The Ticino lines and the opening of 1882

The valley lines of 1874

The first trains in Ticino ran eight years before the tunnel opened. As the convention of 1869 required, the company built the lines in the Ticino plain first. In 1874 it opened the lines from Biasca to Bellinzona and on to Locarno, with a junction at Giubiasco, and the separate line from Lugano to Chiasso.¹ On the Chiasso side the connection to the Italian network followed in 1876, when the line from Chiasso to Como was opened.² Until 1882 these lines formed two isolated fragments. The northern fragment connected the Riviera, Bellinzona and the Locarnese with Lake Maggiore at Magadino. The southern fragment connected Lugano with the Mendrisiotto and, from 1876, with Como and Milan. Between them lay the Monte Ceneri, which travellers still crossed by the carriage road built in 1811 after the foundation of the canton.³

The valley lines brought immediate change. Bellinzona received its station and the first repair workshops of the Gotthardbahn in 1874, in the district of Daro.⁴ Chiasso received an international station at the frontier with Italy. Lugano was connected by rail to the Lombard markets, and from 1876 to Milan. For a canton whose economy had depended on emigration, transit on foot and by carriage and small-scale agriculture, the railway was the first large industrial undertaking on its territory. It employed construction workers, station staff and track workers, and it brought engineers and administrators from northern Switzerland, Germany and Italy into the small towns of the south.

The Monte Ceneri and the Luino line

The postponement of the Ceneri line in 1877 had threatened to leave the Sottoceneri outside the international traffic. The federal subsidy of CHF 2 million under the act of 1878 allowed the company to build the line at the same time as the main line.⁵ The Ceneri line, with a summit tunnel of 1,675 metres, was opened on 10 April 1882, and with it the network that the convention of 1869 had defined became complete in Ticino.⁶ The line from Bellinzona via Cadenazzo and the left bank of Lake Maggiore to Luino and the Italian border, which the Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft opened on 4 December 1882, gave the Gotthard a second connection to the Italian network. It was originally intended to carry the Gotthard traffic to Genoa, while the traffic to Milan was to run via Chiasso.

The two southern connections reflected the competing interests of Italian cities and Ticinese regions. Milan wanted the shortest line via Chiasso and Como. Genoa and the western Lombard and Piedmontese industries preferred the line via Luino. Within Ticino, Lugano had feared for years that the international traffic would bypass it. During the negotiations a solution had even been discussed in which the main line would pass "at the gates of Lugano without entering", which provoked strong protests in the town.⁷ In the end Lugano received a station on the main line, on the hillside above the old town and the lake front.

The inauguration of May 1882

Regular through traffic through the tunnel began on 1 January 1882, before the whole line was finished.⁸ The official inauguration took place from 21 to 25 May 1882 with festivities in Lucerne and Milan, attended by representatives of the three contracting states. Scheduled operation on the whole line from Immensee to Chiasso began on 1 June 1882.⁹ The line included 36 tunnels with a total length of about 31 kilometres, of which seven were spiral tunnels: three on the northern ramp around Wassen, the Freggio and Prato tunnels in the Piottino gorge (Dazio Grande) and the Pianotondo and Travi tunnels in the Biaschina gorge. Its highest point lay inside the tunnel at about 1,151 metres. The total construction cost amounted to about CHF 238 million.¹⁰ The opening reduced the journey from Basel or Zurich to Milan from several days by carriage and steamer to less than a day by train.

The Gotthardbahn was a well-managed railway for its time. It introduced continuous automatic brakes, four-axle carriages, saloon cars and some of the most powerful steam locomotives in Europe for its mountain ramps.¹¹ Its traffic grew quickly. In 1883, its first full year, the line carried about 250,000 passengers and 300,000 tonnes of goods.¹² By 1897, when the access lines from Lucerne and Zug to Arth-Goldau were completed, the company's network reached 273 kilometres. A second track was added from 1888 onwards as traffic grew, but according to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland the double track was complete on the whole line only in 1965.¹³

Date Event 15 Oct 1869 Convention Switzerland–Italy 28 Oct 1871 Accession of the German Empire 6 Dec 1871 Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft constituted in Lucerne 7 Aug 1872 Tunnel contract with Louis Favre 1874 Biasca–Bellinzona–Locarno and Lugano–Chiasso opened 27–28 Jul 1875 Strike at Göschenen, four dead Jun 1877 Lucerne conference reduces the programme 12 Mar 1878 Supplementary treaty (CHF 28 million) 27 Jul 1878 Escher resigns as president 19 Jan 1879 Referendum approves federal subsidy 19 Jul 1879 Death of Louis Favre 29 Feb 1880 Breakthrough of the tunnel 21–25 May 1882 Inauguration festivities 1 Jun 1882 Scheduled operation Immensee–Chiasso 1897 Access lines Lucerne–Immensee, Zug–Arth-Goldau 1 May 1909 Takeover by the Swiss Federal Railways Table: Chronology of the Gotthard railway, 1869–1909.

Notes

1. Caizzi, "La fine di una tormentata vicenda" (as above): "Nel 1874, apertura al traffico delle linee da Biasca a Chiasso [sic] e della Bellinzona-Locarno"; Wikipedia, "Gotthard railway", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_railway (consulted as a last resort), for the lines Biasca– Locarno and Lugano–Chiasso opened in 1874; HLS, art. "Gottardo, Ferrovia del" (as above), for the completion of the plain sections in 1874. ↩
2. HLS, art. "Chiasso" (Stefania Bianchi, updated 30.06.2022), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002230/: "Nel 1874 venne inaugurata la linea C.-Lugano, nel 1876 quella per Como". ↩
3. HLS, art. "Ceneri, Monte" (Graziano Tarilli, version of 17.05.2016), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/008835/2016-05-17/, for the carriage road of 1811. ↩
4. HLS, art. "Bellinzona" (Pablo Crivelli, Chiara Orelli, version of 05.04.2017), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/002031/2017-04-05/. ↩
5. Federal Act of 22 August 1878 (as above), Art. 4. ↩
6. HLS, art. "Ceneri, Monte" (as above): "Nel 1882 fu aperta la linea ferroviaria che supera il C. in galleria"; Handbuch der deutschen Aktiengesellschaften (as above), p. 551, for the length of the Ceneri tunnel (1,675 m); Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardbahn" (as above), for "10. Apr. 1882 | Bellinzona–Lugano (Monte Ceneri) in Betrieb"; Wikipedia (de), "Bahnstrecke Cadenazzo–Luino", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Cadenazzo%E2%80%93Luino (used as a last resort): "Die Luino-Linie wurde am 4. Dezember 1882 von der Gotthardbahn-Gesellschaft eröffnet", and on its original purpose for the traffic to Genoa. ↩
7. Caizzi, "La fine di una tormentata vicenda" (as above): "alle porte di Lugano senza entrarvi". ↩
8. Handbuch der deutschen Aktiengesellschaften (as above), p. 551, giving the opening of operations as 1 January 1882; HLS, art. "Gottardo, Ferrovia del" (as above). ↩
9. Wikipedia, "Gotthard railway" (as above), for the festivities of 21–25 May 1882 and scheduled operation from 1 June 1882; Andreae (as above), for the official opening on 1 June 1882. ↩
10. Wikipedia, "Gotthard railway" (as above), for the 36 tunnels (31,216 m), the seven spirals, the highest point at 1,151 m and the cost of CHF 238 million; Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardbahn" (as above), for the "Doppelschleife bei Wassen", the "Freggio-Kehrtunnel" and "Prato-Kehrtunnel" and the "Pianotondo-Kehrtunnel und Travi-Kehrtunnel". ↩
11. HLS, art. "Gottardo, Ferrovia del" (as above), for the technical innovations and the network: "Fino al 1897, la Ferrovia del Gottardo realizzò una rete di 273 km." ↩
12. Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, aboutswitzerland, "The legend of the Gotthard pass", https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/the-legend-of-the-gotthard-pass. ↩
13. HLS, art. "Gottardo, Ferrovia del" (as above): "La realizzazione del doppio binario su tutta la linea terminò solo nel 1965"; Wikipedia (de), "Gotthardbahn" (as above): "Die Zulegung des zweiten Streckengleises erfolgte ab 1888." ↩

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 August 2025.