Münchenstein rail disaster

The accident occurred on the railway line between Basel and Delémont, near the Bruckgut just below the village centre of Münchenstein, as the train was traversing the bridge across the river Birs.

Eiffel's engineering company had already acquired the necessary experience, having previously planned and built numerous railway bridges and viaducts in France such as those at Rouzat and Bouble in the Massif Central.

The disaster occurred as the passenger train, which had been travelling at full speed, applied its brakes as it approached and crossed the bridge, immediately before entering the Münchenstein railway station.

In its first years of activity, Empa was involved in wide-ranging quality testing of building and structural materials for the Swiss National Exhibition of 1883.

Intensive research work by the co-founder and first director, Prof. Ludwig von Tetmajer, gave rise to the first publications on the testing and standardisation of building materials and metals.

His investigation of the collapse revealed that Euler's formula for buckling, which had hitherto been used to calculate design loads in such structures, needed to be corrected for slender bars.