page_title: Swiss Federal Railways
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Swiss Federal Railways / History
caption_attribution_description: English: SBB Historic push-pull train consisting of BDe 4/4, A, ABt near Hettlingen Deutsch: SBB Historic-Pendelzug bestehend aus BDe 4/4, A EW II und ABt nach Hettlingen
context_page_description: Swiss Federal Railways is the national railway company of Switzerland. It is usually referred to by the initials of its German, French, and Italian names, either as SBB CFF FFS, or used separately. The Romansh version of its name, Viafiers federalas svizras, is not officially used.
  The company is headquartered in Bern. It used to be a government institution, but since 1999 it has been a special stock corporation whose shares are held by the Swiss Confederation and the Swiss cantons.
  SBB was ranked first among national European rail systems in the 2017 European Railway Performance Index for its intensity of use, quality of service, and safety rating. While European rail operators such as French SNCF and Spanish Renfe have emphasised the building of high-speed rail, SBB has invested in the reliability and quality of service of its conventional rail network. In addition to passenger rail, SBB operates cargo and freight rail service and has large real estate holdings in Switzerland.
context_section_description: In the 19th century, all Swiss railways were owned by private ventures. The economic and political interests of these companies led to lines being built in parallel and some companies went bankrupt in the resulting competition. On 20 February 1898 the Swiss people agreed in a referendum to the creation of a state-owned railway company.
  Later that year, the Federal Assembly approved the purchase of Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB) to operate trains on behalf of the federal government. The first train running on the account of the Swiss Confederation ran during the night of New Year's Eve 1900/New Year's Day 1901 from Zurich via Bern to Geneva, and received a ceremonial welcome upon arriving in Bern. SBB's management board was first formed in mid-1901, and added Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB) to the system on 1 January 1902. This date is now observed as the "official" birthday of SBB.
  The following railway companies were nationalised:
  Aargauische Südbahn (ASB)
  Bötzbergbahn (BöB)
  Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB)
  Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB)
  Toggenburgerbahn (TB)
  Vereinigte Schweizerbahnen (VSB)
  Tösstalbahn including the Wald-Rüti Railway (WR)
  Wohlen-Bremgarten Railway (WB)
  Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS) including the Brünigbahn (the latter in 1903)
  Other companies were included later, and the rail network was extended. It is still growing today.
  On 1 January 1999 the Swiss Federal Railway has been excluded from the Federal Administration and became a fully state-owned (the federal state owns 100% of all shares) limited company regulated by public law (German: öffentlich-rechtliche Aktiengesellschaft).
  First class compartments were discontinued on 3 June 1956, and second and third class accommodation was reclassified as first and second class, respectively.
  In 1982 SBB introduced the Taktfahrplan ("clockface timetable"), with trains for certain destinations leaving every 60 minutes, greatly simplifying the timetable.
  On 12 December 2004 the first phase of Bahn2000, an ambitious programme to improve the company's services, was put into effect. The core element was the Zurich-Bern-Basel triangle, where travel times between the cities was reduced to under one hour, resulting in good connections from these stations for most trains. Some connections between cities got two trains in each direction per hour or more, and the S-Bahn services were intensified to four or more trains per hour. Because of these changes 90% of the timetable was changed, 12% more trains were scheduled and travel times generally improved. It was the greatest timetable change since the introduction of the Taktfahrplan.
  For this change to be possible, large parts of the infrastructure had to be modified and many stations were rebuilt, for instance the line from Ziegelbrücke to Sargans or Bern main station which got the "wave of Bern", a platform over the tracks to provide better access to the platforms and the city centre.
  On 22 June 2005 a short circuit on a long distance power transmission line in central Switzerland led to a chain reaction. The entire Swiss railway network was out of service during rush hour and an estimated 200,000 people and 1,500 trains were stuck at stations or somewhere on the track. It turned out that the SBB power transmission network was overloaded and did not provide enough redundancy to tolerate the shutdown of the four cable Amsteg-Steinen power line due to construction work. So, the power grid was split in two parts, the northern half being overloaded and the southern half having a load reduction for the SBB power plants are situated in the southern part (the Alps), while most of the power is needed in the northern part (the Swiss plateau). The situation led to high voltage fluctuations and finally breakdown and emergency shutdown of the entire power supply.
  In the same year, the Swiss Federal Railways received the Wakker Prize, an award given out by the Swiss Heimatschutz (an institution aiming to preserve significant buildings), which is usually only granted to communes, for their extraordinary efforts. The Swiss Federal Railwa
caption: Historic SBB push-pull train consisting of BDe 4/4, A, ABt near Hettlingen ZH
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