Cisalpino
Encyclopedia
Aktiengesellschaft
Aktiengesellschaft is a German term that refers to a corporation that is limited by shares, i.e. owned by shareholders, and may be traded on a stock market. The term is used in Germany, Austria and Switzerland...
was a railway company
Railway company
A railway company or railroad company is an entity that operates a railroad track and/or trains. Such a company can either be private or public...
operating international trains between Switzerland and Italy connecting Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
, Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen is a city in northern Switzerland and the capital of the canton of the same name; it has an estimated population of 34,587 ....
, Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Trieste
Trieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
, Livorno
Livorno
Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...
, and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. The company had its legal headquarters in Muri bei Bern
Muri bei Bern
Muri bei Bern is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.The municipality is clearly divided into two parts, each with about 6,000 people...
, Switzerland, and was jointly owned by the Swiss Federal Railways and Trenitalia
Trenitalia
Trenitalia is the primary train operator in Italy. Trenitalia is owned by Ferrovie dello Stato, itself owned by the Italian Government. It was created in 2000 following the EU directive on the deregulation of rail transport.-Passenger transport:...
.
It was founded in 1993 to operate fast trains across
the Alps using tilting train
Tilting train
A tilting train is a train that has a mechanism enabling increased speed on regular rail tracks. As a train rounds a curve at speed, objects inside the train experience centrifugal force. This can cause packages to slide about or seated passengers to feel squashed by the outboard armrest due to...
s.
In 2005, however, it also took over all daytime long-distance
passenger trains between Switzerland and Italy run with conventional, non-tilting trains.
In the fall of 2009, the project was abandoned because of mounting bad press over the quality of service and the fiasco surrounding orders placed for new trains. The remaining trains were split nearly evenly between the two owners.
The company still exists and owns the ETR 610, and lease them to Trenitalia and SBB CFF FFS. For legal reasons will continue to do that for a certain time, but its name is no more used with the public.
Cisalpino tilting trains
The original service was and still is branded under the name "Cisalpino" using the abbreviation "CIS" in timetables. It operated with 9 Italian ETR 470ETR 470
ETR 470 is an Italian high-speed tilting Electric Multiple Unit introduced in 1993 and produced in 9 units for the ItaloSwiss firm Cisalpino. They were produced by Fiat Ferroviaria ....
tilting trains (colloquially known as "Pendolino
Pendolino
Pendolino is an Italian family of tilting trains used in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Russian Federation, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Switzerland, China and shortly in Romania and Poland...
").
During the 2009 timetable these trains were used two main routes to connect Milan with northern Switzerland. Four trains per day and per direction ran via the Lötschberg line to Bern and Basel. Zurich was connected via the Gotthardbahn
Gotthardbahn
Gotthardbahn was the name of a private Swiss railway company which operated the railway line from Immensee to Chiasso . Nowadays this term usually does not refer to that company, but to the railway line itself...
with seven daily trains, of which three are direct, and four others require a change in Lugano
Lugano
Lugano is a city of inhabitants in the city proper and a total of over 145,000 people in the agglomeration/city region, in the south of Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, which borders Italy...
on to a leased Swiss ICN train. One of the Zurich-bound trains originally ran as far north as Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, but was cut back to Schaffhausen in 2006.
Train maintenance was carried out in Milan Greco workshop by the Italian railway operator Trenitalia
Trenitalia
Trenitalia is the primary train operator in Italy. Trenitalia is owned by Ferrovie dello Stato, itself owned by the Italian Government. It was created in 2000 following the EU directive on the deregulation of rail transport.-Passenger transport:...
. Trains were staffed with personnel from Trenitalia, as well as the Swiss Federal Railways, while the catering was provided by the Italian company Cremonini.
The trains had two classes. In first class, power sockets were available. The Cisalpino train included a dining car.
Problems
The Cisalpino ETR 470 trains currently in service suffer from a bad reputation due to continuing problems with punctuality (breakdowns in mid-journey) and cleanliness (overflowing toilets) and a ride that caused customers to complain of nausea due to these being first-generation Pendolinos. The service between Zürich and Stuttgart was discontinued in mid-December 2006 for these reasons. In 2008, 83 Cisalpino trains failed to reach their destination and 11.2% suffered a delay of 15 minutes or more (average delay 28 minutes).Despite these problems and the closure of the Cisalpino Company the ETR 470 continues to run as EuroCity (see EuroCity section).
New trains
A batch of 14 new tilting trains ETR 610 was ordered in 2004 from AlstomAlstom
Alstom is a large multinational conglomerate which holds interests in the power generation and transport markets. According to the company website, in the years 2010-2011 Alstom had annual sales of over €20.9 billion, and employed more than 85,000 people in 70 countries. Alstom's headquarters are...
(former Fiat Ferroviaria
Fiat Ferroviaria
thumb|300px|[[FS Class E626]] locomotive, a mainstay of Italian railways starting from the 1930s.Fiat Ferroviaria was the rail division of FIAT of Italy....
) in the hope of providing much-needed relief, but have themselves had some problems. Entry into service, originally to come with the December 2007 timetable change together with the Lötschberg Base Tunnel
Lötschberg Base Tunnel
The Lötschberg Base Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the BLS Lötschbergbahn's Lötschberg Line cutting through the Alps of Switzerland some below the existing Lötschberg Tunnel. It is currently the world's longest land tunnel and accommodates passenger and freight trains. It runs between Frutigen,...
was deferred and re-scheduled for the spring of 2009. Again the trains were not ready for passenger-carrying service and their introduction deferred to August 2009 when two did enter revenue earning service. By December 2009 six trains were available, but the last train will be put into service only by December 2010, three years later than planned.
It is interesting to note that these new trains were ordered from the same consortium that built the original problematic trains.
Too heavy
During testing in 2009 it was found that the new ETR 610 trains were too heavy for the main Gotthard route from Zurich to Milan for which they had been ordered. The weight of the train influences the permitted cornering speed due to forces on the track – the heavier the train the slower the cornering speed allowed. It was found the new trains would have to run so slowly that traditional trains without tilting technologies would be just as fast – calling the whole project into question.EuroCity
Cisalpino also operated conventional EuroCityEuroCity
EuroCity, abbreviated EC, denotes an international train service within the European inter-city rail network. In contrast to trains with the "IC" label, "EC" trains are international trains that meet certain criteria. The EuroCity label replaces the older Trans Europ Express name for...
trains on two routes: from Basel or Zurich to Milan via Gotthard
Gotthardbahn
Gotthardbahn was the name of a private Swiss railway company which operated the railway line from Immensee to Chiasso . Nowadays this term usually does not refer to that company, but to the railway line itself...
and from Geneva to Milan via Simplon
Simplon Tunnel
The Simplon Tunnel is an Alpine railway tunnel that connects the Swiss town of Brig with Domodossola in Italy, though its relatively straight trajectory does not run under Simplon Pass itself. It actually consists of two single-track tunnels built nearly 20 years apart...
. Three of these trains per day went all the way to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
while one train continued from Milan to Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
and Livorno
Livorno
Livorno , traditionally Leghorn , is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of approximately 160,000 residents in 2009.- History :...
.
These trains were run with traditional Swiss or Italian EuroCity non-tilting rolling stock. All trains had first- and second-class coaches. A dining car was available only on some of the trains.
For the Venice-bound trains, maintenance was carried out in Venice. The other trains were maintained in Switzerland. Like the Cisalpino trains, crews are provided by Trenitalia in Italy and the Swiss Federal Railways in Switzerland.
During the 2009 timetable Cisalpino also operated three couples of Milan-Bellinzona
Bellinzona
Bellinzona is the administrative capital of the canton Ticino in Switzerland. The city is famous for its three castles that have been UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 2000....
EuroCity with italian stock.
Confusingly in 2010 whilst the name Cisalpino has disappeared from the timetables the ancient problematic ETR 470 trains live on. On the Zurich-Milan route they are now also called EuroCity. The only way to tell which EuroCity is an old tilting train is to check whether folding bicycles are allowed (the tilting trains have no space for such luggage).
See also
- ETR 500ETR 500ETR 500 is a family of Italian high-speed trains introduced in 1993.Designed under the aegis of the Ferrovie dello Stato , it is now operated by Trenitalia on RFI tracks.-History:...
Eurostar Italia Alta Velocità - Intercity NeigezugSBB RABDe 500The RABDe 500 , is a Swiss passenger train which debuted in 2000, in time for Expo.02 held in western Switzerland in 2002...
(ICN)
External links
- Official website
- Campaign to remove Cisalpino from service Provides up-to-date statistics for non-arrival and delays.