Yverdon–Ste-Croix railway
railway line
The Yverdon to Sainte-Croix Railway (French: Chemin de fer Yverdon–Ste-Croix, YSteC) is a 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge railway line and former railway company in Switzerland. The line connects the towns of Yverdon-les-Bains and Sainte-Croix, both in the canton of Vaud, and is some 24 kilometres (15 mi) long, overcoming a vertical height change of 633 metres (2,077 ft). It is now owned and operated by the TRAVYS company (Transports Vallée-de-Joux - Yverdon-les-Bains - Sainte-Croix).
History
The line was opened in 1893 by the Yverdon–Ste-Croix railway company, largely as a result of the influence of William Barbey from Valeyres-sous-Rances, who financed the building of the line. The line initially used steam locomotives to the articulated Mallet design. Because of the influence of the religious William Barbey, the line did not operate any trains on Sundays.
In 1918, after the death of William Barbey, the line began operations on Sundays. Like many Swiss railways, it suffered from a shortage of coal during the Second World War and, in 1945, it was electrified at 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC, using overhead wires.
In 1974 the railway pioneered the Vevey system of Rollbocks, which allows a train of standard-gauge wagons to be automatically loaded onto transporter bogies so that it can travel on a narrow-gauge line.
On February 14, 1976, two railcars collided head-to-head between Essert-sous-Champvent and Valeyres-sous-Montagny at about 50 km/h (31 mph).
“Yverdon–Ste-Croix railway” enters the record as railway line. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Yverdon, Ste-Croix and railway 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 Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q530978. VIAF identifies the subject as 154180205. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1918, 1945 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yverdon–Ste-Croix railway” 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.