Wynental and Suhrental Railway

The Wynental and Suhrental Railway (WSB) (, WSB) was a privately owned railway company in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. It was formed by the merger of the Aarau-Schöftland Railway (, AS) with the Wynental Railway (, WTB) in 1958. It in turn merged with BDWM Transport in 2018 to form Aargau Verkehr (AVA).

The company owned and operated the Menziken–Aarau–Schöftland railway line, a metre gauge railway line from Menziken to Schöftland via Aarau. The line continues to run, under the ownership of Aargau Verkehr.

History

The Wynental Railway

In 1871, several municipalities in the Wynental founded a committee requesting a concession for two railway lines, from Aarau via Oberkulm to Reinach, and from Beinwil am See via Reinach to Menziken. Both were planned as standard gauge lines operated with steam engines. A year later the project was granted by the authorities of the canton Aargau, but was not executed, mainly due to disagreements over the exact line through the narrow valley. Eventually the section between Beinwil am See and Menziken was built and opened in 1883 by the

The Wynental and Suhrental Railway

On 24 June 1958 the AS and WTB companies were merged to form the Wynental- und Suhrentalbahn (WSB).[1] The new company faced two challenges; the fact that its two lines were not physically connected and the impact on services caused by increasing motor traffic interfering with its still largely street running tracks. The first step to address these came in 1967, when the former AS branch relocated from its city centre street track into a 260 m tunnel leading to the former WTB station on the south side of the SBB station.

Elsewhere on the line, steps were taken to move the tracks away from the main roads. In the villages however, space was often limited, so the railway line had to be separated from the road completely. A main step was the complete change of the route in Gränichen, on the line through the Wynental, in 1985. Nevertheless, there were still many long stretches with tramway-like characteristics, in particular in Reinach and Menziken in the upper Wynental. In 1991, passenger traffic on the SBB line from Beinwil am See to Beromünster was abandoned, and plans were set for the relocation of the WSB route to the now vacant SBB route. The adaptation work started in 1999 after the cessation of freight traffic. The new section Reinach Nord - Menziken was finally opened on 15 December 2002.

On 5 December 2004, the line through Muhen, on the line through the Suhrental, was diverted away from the road. Between 2008 and 2010, the section of the Wynental line between Aarau and Suhr, which ran in the Kantonsstrasse K 242, was closed. It was replaced by a new route between the two places, operating on the right of way of the closed SBB standard gauge branch that roughly paralleled the former route. As part of this work, a new underpass was constructed to take the narrow gauge line under the SBB's Zofingen to Wettingen line and new platforms built at Suhr station providing direct interchange between the two lines. This section was operational on 22 November 2010.[2]

native name	Wynental- und Suhrentalbahn
native name lang	de
industry	Rail transport
predecessor	Aarau-Schöftland Railway Wynental Railway
successor	Aargau Verkehr
founded	June 24, 1958
defunct	June 19, 2018
hq location city	Aarau
hq location country	Switzerland
area served	Canton of Aargau
services	Menziken–Aarau–Schöftland railway line

Wynental and Suhrental Railway

History

The Wynental Railway

The Aarau-Schöftland Railway

The Wynental and Suhrental Railway

AAR bus+bahn

Aargau Verkehr

Literature

External links

References