completely closed for the entire summer of 2019, all regional trains through the Prättigau (with the exception of trains running in the direction of Davos) and through the Upper Engadine were linked and ran through the Sasslatsch -Junction.

In long-distance traffic between the Upper Engadine and travel destinations north of Landquart, the Vereina tunnel competes with the Albula route , which is a little slower and more expensive, but interesting for tourists because of the landscape and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

Entrance to the Vereina tunnel in Sagliains, to the left of the tunnel portal the route to Bever

There are around two to three pairs of trains a day in freight traffic .

On peak days, almost 5000 cars can be transported with the car loader. Up to four car trains run per hour, so that the mixed traffic with the passenger trains reaches the capacity limit of the mostly single-lane tunnel.

Remarks

↑ The Seikan Tunnel in Japan, which is equipped with a Cape Gauge (1067 mm), is the longest narrow-gauge tunnel in the world at 53.9 kilometers .

Web links

Commons : Vereinatunnel - collection of images, videos and audio files

Rail info Switzerland: Vereina

Individual evidence

↑ Candidature UNESCO World Heritage "Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Cultural Landscape": On the history of the Rhaetian Railway (p. 268f). (PDF; 653 kB) (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved September 20, 2009 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rhb.ch

↑ www.ozdoba.net: Rhaetian Railway - the little red one ( Memento from May 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

↑ contribution to offset the increase in construction costs at Vereina ( Memento of 9 February 2012 at the Internet Archive ) Communication DETEC (Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications) of 1 December 1999

↑ LITRA May 7, 1997 ( Memento of October 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

↑ determined with the measurement function of the digital Swiss national map https://map.geo.admin.ch/?lang=de&topic=ech&bgLayer=ch.swisstopo.pixelkarte-farben&layers=ch.swisstopo.zeitreihen,ch.bfs.gebaeude_wohnungs_register,ch. bav.haltestellen-oev, ch.swisstopo.swisstlm3d-wanderwege & layers_visibility = false, false, false, false & layers_timestamp = 18641231 ,,, & E = 2786840.70 & N = 1192065.42 & zoom = 13

↑ The longest meter-gauge tunnel in the world ( Memento from May 31, 2006 in the Internet Archive )

↑ No longer an independent “Engadin Star” , Rail-Info Switzerland, News issue 4/2002 (October)