The Brienz-Rothorn railway uses a cogwheel system to go up the mountain. Extract from the Schweizer Filmwochenschau (Swiss Weekly Newsreel) in 1976. Swiss Federal Archives

Designing trains to scale the alpine heights

Falling travel costs and diminishing distances led to an increase in tourism in the 19th century. The Swiss mountains held a special fascination for many travellers, and innovative solutions were needed to transport tourists to the more inaccessible mountain areas in comfort.

Jean-Luc Rickenbacher

Jean-Luc Rickenbacher is a historian and curator at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.

Inspired by travelogues, novels and paintings, the number of visitors to Switzerland grew steadily during the second half of the 19th century. The expansion of the rail network was instrumental to the growth in tourism. At the same time, the standard railways powered by adhesion traction were clearly unsuited to climbing the mountain peaks. One of the world’s steepest railways at the time, the Hauenstein route between Olten and Basel, which opened in 1858, only had a maximum gradient of 2.6%. Engineers and inventors racked their brains on how to design a railway to scale the alpine heights.

**The close connection between rail and tourism is evident from the advertising posters – like this one for the Vitznau-Rigi railway from 1898 on which the timetable was printed.** The Swiss Museum of Transport, VA-42383

Winterthur architect Friedrich Albrecht raised eyebrows in 1858 when he suggested transporting tourists to the Rigi using a hydrogen-filled balloon moving along a railway structure on the ground. Finally Niklaus Riggenbach (1817–1899) made the crucial breakthrough with the rack railway. The basic idea was to place a toothed rack between the rails, which the locomotive’s driving pinions would clamp around, thus propelling the train upwards. The opening of the Vitznau-Rigi railway in 1871 was Europe’s first rack railway and it could negotiate gradients of up to 25%.

The composition of a train on Vitznau-Rigi railway around 1875 on Schnurtobel Bridge with the clearlv visible ladder centre rail, a defining feature of the Riggenbach rack system. A pilotman walked ahead to warn the train driver of any hazards or clear obstacles from the track. The Swiss Museum of Transport, VA-58261

Inventor of the cogwheel system

Riggenbach’s cogwheel railway on the Rigi was a major success. However, there are conflicting views as to whether he really invented the cogwheel system. There were already similar designs in use for English industrial railways and the world’s first mountain cogwheel railway designed by Silvester Marsh (1803-1884) was opened in the US in 1869 on Mount Washington to the north of Boston.

The almost 70-year-old Marsh wasn’t really interested in exploiting the full commercial potential of his system. Around 1870, however, Riggenbach designed a much more efficient system and he wanted to maximise its potential for the alpine tourism market. Two of his students also turned out to be extremely capable railway engineers: Roman Abt (1850–1933) from Lucerne invented the Lamella rack in 1882, which was used in over 70 rail projects all over the world. Emil Victor Strub (1858–1909) developed a combination of the above designs, which was first applied for the Jungfrau railway in 1898. The world’s steepest cogwheel railway at a gradient of 46% – the Pilatus line opened in 1889 – was the system designed by Eduard Locher (1840–1910), whereby the cogwheels lock onto the track horizontally.

**Cogwheel train composition with a Jungfrau railway electric locomotive He 2/2 in front of the Eiger Glacier, taken on 24 July 1928.** The Swiss Museum of Transport, VA-642

**The Pilatus railway is the steepest cogwheel track in the world with an incline of 46%. New railcars were used from 1937 following electrification in the 1930s. This is Beh 1/2 No. 24.** The Swiss Museum of Transport, VA-15399

Exporting all over the world

Switzerland is rightly known as the land of mountain railways. No other country has so many cogwheel railways in such a small area. At the same time, they are far from an exclusively Swiss phenomenon; there are rack mountain railways all over the world, including many countries in Europe plus North, Central and South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

Most of the world’s mountain railways are equipped with a cogwheel system developed by Swiss engineers. The main manufacturer of cogwheel locomotives was the Schweizerische Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik (SLM) in Winterthur founded in 1871. Although some railways – in the Andes or Lebanon, for example – have been closed down, SLM locomotives are still running in Indonesia and Southern India. The world’s highest ever cogwheel railway was in operation from 1964 to 2017 with SLM railcars. It used the Abt system on the 4,301-metre-high Pikes Peak in Colorado (US). The railcars were replaced by new vehicles from Stadler Rail in 2021. Moreover, cogwheel railways are by no means restricted to alpine areas: they are also used on urban slopes – as with the Dolderbahn in Zurich, for example.

SLM adhesion and cogwheel locomotive in 1926 on the Beirut-Damascus route in French-administered Lebanon and Syria. — **u003cemu003eSLMu003c/emu003e adhesion and cogwheel locomotive in 1926 on the Beirut-Damascus route in French-administered Lebanon and Syria.** SBB Historic

Adhesion and rack railway over the Brünig pass

While some tracks run entirely on the cogwheel system, there are others that combine adhesion and cogwheel propulsion, such as the Brünig railway. It was incorporated into the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in 1903 and was somewhat unique in the SBB network as the only narrow-gauge railway and at the same time the only line using the adhesion and rack systems.

**An Engelbergbahn (StEB) railcar with an HGe 2/2 bank engine on a steep incline, taken in 1910.** Wikimedia / Swiss National Library

The Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg line ran directly from Lucerne to Engelberg. The new railcars –BDeh 4/4 No. 4 and No. 7 in Engelberg station in 1985 – the rack railway enabled them to complete the steep ascent to Engelberg without a bank engine. e-pics

The Stansstad-Engelberg railway (StEB) used a cogwheel system for the steep ascent from Grafenort up to just before Engelberg. As the Engelberg railcars did not have cogwheels, they were unable to climb the 24.6% steep incline under their own power. Instead they were pushed up the mountain by special cogwheel-equipped locomotives and slowed down on the descent into the valley. The locals called the train “Schüttelbecher”, which translates as cocktail shaker because of its jerky movements. Following financial difficulties, the railway was extensively modernised and renamed Lucerne-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn (LSE) in 1964. On 1 January 2005, LSE merged with Brünig railway (SBB). The line is now operated by the company Zentralbahn and still has sections powered by a combination of adhesion and cogwheel propulsion. Zentralbahn celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

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