Kraftwerke Sils Domleschg

In 1891, steam clouds still rose into the sky from the Albula Railway. Positive experiences on other railway lines, as well as coal shortages during World War I, led to the switch from steam to electricity on the Albula line by 1919 — and to the expansion of the Thusis power station at the entrance to the Viamala Gorge.

In Sils, the neighboring municipality of Thusis, the power station of the city of Zurich was already in operation at that time. Between 1907 and 1910, the operators had dammed the Albula River below Tiefencastel and channeled the water through tunnels to the large machine hall in Sils. This hall was built according to plans by the renowned Zurich architect Gustav Gull. Next to it, a residential settlement designed by Nicolaus Hartmann was constructed. Thus, Sils attracted two important architects: Gustav Gull, who built the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, and Nicolaus Hartmann Jr., considered one of the leading representatives of the so-called Grisons Heimatstil due to buildings like the RhB headquarters in Chur.

But the history of electricity in Sils goes even further: Zurich expanded its use of the Albula River by building the 61-meter-high arch dam at Solis in the Schinschlucht above Sils, completed in 1986. Today, all Grisons facilities of the Zurich power company are remotely controlled from Sils. Also present in Sils are the Hinterrhein power plants, which no longer use the water power of the Hinterrhein directly at the old plant in Thusis, but instead divert it to Sils. As a result, the large facilities in Sils, operated by various companies, now form an important hub in the Swiss power grid. One turbine is dedicated specifically to producing electricity for the Rhaetian Railway — not at the standard national frequency of 50 Hz, but at 16 2/3 Hz. Unlike the Swiss Federal Railways, the RhB did not need to build its own power plants. In Graubünden, the connection between hydropower and railway tracks emerged early on.