page_title: St. Gallen–Winterthur railway line
section_title: Construction and opening
hierarchical_section_title: St. Gallen–Winterthur railway line / History / Construction and opening
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Sitterbrücke bei St. Gallen. Die Brücken über die Sitter, Glatt, Uze und Thur wurden nach den gleichen Konstruktionsprinzipien errichtet.
context_page_description: The St. Gallen–Winterthur railway line is a standard gauge railway line in the Swiss cantons of St. Gallen, Thurgau and Zürich and belongs to the Swiss Federal Railways. The 57.1 kilometre-long line was opened between 1855 and 1856 in four stages by the St. Gallen-Appenzell Railway.
context_section_description: The Canton of Thurgau initially refused to grant a concession for the line on its territory, as the route would not have favoured Thurgau. The Swiss Northeastern Railway (Die Schweizerische Nordostbahn) operated the competing Winterthur–Romanshorn railway through the Thurgau.
  The Winterthur–Wil–Thur bridge section at Schwarzenbach was built by Julius Herz. The Winterthur–Wil section was opened on 14 October 1855. The journey time was 40 minutes.
  The line between Wil and Flawil was hotly debated. The SGAE applied for a concession for the easily-built route south of Uzwil’s local hill, the Vogelsberg, from Schwarzenbach via the Bettenauer Weiher and Oberuzwil to Flawil. Commercial interests preferred a route north of the Vogelsberg so that Uzwil could have a station. So the line was built with a tight S-curve on the edge of the Vogelsberg, where Uzwil station was later built. As a result, this S-curve is today one of the slowest sections of the whole line and the tightest curve on a relatively high-speed line in Switzerland. The Wil–Flawil section was opened on 25 December 1855.
  After the construction of the Glatt bridge at Egg between Flawil and Gossau was completed on 15 February 1856, the line reached Gossau and Winkeln. Finally, the line was extended to the town of  St. Gallen on 24 March 1856. For this purpose, an iron lattice bridge designed by Karl Etzel was built over the Sitter, the original Sitter Viaduct.
caption: Original Sitter Viaduct with a lattice girder. The bridges over the Glatt, the Uze and the Thur were built according to the same design principles.
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