page_title: BVZ Zermatt-Bahn
section_title: Planning, construction and commencement of traffic
hierarchical_section_title: BVZ Zermatt-Bahn / History / Planning, construction and commencement of traffic
context_page_description: The Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn – officially known between 1991 and 2002 as the BVZ Zermatt-Bahn – is a metre gauge railway in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland. Its 44 kilometre long line links the communities of Brig and Visp in the Rhone Valley with Täsch and the car free holiday resort of Zermatt in the Mattertal. The BVZ also forms part of the much travelled and admired route of the Glacier Express between St. Moritz and Zermatt. Opened in 1891 as the Visp-Zermatt-Bahn, the BVZ merged on 1 January 2003 with the Furka Oberalp Bahn to form the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn.
  The Gornergratbahn is connected with the BVZ at Zermatt.
context_section_description: The mountain village of Zermatt first gained major recognition in Europe in light of the inaugural ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whymper in 1865. From then onwards, the number of overnight visitors rose steadily, even though the village itself was only reachable by a lengthy march on foot through the barren valley of Zermatt. Even the simple mule ride as far as St. Niklaus took a long time. Nevertheless, by the 1880s there were already as many as 12,000 tourist visits to Zermatt each year. To promote tourism in the valley, and especially in Zermatt itself, plans soon emerged to build a railway line intended to connect the emerging spa with the Rhone Valley.
  On 21 September 1886, the Swiss Federal Council granted the banking house Masson, Chavannes & Co. in Lausanne and the Basler Handelsbank an initial concession. The original request was for a 750 mm (2 ft 5 ¹⁄₂ in) narrow gauge railway from Visp to Zermatt, using a mixture of adhesion and rack railway line. At the insistence of the Bundesrat, the gauge was finally altered to metre gauge. The railway was at the outset to be operated from the start of June to the end of September, as the promoters did not wish to take on the risks of operating the line in an alpine winter. Additionally, it was only in summer that there were prospects of significant numbers of passengers, as in those days winter tourism was still of no great importance. Nevertheless, the Bundesrat reserved the right to extend the operating season, and similarly stipulated that concessionary fares be offered to locals.
  Planning and construction of the line was entrusted by the participating banks to the railway company Suisse Occidentale-Simplon (SOS), which, in the summer of 1887, conducted extensive survey work in the Mattertal. On 10 October 1888, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Viège à Zermatt SA emerged as the operating company.
  The exact route and mode of operation was initially the subject of intense debate. The Suisse Occidentale-Simplon proposed a pure adhesion line, with a maximum gradient of 4.5%, while the engineer Ernest von Stockalper, who was working on the construction of the Gotthardbahn, proposed a combined adhesion and rack railway, as originally planned. A Special Commission established to investigate the ideal mode of operation visited, for the purpose of its investigations, numerous rack railways in Switzerland and Germany, including the Brünigbahn and the Rübelandbahn in the Harz, which was equipped with the Abt rack rail system. These visits led to a decision to equip the line with the system used on the Rübelandbahn, and using a maximum gradient of 12.5%. A total of six sections of track were to be laid out with a total of 7450 m of rack railway.
  Construction began on 27 November 1888 in Visp. The work was entrusted to the western Swiss contractors Julius Chappuis, while the SOS undertook the purchase of land and the procurement of rolling stock. Acquisition of the necessary land turned out to be difficult, particularly in the municipalities of Stalden and St. Niklaus, as the local population was not interested in selling.  Tedious expropriation procedures therefore became necessary. Also, land in the entire valley was divided into a myriad of tiny plots, and usually the actual owners of the plots were not recorded in official documents.  The absence of a road made it necessary to transport the building materials almost exclusively over the already completed parts of the railway tracks to the construction sites.
  On 3 July 1890, rail traffic on the first part of the line, between Visp and Stalden, could finally be introduced. By 26 August of the same year, the first trains reached St. Niklaus. In the following months, however, an unusually severe winter delayed the completion of the remaining sections.  Only on 18 July 1891 could the entire line as far as Zermatt be handed over to traffic.
caption: The arrival of the first train in Zermatt.
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