Swiss Central Railway

The SCB built its main workshop at Olten station around 1855. This, in addition to the usual maintenance work, also produced new locomotives and freight wagons. The modern SBB workshop emerged from the SCB workshop.

SCB's annual reports provide information on the rapidly growing volume of rail traffic on the network. The capacity of the Hauenstein line, at that time the only railway connection from the Rhine Valley to the Swiss Plateau, proved inadequate after just a few years.

The SCB was of vital importance for supplying Switzerland with imported goods such as grain or coal. As a result goods traffic was large and grew steadily. The improvement in the company’s financial situation, led to calls for further expansions of its network.

Swiss Central Railway 1880–1901

Route map Basel Badischer Bahnhof Basel Connecting Line bridge (Rhine) Basel St. Johann 0.00 Basel Centralbahnhof[lower-alpha 1] Schweizerhalle 8.34 Pratteln 14.38 Liestal Waterfalls Tunnel (project) Hauenstein Tunnel 50.77 Wöschnau near Aarau 39.29 39.29 Olten Aarau Suhr 43.01 Aarburg 56.63 Oensingen 47.46 Zofingen 59.20 Langenthal (light red: LWB project) 62.52 Wauwil 73.82 80.29 Neu Solothurn[lower-alpha 3] 66.80 Herzogenbuchsee 95.09 Lucerne 99.37 Biel/Bienne 101.86 Busswil Red Bridge (Aare) 106.13 Bern Thörishaus near Bern 137.59 Scherzligen near Thun Without intermediate stations and connecting lines. The metric chainage for most of the SCB lines runs from the zero point in Basel station. The chainage information has been omitted here for lines with a different zero point.

Red bridge over the Aare in Bern, with the Minster in the background, around 1870

Share capital and fixed bonds (left scale) as well as dividends (right scale) of the SCB

Bridge on the Basel Connecting Line during the First World War

From 1872, the Swiss National Railway (Schweizerische Nationalbahn; SNB) tried to establish competition with the existing railway companies with a second rail link between Lake Geneva and Lake Constance (Bodensee). Originally, the National Railway planned a line from Aarau via Olten through the Gäu to Solothurn and on to Lyss. Along with the NOB, the SCB made daring commitments to build new lines to fight the competition. In 1872, the SCB entered into an undertaking with the canton of Solothurn to build the Gäu Railway (Gäubahn; Olten–Solothurn–Lyss, now considered part of the Jura Foot Railway), along with the Solothurn–Biberist branch line (now considered part of the Solothurn–Langnau railway). In return, Solothurn demanded the creation of the Waterfalls Railway (Wasserfallenbahn) from Liestal through the Jura to Solothurn and its continuation from Solothurn to Schönbühl near Bern. The SCB also committed to build a local railway (Lokalbahn) from Liestal to Waldenburg and to participate in the Sissach–Gelterkinden tramway (Sissach-Gelterkinden-Bahn), including funding a third of its construction costs. The SCB increased its share capital from CHF 37.5 to 50 million in 1873 to finance the construction of new lines and the duplication of parts of the old network.

When Alsace-Lorraine was ceded to Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, attempts were made to build a rail link from Delle to Lucerne via Delémont and Langenthal (Jura–Gotthard Railway). In addition, the Bern-Lucerne Railway (Bern-Luzern-Bahn; BLB) planned a line to the Gotthard via Langnau. To defend against this double competition, the SCB began construction of the Langenthal–Wauwil railway. It would have connected the Olten–Bern and the Olten–Lucerne lines and significantly shortened the detour via Aarburg.

However, the raising of additional funds was difficult due to the economic crisis and led to significant restrictions on the construction program. The construction of the Waterfalls Railway and the Langenthal–Wauwil line, in which CHF 3.5 million had already been invested, had to be abandoned. The payment of dividends was discontinued and the net income of 2 ½ years was used to write off the construction costs of the discontinued lines. In 1881, the unrealised Waterfalls Railway cost the SCB the deposit of CHF 125 000 that it had paid for the concession. The construction of the Waldenburg Railway was left to a special undertaking.

The SCB had more success with the joint ventures with the NOB. The SCB together with the NOB built the Bötzberg Railway from Pratteln to Brugg AG from 1871 to 1875 and the Aargau Southern Railway (Aargauische Südbahn), which connected their lines to the Gotthard Railway from Rupperswil via Wohlen to Immensee, operated by the Central Railway, from 1873 to 1882. The opening of these two lines led to a decline in traffic on the Hauenstein line.

The construction of the Basel Connecting Line also occurred in this period. In the Treaty on the Construction and Operation of the Gotthard Railway, Switzerland undertook to connect its network with the Baden Railways by rail over the Rhine. The Basel Connecting Line was built by the SCB together with the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways and put into operation on 3 November 1873. A year before, the section of the Strasbourg–Basel railway from the French border at St. Ludwig to the Centralbahnhof[lower-alpha 1] was transferred from the Chemins de fer de l'Est to the SCB under a federal decree. The Salinenbahn (Salt Railway) from Pratteln to the Schweizer Salinen (Swiss salt works) at Schweizerhalle was opened on 28 October 1872.

Swiss Central Railway bond worth CHF 1000 from 1 November 1880

Liestal station around 1890 with only two through tracks. The 750 mm-gauge Waldenburg Railway, which opened in 1880, shared a section of track with the SCB line to Altmarkt junction using four rails

The opening of the Gotthard Railway gave the SCB a strong boost from 1882 onwards. Both passenger and freight traffic increased strongly and permanently. The SCB received half the profits of the highly profitable Bötzberg Railway. Also, the initially loss-making Southern Railway produced abundant profits from 1882, half of which were paid to the SCB. As early as 1873, SCB was again able to pay dividends to shareholders, which reached nine or more percent of the capital value of shares between 1898 and 1900. These high payments to shareholders shortly before the nationalisation did not meet with approval everywhere.

The railway crisis caused many domestic shareholders to sell their shares to domestic and foreign banks. The railway shares played an important role in speculation on the stock market. The new majority of foreign shareholders considered short-term profit maximisation to be the main priority of the company. In 1887 and 1896, the management was replaced by a president who was more comfortable with the banks.

On 30 May 1898, a group of track workers employed by the Swiss Central Railway was run over by a passenger train of the Northeastern Railway at the southern exit from the Gütsch tunnel near Lucerne. Seven railway workers were killed immediately and four seriously injured.[1] On 4 June 1899, the Zurich–Geneva night express of the NOB ran past a designated stopping point in Aarau and ran into two stationary Central Railway locomotives. The accident caused two deaths and three serious injuries.[2]

In 1891, a banking consortium offered the federal government the majority of shares in SCB. The policy would have had a great impact on the SCB. However, a referendum was called to prevent the purchase because of its high cost and it was rejected by the voters. The nationalisation of SCB was only decided in 1898 with the adoption of the repurchase law. The Central Railway became the property of the Confederation in 1902 and became part of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB).

• 
  Basel Centralbahnhof in 1861
• 
  Olten station, about 1860
• 
  Olten station, about 1900
• 
  Bern station in 1860
• 
  Bern station, opened in 1891
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  Biel/Bienne station, built in 1864
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  Biel/Bienne station, built in 1864
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  First Lucerne station
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  Second Lucerne station built in 1896 on the left, lake bridge on the right

• Bärtschi, Hans-Peter (25 February 2013). "Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB)". Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (in German). Retrieved 4 February 2019.
• Dietler (1923). "Schweizerische Zentralbahn". Röll: Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens (in German). Retrieved 4 February 2019.
• Frey, Thomas; Schiedt, Hans-Ulrich. "Schweizerische Centralbahn". bahndaten.ch. Daten zu den Schweizer Eisenbahnen 1847–1920 (in German). ViaStoria. Retrieved 4 February 2019.
• Weissenbach, Plazid (1913). Das Eisenbahnwesen der Schweiz. Erster Teil. Geschichte des Eisenbahnwesens (PDF 14.8 MB) (in German). Retrieved 4 February 2019.