Chemin de fer Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher (LEB)

Updated: August 2026 – Some railway companies hide their purpose behind a fanciful name. Others write it straight onto the company sign as a route map. The Chemin de fer Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher belongs to the second sort: three places, a chain of hyphens between them – and you already know what it’s about.

What is the Chemin de fer Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher?

The Chemin de fer Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher, known for short as the LEB, is a metre-gauge regional railway in the canton of Vaud. Its name is also its description: “Chemin de fer” is the French word for railway, Lausanne, Echallens and Bercher are the places that give the route its name. The abbreviation LEB comes directly from their initial letters.

The singular in the name is no accident: one Chemin de fer, one named route. Companies with several lines often carry their name in the plural, like the Chemins de fer du Jura. Anyone paying attention to such details reads surprisingly much off a company sign.

Place-name chains in company names: the name as a route map

A place-name chain is a company name made up of place names strung together. It’s a Europe-wide pattern and especially widespread in Switzerland, because many railways were founded for one specific route and still carry that purpose in their name today.

The chain follows the geography and typically names the starting point, a defining intermediate stop and the end point – in the order of the route, usually starting with the larger town. It tells you very precisely roughly where to a service runs. What it doesn’t tell you: which stops lie in between, how long the route is, what gauge applies, or who owns the company today.

Naming pattern	Example from this database	What you read from it
Three-part place chain	Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher	Starting point, intermediate point, end point of the route
Place chain plus regional term	Morges–Bière–Cossonay	Route within a named region
Place plus landscape name	Montreux–Berner Oberland	Connection from a town into a mountain area
Canton instead of places	Aargau Verkehr	Client and origin, not the route
Initial abbreviation	LEB, MBC, MOB	Initial letters of the chain, in the same order

You can trace this pattern well in the MBC Morges–Bière–Cossonay and the Montreux–Berner Oberland Railway – both also carry their route on their company sign.

These names are remarkably durable. Companies merge, services are re-tendered, brands get refreshed – yet the place chain often stays put anyway, because it’s anchored in the region’s everyday speech. For observers that’s both an advantage and a trap: the name reliably leads you to the right route, but not necessarily to the company currently responsible for it. When you log a sighting, keep the route and the company lettering as separate pieces of information.

A second clue concerns reading direction. Chains usually start at the larger place or the company’s seat and work outward. That’s a convention, not a rule – but it helps when decoding unknown abbreviations: assume the first letter is the largest town and then check the assumption, rather than taking it on faith.

Identification in the field: step by step

The guide Who’s actually running it? Identifying railway undertakings describes the general path from vehicle to company.

Placing it in railway operations

A metre-gauge regional railway connecting a larger town with its hinterland has a very characteristic operating profile: short multiple units, dense stop spacing, high train frequency at peak times, and a timetable geared towards connections on the standard-gauge network of the Swiss Federal Railways. Top speed plays a smaller role than acceleration and short dwell times. The metre-gauge multiple units in use come, as almost everywhere in Swiss regional traffic, from Stadler Rail, which dominates this market segment.

One detail that helps with identification: in the vehicle-classes database, many Swiss vehicles carry the company abbreviation before the actual designation, for example the MGB ABeh 8/12 (Orion), the BLS RABe 535 (Lötschberger), or the Thurbo RABe 526 (GTW). These entries are useful comparisons – they show how company abbreviation and vehicle designation interlock, without either one saying anything about the other.

The guide to identifying vehicle classes shows how to systematically identify unknown vehicles. The Swiss system of letters and axle formulas is explained in detail in this database under Appenzell Railways.

What a company name doesn’t answer

Documenting sightings

The article Keeping a sightings logbook describes how to turn this into a searchable archive.

Common mix-ups

• Place chain read as a list of stops – it names the end points, not the timetable.
• Abbreviation resolved incorrectly – initial abbreviations follow the order of the chain, not the significance of the places.
• Route name equated with company name – both often keep running in parallel in Switzerland.
• Language taken as a factual statement – “Chemin de fer” just means railway and says nothing about technology or size.
• Dash character taken as proof – hyphens and dashes are used inconsistently.

Conclusion

The Chemin de fer Lausanne–Echallens–Bercher is a metre-gauge regional railway in the canton of Vaud – and a textbook example of a naming pattern that works right across Europe. Anyone who can read place-name chains immediately understands which route lies behind an unfamiliar company sign, and can resolve the abbreviation at the same time.