fares be offered to locals. Planning and construction of the line was entrusted by the participating banks to the railway company Suisse Occidentale-Simplon (SOS), which, in the summer of 1887, conducted extensive survey work in the Mattertal. On 10 October 1888, the Compagnie du Chemin de Fer de Viège à Zermatt SA emerged as the operating company. The exact route and mode of operation was initially the subject of intense debate. The Suisse Occidentale-Simplon proposed a pure adhesion line, with a maximum gradient of 4.5%, while the engineer Ernest von Stockalper, who was working on the construction of the Gotthardbahn, proposed a combined adhesion and rack railway, as originally planned. A Special Commission established to investigate the ideal mode of operation visited, for the purpose of its investigations, numerous rack railways in Switzerland and Germany, including the Brünigbahn and the Rübelandbahn in the Harz, which was equipped with the Abt rack rail system. These visits led to a decision to equip the line with the system used on the Rübelandbahn, and using a maximum gradient of 12.5%. A total of six sections of track were to be laid out with a total of 7450 m of rack railway. Construction began on 27 November 1888 in Visp. The work was entrusted to the western Swiss contractors Julius Chappuis, while the SOS undertook the purchase of land and the procurement of rolling stock. Acquisition of the necessary land turned out to be difficult, particularly in the municipalities of Stalden and St. Niklaus, as the local population was not interested in selling. Tedious expropriation procedures therefore became necessary. Also, land in the entire valley was divided into a myriad of tiny plots, and usually the actual owners of the plots were not recorded in official documents. The absence of a road made it necessary to transport the building materials almost exclusively over the already completed parts of the railway tracks to the construction sites. On 3 July 1890, rail traffic on the first part of the line, between Visp and Stalden, could finally be introduced. By 26 August of the same year, the first trains reached St. Niklaus. In the following months, however, an unusually severe winter delayed the completion of the remaining sections. Only on 18 July 1891 could the entire line as far as Zermatt be handed over to traffic. The first years of operations The Visp-Zermatt-Bahn (VZ) transferred the management