“Our railway”

Gottlieb Duttweiler established a cooperative in 1941 to rescue the Monte-Generoso railway. He raised awareness for the mountain railway and succeeded in making it profitable again.

Monte-Generoso railway shareholders grew tired of waiting and decided to scrap the money-losing cog railway in 1940. But Gottlieb Duttweiler, who learned about the impending closure from Migros Ticino director Charles Hochstrasser, changed its course. At his urging, three thousand people subscribed for shares in the newly formed cooperative, which bought the cog railway and kept it in operation.
Duttweiler made every effort to make the railway profitable again: he wrote articles, created a promotional film and included a train ride in Hotel-Plan Ticino package tours. Soon enough, every Migros customer had heard the name of this mountain getaway, not least because the Migros washing powder was renamed Generoso and a Monte Generoso cake was introduced. In 1941, for the first time in its existence, the train made a profit of 4%.
The cooperative was converted into a public limited company supported by Migros in 1982 and the mountain railway was electrified. Today you can visit the observatory on the summit and the caves with prehistoric cave bear skeletons.