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:''This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series.'' The construction and operation of Swiss railways during the 19th century was carried out by private railways. The first internal line was a 16 km line opened from Zürich to Baden in 1847. By 1860 railways connected western and northeastern Switzerland. The first Alpine railway to be opened under the Gotthard Pass in 1882. A second alpine line was opened under the Simplon Pass in 1906. In 1901, the major railways were nationalised to form Swiss Federal Railways. During the first half of the twentieth century they were electrified and slowly upgraded. After the Second World War, rail rapidly lost its share of the rail market to road transport as car ownership rose and more roads were built. From 1970, the Federal Government has become more involved in upgrading the railways, especially in urban areas and on trunk routes under the Rail 2000 project. In addition, two major trans-alpine routes — the Gotthard Railway and the Lötschberg approach to the Simplon Tunnel — are being rebuilt under the AlpTransit project. ==Early railways== The first line in Switzerland, the extension of the French Strasbourg–Basel Railway (French: ''Chemin de fer de Strasbourg à Bâle'') from Mulhouse to Basel, reached a temporary station outside Basel's walls on 15 June 1844 and the permanent station on 11 December 1845. (The Chemins de fer de l'Est took over the company in 1854.) The Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway's Rhine Valley Line reached the original Basel Baden railway station in 1855. Despite constant discussion, it took some time before these lines extended into Switzerland. The first internal Swiss line, the 16 km long Swiss Northern Railway (German: ''Schweizerische Nordbahn'', SNB) opened from Zürich to Baden in 1847. Private companies - led by Swiss entrepreneurs, industrialists and bankers - built the next wave of railways. In 1850 the Swiss Federal Council invited two British engineers, Robert Stephenson and Henry Swinburne, to draw up plans for a railway network for the Swiss Confederation. They proposed a 645 km network along the valleys, avoiding any Alpine crossings, all of which was eventually built. Although the Constitution of 1848 gave the federal government powers in relation to railways, it initially decided to decentralise rail policy. The first Railway Act of 1852 gave responsibility for administering policy in relation to the construction and operation of railways to the cantons, including licensing of companies, coordination of lines, technical specifications and pricing policy. Railways were to be built by private limited-liability companies, with contributions to be provided by the municipalities and cantons that stood to benefit from projects. Despite the lack of overall planning and the rivalry among the companies, a rail network similar to that proposed by Stephenson and Swinburne soon formed in northern and western Switzerland, with the completion of a link from the French border in the far west near Geneva to the Austrian border in the far northeast at St. Margrethen on 10 December 1860.〔 In 1853 the Swiss Central Railway (German: ''Schweizerische Centralbahn'', SCB) began to build the Basel-Olten line through the Hauenstein pass, with branches from Olten to Aarau and Lucerne, Bern and Thun and from Herzogenbuchsee to Solothurn and Biel. At the same time the Swiss Northeastern Railway (German: ''Schweizerische Nordostbahn'', NOB) concentrated on eastern Switzerland in the cantons of Zürich and Thurgau; its network covered the lines from Zürich to Lake Constance and to Schaffhausen and later to Lucerne. The United Swiss Railways (VSB) built lines from Winterthur to Rorschach and from Wallisellen to Rapperswil, Sargans and Chur. There were contracts for sharing the interlinked VSB line between Weesen and Glarus and the NOB line between Ziegelbrücke, Näfels, Glarus and Linthal.〔 During the same period, railways were built in western Switzerland along Lake Geneva from Geneva to Lausanne and Bex and from Morges to Yverdon. A steamship connected Geneva with the line from Le Bouveret to Martigny. The main developer in the inner part of Vaud was the West Switzerland Company (French: ''Compagnie de l'Ouest-Suisse'', OS) and in the Valais the Line of Italy (French: ''Ligne d'Italie'', absorbed by the Simplon Company (''Compagnie du Simplon'' ) in 1874). The Jura–Neuchâtel Railway emerged from lines from Le Locle and Les Verrières along Lake Neuchâtel to La Neuveville.〔 The Canton of Fribourg delayed the construction of the line from Bern to Lausanne in a bid to have it run through the city of Fribourg rather than on flatter land further west; in 1857, the Swiss government, the canton of Vaud and the West Switzerland Company gave in, allowing construction to commence on the line, which opened in 1862. The Canton of Bern attempted to make its own policy in relation to its railways. At the initiative of its Federal politician Jakob Stämpfli the Swiss East–West Railway (German: ''Schweizerische Ostwestbahn'', OWB) started building a line in 1857 - to compete with the Swiss Central Railway - between La Neuveville (on Lake Biel) and Zürich via Bern, Langnau im Emmental, Luzern and Zug, but without raising sufficient finance to guarantee its completion. In June 1861 it went bankrupt; the Canton of Bern took over the completed section from La Neuveville and Langnau and incorporated it as the Bern State Railway (German: ''Bernische Staatsbahn'', BSB), which continued building the line to Lucerne. The missing section from Langnau to Entlebuch and Lucerne was not completed until 1875. The concession for the Zürich–Lucerne line via Affoltern am Albis was taken over by the Zürich–Zug–Lucerne Railway (German: ''Zürich–Zug–Luzern-Bahn'', ZZL), a subsidiary of the NOB.〔 Financial difficulties led to a series of mergers and increased foreign investment in the rail companies. French investment in Switzerland was also stimulated by an interest in Alpine crossings. Many of the original companies merged with the Swiss Northeastern Railway (German: ''Schweizerische Nordostbahn'') and with the United Swiss Railways (German: ''Vereinigte Schweizerbahnen'', VSB) in the east and with the Jura–Simplon Railway (French: ''Compagnie du Jura–Simplon'', JS) in the west. Despite the financial difficulties, by 1860 a continuous line extended from Geneva to Lake Constance, and by 1870 other main routes were completed. Steamers connected to the railways across several major lakes: Geneva, Neuchâtel, Thun, Lucerne, and Constance. Connections to the networks of neighboring countries occurred at Romanshorn (by ferries to Lindau and Friedrichshafen), at Basel by rail to the Baden Mainline and to the French Chemins de fer de l'Est, at Schaffhausen to the Baden Mainline and at Les Verrières to the line to Pontarlier and Paris.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of rail transport in Switzerland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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