page_title: Bern-Lucerne Railway Company
section_title: Bankruptcy
hierarchical_section_title: Bern-Lucerne Railway Company / History / Bankruptcy
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Lokomotive Nr. 424 der Jura-Simplon-Bahn, die 1875 mit der Nummer 54 für die Bern-Luzern-Bahn beschafft wurde. Die Schlepptender-Lokomotive vom Typ Bourbonnais wurde von der Elsässischen Maschinenbaugesellschaft Mülhausen geliefert. 1899 wurde das Fahrzeug ausrangiert.
context_page_description: The Bern-Lucerne Railway was a railway company in Switzerland, which opened the Langnau–Lucerne line, now part of the Bern–Lucerne railway, on 1 August 1875. It was taken over by the Jura–Simplon Railways on 1 January 1890.
context_section_description: Railway operations were started on 1 August 1875 by an operating company called the Jura–Bern–Luzern that had been established by the BLB and the Chemins de fer du Jura bernois (Bernese Jura Railway). Soon, the Bern-Lucerne Railway could no longer pay the interest on its bonds and was declared bankrupt on 26/27 February 1876. The canton of Lucerne did not take part in the auction of the company's assets on 15 January 1877, so the canton of Berne bid against a consortium in which involved the Central Railway. The representatives of Bern were finally awarded the assets for CHF 8,475,000. The canton of Bern, as the main creditor, bought the railway for almost the same price that it had sold the Gümligen–Langnau section for. Around CHF 14.5 million was written off in bankruptcy, including the total share capital of CHF 10.6 million. Suppliers of goods and services received 70 percent of the face value of their claims.
  The Bern-Lucerne Railway was not alone in having to fight against rising prices. Due to massive cost overruns in the construction of the Gotthard Railway in 1877, it was decided to abandon temporally the construction of some of its access lines—including the Lucerne–Immensee section. On the other hand, the Canton of Bern, which attached great importance to the direct connection of the Bern-Lucerne line to the Gotthard Railway, resisted. The Central Railway and the Northeastern Railway (Schweizerische Nordostbahn, NOB) undertook to grant the Bern-Lucerne Railway favourable conditions for its connection at Lucerne and an unobstructed connection via the Lucerne–Rotkreuz–Immensee route to the Gotthard Railway.
  The financial problems of the canton of Berne, including the "million advanced", had not been settled. It had incurred railway debts of more than CHF 40 million. The subsequent approval of the "million advanced" was vigorously rejected in a referendum on 26 August 1877. The government councilors accepted the consequences from this rebuff and resigned. In the elections for the Great Council in the spring of 1878, the Liberals suffered a severe defeat as a result of their financial policies.
caption: Steam locomotive B3T no. 424 of the Jura–Simplon Railways, put into operation by the Bern-Lucerne Railway as no. 54 in 1875
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