Lausanne–Échallens–Bercher line
Regional metric gauge railway line
The Lausanne–Échallens–Bercher line is a railway line in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. The line connects the city of Lausanne with Bercher via Echallens. It is owned and operated by the Chemin de fer Lausanne-Échallens-Bercher (LEB) company, which was the result of a merger of the separate Chemin de fer Lausanne-Échallens (LE) and Compagnie du Central Vaudois. It is under the operational management of Transports publics de la région lausannoise.
The line is notable as it was the first metre gauge railway to built in Switzerland, in 1873, and the forerunner of many later such lines.
History
The initial line
In 1860, an abortive plan was put forward for a standard gauge railway from Lausanne to Payerne via Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Échallens, Bercher and Demoret. In 1871, an application was made for a concession to build a line from Lausanne to Échallens using a monorail system designed by Jean Larmanjat. The following year, the concession was granted to the Lausanne-Échallens company on the condition that the line should be built as a conventional two-rail railway.
The line was the first metre gauge railway to be built in Switzerland. It was built using equipment from the temporary Mont Cenis Pass Railway that crossed the Mont Cenis Pass between France and Italy until the opening of the Mont Cenis Tunnel in 1871.
“Lausanne–Échallens–Bercher line” enters the record as regional metric gauge railway line. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lausanne, Échallens and Bercher can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3239136. Authority coordinates are 46.639, 6.633. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1873, 1860 and 1871.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lausanne–Échallens–Bercher line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.