Ligne d’Italie station. North of the tunnel is the Les Palluds service station, where the line of the
Western Swiss Railways joined the line from Le Bouveret. , built for the ''Ligne d'Italie'' in 1858. Although a line on the
St. Gingolph–Saint-Maurice–Brig route was technically easy to build, the
Valais government was unable to attract enough Swiss investors to build the line. The
share capital came from France. The driving force behind the project was the speculator
Count Adrien de Lavalette (Fr). The company gained a concession for a line from
Le Bouveret to
Sion in 1853. The object of the
Ligne d’Italie company founded in 1856 was to build a connection between
Romandy and Italy through the
Canton of Valais and the
Simplon. The connection to
Geneva and France was planned to run along the southern shore of
Lake Geneva. After several requests, de Lavalette commenced construction. The Ligne d’Italie opened its first section from Le Bouveret (at the southeastern end of Lake Geneva) to
Martigny via
Saint-Maurice on 14 July 1859. The line was extended to Sion on 10 May 1860. On 2 April 1861, the
Western Swiss Railways opened the last section of its line from
Lausanne to Les Paluds near Saint-Maurice, giving the Ligne d'Italie access to the Swiss railway network. The next section from Sion to
Sierre opened after some delay on 15 October 1868, bringing the total length of the line to 79.5 km. The company, which opened up the very agricultural canton of Valais, was not successful. In addition,
Sardinia ceded
Savoy to France in 1860 and, with the opening of the
Fréjus Rail Tunnel in 1871, a line was opened from
Lyon to
Turin, which competed directly with the projected line. The Ligne d'Italie was liquidated in 1871 and a new company was established under the same name.
Compagnie du Simplon The LI had to be liquidated for the second time and it was sold on 1 June 1874 to the new
Compagnie du Simplon (S) for a symbolic price of
CHF 202,422 plus CHF 500,000 of bonds. The shareholders lost all their capital and the work, which had cost almost CHF 25 million. The operations of the Compagnie du Simplon were managed by the
Western Swiss Railways (SO). The line was extended from Sierre to
Leuk on 1 June 1877 and to the provisional terminus in Brig on 1 July 1878. The line was now 116.9 km long. Although projects have been developed time and again to extend the line through a tunnel under the Simplon to
Domodossola, sufficient finance did not become available for the time being. The line remained a branch line and the operation's results were insufficient to cover interest charges. Nevertheless, the Simplon Railway led to significant economic progress in the Valais. On 1 July 1881, the Compagnie du Simplon was bought by the Western Swiss Railways, which then changed its name to the
Western Switzerland–Simplon Company (
Suisse-Occidentale–Simplon, SOS). The short Le Bouveret–
Saint-Gingolph branch line opened on 1 June 1886, connecting with the line of the
Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée in Savoy. In 1890, the SOS merged with the
Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS), which significantly accelerated the efforts to construct the
Simplon Tunnel. == Rolling stock==