What is "zentralbahn"

The Zentralbahn is a Swiss railway company that owns and operates two connecting railway lines in Central Switzerland and the Bernese Oberland. It was created on January 1, 2005, with the acquisition of the independently owned Luzern–Stans–Engelberg Railway, and the Brünig line of the Swiss Federal Railways. The company has its headquarters in Stansstad.

The railway owns the infrastructure of the long inter-regional Brünig line, which links Lucerne and Interlaken over the Brünig Pass, and the long Luzern–Stans–Engelberg line from Hergiswil, on the Brünig line some out of Lucerne, to Engelberg. Both lines are built to the metre gauge, and use rack railway technology to climb their steepest gradients, although most of both lines uses conventional adhesion.

The railway operates two hourly InterRegio express services, one between Lucerne and Interlaken, and one between Lucerne and Engelberg. It also operates two half-hourly services of the Lucerne S-Bahn, the S4 between Lucerne and Wolfenschiessen and the S5 between Lucerne and Giswil. At the Interlaken end of the line, an hourly Regio service is operated as far as Meiringen. Only the two InterRegio services traverse the company's rack sections and require rack equipped stock.