The Alpine railway question, 1845–1869

Early projects and the Lukmanier

The railway question reached Ticino almost as soon as railways reached Switzerland. In the late autumn of 1845 the first public discussion of a line through the canton began, and on 30 October 1845 the cantons of St Gallen, Graubünden and Ticino signed a treaty at Chur on a railway from Lake Maggiore to Lake Constance. A few weeks later, on 7 December 1845, Ticino concluded an agreement with the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont) in Turin, negotiated for the canton by Giovanni Battista Pioda and Giuseppe Brocchi.¹ The idea behind these agreements was simple. Piedmont wanted access from Genoa to the markets of southern Germany and eastern Switzerland without passing through Austrian Lombardy, while the eastern Swiss cantons wanted a line that would bring that traffic to them. The obvious route ran from Lake Maggiore up the Ticino valley to Biasca, through the Val di Blenio and over or under the Lukmanier pass (Lucomagno) into the Grisons Rhine valley and on to Chur and Lake Constance. Its great advocate was the Grisons engineer Richard La Nicca, who defended the Lukmanier with remarkable persistence for two decades.²

On 19 January 1846 the Grand Council of Ticino authorized two railway concessions in favour of a promoting committee led by Carlo Rota Vezzoli. The projects failed for lack of money. The capital requirement of 12 million French francs, divided into 24,000 shares of 500 francs, could not be placed, although the promoters offered 4 per cent interest on paid-in capital even during the years of construction. The London market showed interest but declined to subscribe. Cavour, then not yet in office, judged the initiative "at least premature". In June 1851 the company that held the concession, the Strada ferrata meridionale, withdrew and forfeited its deposit of CHF 50,000.³ The episode set the pattern for the next twenty years. Railway concessions for the Alpine crossing were easy to grant and hard to finance, because no private investor would carry the risk of a long tunnel through unknown rock without a guarantee from governments.

The federal framework of 1852 and the cantonal competition

The Federal Constitution of 1848 had given the Confederation power over public works, but the first federal railway law of 1852 left the construction and operation of railways and the power to grant concessions to the cantons. Railways were to be built by private companies with private capital, supplemented by contributions from municipalities and cantons.⁴ The law followed the ideas of Alfred Escher, the Zurich liberal who dominated federal politics in the 1850s, who had secured its passage and who preferred private enterprise to a state railway.⁵ The consequence was a decade of competition between private companies and the cantons that supported them. The Schweizerische Nordostbahn (NOB), founded in 1853 with Escher as its director, served Zurich and eastern Switzerland. The Schweizerische Centralbahn (SCB) served Basel and the centre of the country.⁶ Each company wanted the Alpine line to feed its own network.

Three routes competed. The Lukmanier had the support of Graubünden, St Gallen and, at first, Ticino, which granted provisional concessions for it, together with St Gallen and Graubünden, in September 1853. The Splügen, further east, was favoured by eastern Switzerland and by interests in Lombardy. The Gotthard offered the shortest line between the Rhine at Basel and Milan, but it required the longest tunnel and the steepest ramps.⁷ On 19 August 1853 nine cantons met in Lucerne and formed a first Gotthard committee: Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt, Bern, Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schwyz, Solothurn and Uri. Zurich and Ticino stayed away. The committee commissioned the engineer Gottlieb Koller, who had headed the first federal railway office, to plan the route. Koller estimated its cost at about CHF 70 million. The engineer Wetli surveyed the line from Erstfeld to Lugano in five months, a work of surveying that is still regarded as a masterpiece of precision.⁸ The opening of the Semmering railway in Austria in 1854 and the start of work on the Mont Cenis tunnel between Savoy and Piedmont in 1857 showed that mountain railways and long tunnels were technically possible.⁹

Notes

1. Bruno Caizzi, "Gli albori della questione ferroviaria nel Ticino", Scuola ticinese no. 86, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.86/ ST_86_Caizzi_albori_questione_ferroviaria.pdf, for the treaty of Chur of 30 October 1845 and the agreement of Turin of 7 December 1845 signed by G. B. Pioda and Giuseppe Brocchi. The title is given as it appears in the file name of the online edition. ↩
2. Caizzi, "Gli albori" (as above), describing La Nicca as an untiring designer and "generously stubborn" defender of the Lukmanier; Jürg Meister, Die Geschichte des Gotthard-Komitees (April 2017), https://www.alptransit-portal.ch/Storages/User/Meilensteine/Pin_066/Dokumente_066/ Geschichte_Gotthardkomitee.pdf, on the route Chur–Biasca–Lake Maggiore. ↩
3. Caizzi, "Gli albori" (as above), for the concessions of 19 January 1846, the capital of 12 million French francs in 24,000 shares of 500 francs, the 4 per cent interest during construction, the refusal of the London market, Cavour's judgment and the withdrawal of the Strada ferrata meridionale in June 1851 with the loss of its deposit of 50,000 francs. ↩
4. HLS, art. "Eisenbahnen" (Hans-Peter Bärtschi, Anne-Marie Dubler, version of 11.02.2015), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007961/: the federal railway law of 1852 left construction, operation and the power to grant concessions to the cantons, and private capital financed most lines with municipal and cantonal contributions. ↩
5. Wikipedia (de), "Alfred Escher", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Escher (used as a last resort): "1852 verhalf Escher dem Eisenbahngesetz zum Durchbruch, das ganz seinen Vorstellungen folgte: der Bau und Betrieb der Bahnen wurde privaten Gesellschaften überlassen." For a full account see Joseph Jung, Alfred Escher 1819–1882. Der Aufbruch zur modernen Schweiz (Zurich 2006). ↩
6. HLS, art. "Escher, Alfred" (Markus Bürgi, version of 20.01.2020), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/003626/2020-01-20/, for Escher's directorship of the Nordostbahn from 1853 to 1872. ↩
7. Meister, Geschichte des Gotthard-Komitees (as above), for the three competing routes and the provisional Lukmanier concession of September 1853 by St Gallen, Graubünden and Ticino. ↩
8. Meister, Geschichte des Gotthard-Komitees (as above), for the meeting of 19 August 1853, the nine cantons, Koller's estimate of CHF 70 million and Wetli's survey from Erstfeld to Lugano ("eine Arbeit welche in Bezug auf Präzision in der Vermessungstechnik auch heute noch als Meisterleistung gilt"). ↩
9. Meister, Geschichte des Gotthard-Komitees (as above), on the Semmering (1848–1854) and Mont Cenis (from 1857) as technical models. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.