The Brig–Zermatt railway line is a metre gauge railway line in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Its line links the communities of Brig and Visp in the Rhone Valley with Täsch and the car free holiday resort of Zermatt in the Mattertal. The line also forms part of the much travelled and admired route of the Glacier Express between St. Moritz and Zermatt. The Gornergratbahn (which was opened in 1898) is connected with the line at Zermatt.
The line was originally built by the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (VZ), and opened between Visp and Zermatt in 1890–1891. The extension to Brig opened in 1930. The company was renamed the Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (BVZ) in 1961, and was later branded as BVZ Zermatt-Bahn. It merged with the Furka Oberalp Bahn (FO) in 2003 to form the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB).
History Planning, construction and commencement of traffic
The mountain village of Zermatt first gained major recognition in Europe in light of the inaugural ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper in 1865. From then onwards, the number of overnight visitors rose steadily, even though the village itself was only reachable by a lengthy march on foot through the barren valley of Zermatt. Even the simple mule ride as far as St. Niklaus took a long time. Nevertheless, by the 1880s there were already as many as 12,000 tourist visits to Zermatt each year.Zermatt-Bahn: Vom Tal zum Berg, S. 13 To promote tourism in the valley, and especially in Zermatt itself, plans soon emerged to build a railway line intended to connect the emerging spa with the Rhone Valley.
On 21 September 1886, the Swiss Federal Council granted the banking house Masson, Chavannes & Co. in Lausanne and the Basler Handelsbank an initial concession. The original request was for a narrow gauge railway from Visp to Zermatt, using a mixture of adhesion and rack railway line. At the insistence of the Bundesrat, the gauge was finally altered to metre gauge. The railway was at the outset to be operated from the start of June to the end of September, as the promoters did not wish to take on the risks of operating the line in an alpine winter. Additionally, it was only in summer that there were prospects of significant numbers of passengers, as in those days winter tourism was still of no great importance. Nevertheless, the Bundesrat reserved the right to extend the operating season, and similarly stipulated that concessionary fares be offered to locals.
Planning and construction of the line was entrusted by the participating banks to the railway company Suisse Occidentale-Simplon (SOS), which, in the summer of 1887, conducted extensive survey work in the Mattertal. On 10 October 1888, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Viège à Zermatt SA emerged as the operating company.
The exact route and mode of operation was initially the subject of intense debate. The Suisse Occidentale-Simplon proposed a pure adhesion line, with a maximum gradient of 4.5%, while the engineer Ernest von Stockalper, who was working on the construction of the Gotthardbahn, proposed a combined adhesion and rack railway, as originally planned. A Special Commission established to investigate the ideal mode of operation visited, for the purpose of its investigations, numerous rack railways in Switzerland and Germany, including the Brünigbahn and the Rübelandbahn in the Harz, which was equipped with the Abt rack rail system. These visits led to a decision to equip the line with the system used on the Rübelandbahn, and using a maximum gradient of 12.5%. A total of six sections of track were to be laid out with a total of 7450 m of rack railway.
Construction began on 27 November 1888 in Visp. The work was entrusted to the western Swiss contractors Julius Chappuis, while the SOS undertook the purchase of land and the procurement of rolling stock. Acquisition of the necessary land turned out to be difficult, particularly in the municipalities of Stalden and St. Niklaus, as the local population was not interested in selling. Tedious expropriation procedures therefore became necessary. Also, land in the entire valley was divided into a myriad of tiny plots, and usually the actual owners of the plots were not recorded in official documents. The absence of a road made it necessary to transport the building materials almost exclusively over the already completed parts of the railway tracks to the construction sites.
On 3 July 1890, rail traffic on the first part of the line, between Visp and Stalden, could finally be introduced. By 26 August of the same year, the first trains reached St. Niklaus. In the following months, however, an unusually severe winter delayed the completion of the remaining sections. Only on 18 July 1891 could the entire line as far as Zermatt be handed over to traffic.
The first years of operations
The Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (VZ) transferred the management of the line to the Suisse Occidentale-Simplon, as under that arrangement there was the possibility of using its staff elsewhere during the annual winter service interruption. This management agreement was approved by the SOS's successor company, the Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS) and retained finally also by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) until 1920.
From the opening of the line onwards, passenger numbers continually increased, and after a short while were already significantly exceeding the predictions established at the time of the line's construction. Yet at the same time, the railway had to fight countless storms that again and again paralysed operations for days. The opening of the Gornergratbahn in 1898, the Simplon Tunnel in 1906 and the Lötschbergbahn in 1913 brought the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn further passengers. However, the upward trend met with an abrupt end at the outbreak of World War I. Foreign tourists stayed away from Switzerland, while coal prices massively increased. Passenger numbers fell back to the level of 1891. The timetable had to be substantially reduced, and fares strongly increased, but a cost covering operation was no longer possible. In the summer timetable for 1914, there were still six train pairs per day between Visp and Zermatt. After the outbreak of war there were only three, and from 1918 just two train pairs. In 1918, the total loss amounted to around 971,000 francs.EJ-Sonderheft Eisenbahnen am Matterhorn, p 15
After the war, passenger numbers initially increased again only slowly. In the midst of the emerging boom, a flood on 24 September 1920 destroyed about 300 metres of the formation between Visp and Ackersand. Even this event came after the Vispa had already been diverted during the winter of 1919/20 by avalanches and landslides onto the formation at Kin, causing serious damage. The resulting deficit, which to this day is the most recent in the history of the railway, gave the SBB a reason not to renew the expiring management contracts, and to return the management of the railway to the VZ from 1 January 1921. The railway's management was then allocated to a collective directorate also responsible for managing the Gornergratbahn. At the same time, in collaboration with Zermatt hoteliers, an office was set up to run the first international promotions for the Zermatt tourist resort. In 1927, passenger numbers once again reached pre war levels. In 1931, with 227,845 passengers, the line set a new record that was not surpassed until after World War II.Zermatt-Bahn: Vom Tal zum Berg, p 22
Closing the gap, electrification and year-round operations
The rescue of the Furka Oberalp Bahn The Visp-Zermatt-Bahn survived World War 1 unscathed. Totally different was the situation of the Brig-Furka-Disentis-Bahn (BFD), which was not yet completed as at the outbreak of the war. The BFD was able, by 1915, only to complete the section between Brig and Gletsch, and in 1923 had to file for bankruptcy. VZ Director Auguste Marguerat then took the initiative to preserve the line as a whole, including the section not yet built. A syndicate was formed, with the support of the Swiss Federation and the Cantons of Valais, Uri, Grisons and Vaud. On 4 April 1925, the railway facilities and rolling stock of the bankrupt line were purchased for 1.75 million francs.Zermatt-Bahn: Vom Tal zum Berg, S. 23 On 17 April 1925 came the founding of the Furka Oberalp Bahn AG (FO), with share capital of 3.3 million francs.EJ-Sonderheft Eisenbahnen am Matterhorn, S. 26 As early as 4 July 1926, operations could commence on the whole FO line as far as Disentis. The FO was initially operated by the VZ, and only on 1 January 1961 spun off as a separate operation.
Closing the gap Brig–Visp The entry into operation of the Furka Oberalp Bahn revealed a disadvantage, namely the gap between the end point of the VZ in Visp, and that of the FO in Brig. Additionally, since the opening of the Lötschbergbahn in 1913 passengers arriving from the direction of Bern had had to change trains in Brig as well as in Visp; a circumstance that was perceived as cumbersome.
Even as at the start of the 20th century, numerous projects for a metre gauge railway line from Visp to Brig had already been proposed. Most of them also envisaged a continuation in the direction of Furka or Grimsel, but in the end the only continuation to be realised was the later Furka Oberalp Bahn, with its starting point in Brig.
In 1919, the hotelier Alexander Seiler applied for a concession for a metre gauge tramway from Visp to Brig, which, if built, would serve to open up the small settlements between the two towns. That project was terminated after the SBB stated that it would insert two halting points into its standard gauge line. As the SBB did not follow up this announcement, the concession application was resubmitted in 1925. Shortly afterwards, a committee comprising the VZ, the FO and the Lonza Group works at Visp took over the project. Under the leadership of the VZ, it was transformed into a connecting narrow gauge railway running parallel to the SBB line, was no longer equipped with any halting points, and was to serve only to link the VZ and the FO. In 1928, the committee presented a correspondingly modified concession application, which was approved on 28 September 1928, subject to a condition that one intermediate halting point be included. Following the completion of that project as approved, continuous operations from Brig to Zermatt were finally able to begin on 5 June 1930. Curiously, the opening of the new link did not lead directly to a name change for the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn. Only on 1 June 1962 was the name changed to Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Brigue-Viège-Zermatt (Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn).
The three narrow gauge lines now bound by rail - the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn, the Furka Oberalp Bahn and the Rhätische Bahn - took advantage of the opening of the new connection to introduce a through express train from St. Moritz to Zermatt. On 25 June 1930, the now world-famous Glacier Express departed from Zermatt station for the first time.
Electrification
Under pressure from the enormous increase in coal prices during World War I, there were discussions soon after the end of the war about electrification of the railway, to make it independent of expensive imported coal. A study commissioned in 1919 recommended the use of direct current, with a voltage of between 1500 and 3000 volts. To save costs, parts from steam locomotives would be used for the construction of electric locos, and at times consideration was given to purchasing railcars. As prices of copper and the necessary electrical systems were still extremely high in the immediate aftermath of the war, the electrification plan had to be abandoned in view of the still ailing financial resources of the VZ.