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SBB-CFF-FFS Logo
The Re 460 Locomotive of the SBB-CFF-FFS
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The Re 460 Locomotive of the SBB-CFF-FFS

Swiss Federal Railways (SBB-CFF-FFS) is the national railway company of Switzerland. It provides both intercity and commuter rail as well as freight services.

Swiss Federal Railways is known by its acronyms in the four principal languages of Switzerland:

Swiss Rail codeshares with American Airlines out of Zurich International Airport in Zürich.

Contents

History

Swiss Federal Railways was created January 1 1902 by the nationalisation of several private companies : Other companies were included later, and the rail network was extended. It is still growing today.

In 1982 SBB-CFF-FFS introduced a regular schedule on an hourly basis, known as the Taktfahrplan, with trains for a given destination leaving every 60 minutes, which greatly simplified the timetable. On December 12 2004 the first phase of Rail2000, an ambitious program to improve the company's services, was introduced. Some destinations are now linked every 30 or 15 minutes and some winding tracks were straightened to allow trains to travel at higher speed. Due to these changes, 90% of the timetable was changed and travel times generally improved. Most of the improvements were made to intercity lines to the detriment of regional trains.

The company

SBB logos applied to the side of a passenger car.
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SBB logos applied to the side of a passenger car.

The Federal Railways operate 3069 km of standard gauge track (2928 km of which is electrified at 15 kV 16.7 Hz) and formerly owned 74 km of narrow gauge (1000 mm) track between Lucerne and Interlaken (the Brünigbahn), also electrified at 15 kV 16.7 Hz). The narrow-gauge Brünigbahn was sold to the Luzern-Stans-Engelberg-Bahn with effect from 1 January 2005, forming a new undertaking, the Zentralbahn which combines the Brünigbahn and the LSE. Since the federal government owns 47% of the LSE as well as 100% of the SBB, the line will remain more-or-less in state ownership.

Every year, more than 300 million travellers and 60 million tons of freight are transported by 27,000 workers.

Status

As of 1999 Swiss Federal Railways is officially a private company or AG (Aktiengesellschaft - stock company) which is wholly owned by the Swiss Federal Government and the Swiss cantons. The infrastructure of the railroad is treated similarly to that of a federal highway, being subsidized by the government for regular maintenance and capital investment. Swiss federal law dictates that the infrastructure (rather the rails) of the entire Federal Railway system must be available to outside parties at equitable prices. Therefore, the Infrastructure division of the Federal Railways receives set "tolls" from all companies that operate on their rails, including their own.

Local commuter rail services are "ordered" individually by each canton as a distinct service; this principle of ordering allows the SBB CFF FFS to offset operational losses in this sector of the market. Intercity rail is not directly subsidized since it is profitable.

Swiss Federal Railways is also the major supplier of freight rail services in Switzerland. This section of the company has been split off to become a semi-autonomous division called SBB Cargo.

Prominent SBB train sets

The most famous of all SBB train sets used to be the "green vehicles", which were mainly green in appearance. These, however, are now being replaced by the IC 2000 double-decker trains, or they are being remodelled with closed lavatory systems, chairs being changed and red replacing the green stripe; the duller white colour is also being replaced with a brighter one.

The SBB also operates the high-speed ICN (Intercity-Neigezug) or Intercity Tilting Train, which was a major transportational player in Expo.02.

Announcements

Announcements are performed in German, French, Italian and English There are several kinds of announcements. In the train, there is a welcome message when the train is about to leave the first station. Then, every station is announced and at the end station, an additional sentence requests the travelers to leave the train.

For example when reaching Geneva, you would hear: Mesdames et Messieurs, nous arrivons à Genève. Gare terminus. Tous les passagers sont priés de descendre. Le Personnel d'accompagnement vous dit merci et au revoir. -- Meine Dame und Herren, wir treffen in Genf ein. Endstation. Das Zug-Team bittet alle Reisenden auszusteigen und verabschiedet sich. -- Ladies and Gentlemen, we are arriving in Geneva. End Station. All passengers are kindly requested to leave the train. The train crew hopes you have had a pleasant journey and wishes you good-bye.

On the platform of the terminal an announcement will go: Tout le monde descend s'il vous plaît, ce train reste a Genève--Bitte nicht einsteigen. Dieser Zug bleibt in Genf. (Please get off the train. This train is staying in Geneva)

The announcements are usually made in the language of the region your train is in and at major stations (i.e. Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich, Bern....) the announcement is performed in:

The announcement system is not yet generalized on some remote regional lines, which occasionally makes it somewhat difficult for the traveler to know where he is.

At the main stations, the arrival and departure, as well as delays for each train is announced on the platforms.

Services

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The SBB has the following services:

Regional trains are sometimes operated by another Swiss railways operator (for example, the Bern S-Bahn services operated by the BLS.) (CityNightLine is a Zürich-based night train operator, and a partner of the SBB.)
The SBB also operates EuroCity trains within Switzerland.

See also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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