A Rail System that Works—and Mountains, too
May 24^th to June 10^th, 2004

Don Winter

For our first trip in 2004 (and since my retirement), we take a Society of International Railway Travelers tour of Switzerland. I have always wanted to travel the major mountain routes and passes of Switzerland, and by adding a couple of personal days at the beginning of this trip, we are able to cover all of them.

The vast majority of the trip was organized around covering the railways in, to and through the mountains, run by a tour group that focuses on travel by train. We also visited at least the old town area and/or cathedral of all of the major cities in the country, mostly as incidentals to where the group was traveling or during time periods left free on the tour (to allow for shopping, mostly).

Monday, May 24^th, 2004

Departing Los Angeles

Our flight to Zurich is at 8 pm, so following the advice of Swiss International we take a taxi the five miles to Los Angeles Airport at 4:30 pm to start the process of checking in, checking the luggage, passing through security and changing some money into Swiss francs. First, the luggage has to be X-rayed, with the locks off. Then, a baggage handler brings the x-rayed luggage over to the Swiss International counter, takes the locks from Chris, and relocks the bags. When we reach a check-in counter, he brings the bags over and loads them directly onto the scales so that we never touch them after x-ray. After check-in, we go through security and passport control, and are in the gate area for our flight by 5:25 pm. We watch our aircraft arrive about 6:30 pm, but we leave on time and are in the air by 8:20 pm for our ten hour and fifty minute flight to Zurich.

A Federal System for Self-Determination

Switzerland is centered on the mountain passes between north Europe and Italy that carried all of the commerce between those regions as trade between the regions grew towards the end of the so-called dark ages. Because control of the trade routes spelled success in trade for the powers that controlled them, the lands abutting the pinch points on those trade routes—the passes through the Alps—were the subject of continual battles for control by neighboring peoples and warlords. This led the people who lived in the areas of contention to make the momentous decision that they wanted to control their own destiny, so they created their own fighting forces to defend their lands against those external forces, and having secured their own lands they formed a confederation for the joint defense of those lands.

The original Swiss confederation had only three states or cantons, two of them located along the trade route over the St. Gotthard Pass. In the ensuing centuries, many other areas have formed their own local governments and acceded to the swiss confederation, so that today there are many of these cantons, ranging from the still small (the original Uri and Schwyz along the north slope of the Gotthard Pass) to the largest, the canton of the grey leagues (Grisons or Graubunden) that controls the route over the St. Bernard Pass to Italy. Some of the areas that accreted later were on the far sides of the passes from the original German-speaking cantons, so that today’s Switzerland has four official languages—German, French, Italian, and Romansch, a direct offshoot of Latin, in the Graubunden area.

Today’s Switzerland is governed using a federal system, much like the USA, with local affairs administered by the cantons and national affairs administered by the Swiss federal government located in Bern. The Swiss are still so independent that they have eschewed any sort of alliances with other countries, whether for defense or economic purposes. While the country is, in 2004, totally surrounded by the European Union it remains staunchly independent of such entanglements

Tuesday, May 25^th, 2004

Zurich Airport to Luzern

The plane flies over Colorado, South Dakota, Ontario, Quebec and Labrador before reaching the Atlantic Ocean more than half way through the flight. European landfall is made at the Scilly Isles, then the Channel Islands, Cherbourg, Caen, Rouen, south of Paris, reaching Switzerland at Basel, making one complete circle over the Rhine before landing at Zurich and reaching the gate a few minutes early. Nonetheless, by the time we have walked to baggage claim, retrieved our bags, and passed through passport control and customs, the 4:33 pm train to Luzern has left and we will have to wait for the one at 5: 33 pm (1733). So, we have our Swiss (Rail +) Passes validated, and get something to drink at a café in the rail station. It transpires that the 10-franc note that we had been given in Los Angeles is of an obsolete issue, and the café won’t take it! Later, our hotel will handle that small problem for us.

Drinks in hand, we head down the escalator to the platform from which our train will leave. A few minutes later, in plenty of time, it arrives and we board a first class car. We start out with the luggage in the seating bay opposite our chosen seats, but when the car fills up we have to move it out to the vestibule at the end of the car. The Zurich Airport station has two island platforms, one generally used for departures away from Zurich, and the other generally used for departures towards Zurich, all located on a loop off the north side of the Zurich-St. Gallen line.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-25-04	SBB	1733	Zurich A/P-Luzern	SBB single-level	450 /460

The train will reverse at Zurich Hauptbahnhof, so I start out traveling in reverse for the ten-minute ride into Zurich. Here, the train sits in the platform until after 6 pm (1800), perhaps so that it can act as a commuter train to Luzern. Since our car is out at the end of the platform, I take the opportunity to photograph much of the traffic through the station throat during our wait. This includes not only the expected Zurich S-bahn (local) double-deck and SBB mainline trains of both single-deck (like ours) and double-deck stock, but also a German ICE (Inter City Express) trainset on a run from Germany.

Our train leaves without many people boarding our first class car. The train curves away south immediately outside the terminal, passes through a tunnel, and stops at Enge. To our surprise, the car fills up here. Later, when we’re riding Zurich trams, I will see why—this station is much more convenient for the offices in Zurich financial district than the main station would be. A few miles further along, we take the line climbing the hill away from the line that continues along Lake Zurich to the east, and turns away to the south. At this point, the line is the old Gotthard Railway’s Zurich connection, and is single track in some places (such as through the tunnels), leading our train to have to wait for opposing traffic before proceeding. At Zug, we turn away from the Gotthard route onto a line that is all double track, through Rotkreuz and then curving around into Luzern, where the station is on the south side of the lake with the arriving tracks heading almost due north.

We take a taxi the few blocks west to the Hotel Wilden Mann where we will stay for the next five nights. After settling into our rooms, we check out the prices at the hotel restaurant and receive sticker shock as a result. Since I hadn’t slept at all, and Chris very little, on the flight, neither of us wants to eat very much, and the set prices of 44 francs, and 31 francs for the meals at the hotel are just too much for us to consider. We had been told that food was expensive in Switzerland, and this rapidly becomes clear to us. We walk back along the lake towards the railway station, admiring the swans, bridges and lakeside buildings as we go. We find a place that sells sausage, potatoes and onion sauce for just 16 francs each, and eat there. Then we return to the hotel and go to bed.

A Rail System that Works

In the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, Switzerland still lies squarely astride those trade routes between Germany and Italy, both major members of the European Union. Highway travel between northern and southern Europe using heavy highway goods vehicles threatened to destroy Switzerland’s environment, its roads, and its air quality if allowed to grow unabated. So, the Swiss people decided in a national referendum to limit freight travel by road across (transiting) Switzerland, and to provide the rail capacity to carry the goods from one border to another, instead. That same referendum also authorized massive expenditures on a passenger rail system for Switzerland to limit the use of the roads even by Swiss citizens to those journeys that are either local in nature, or cannot expeditiously be accomplished by rail.

The result was/is a passenger rail network that connects any two major towns or cities in the country with rail service at least once an hour throughout the day, with sufficient capacity to carry all who want to travel at any specific time of day. Some of this service is provided by trains dedicated to travel between a city pair, while other service is provided in part by long-distance trains (even trans-European trains) that nonetheless slot into the hourly service pattern between those Swiss cities.

Of course, not all city pairs are, or could be, connected by through trains, so there are many designated connecting points throughout the railway system where trains on one route make (generally cross-platform) connections with trains on another route to provide additional travel possibilities on a one-change basis. Generally, these connections are made both ways to/from the same pair of trains, but in almost all cases, the connections take less than ten minutes between the arrival of one train and the departure of another. Except where there are unavoidable delays due to track maintenance and the like, the Swiss rail system operates at a level of punctuality that makes these connections work routinely. The result is that the Swiss routinely use the railway system for business travel as well as commuting into the cities. The level of service is such as to make it conveniently possible for people who work in the financial centers in Zurich to live in more desirable communities such as Luzern, traveling back and forth by train each day for work.

Provision of these services requires a range of different kinds of trains, locomotives, and coaching stock. At the high end, there are long distance expresses, often formed with stock from different countries, and including the French TGV, German ICE, and Italian tilt train trainsets as well as locomotive-hauled carriages. There are purely Swiss long distance loco-hauled trains with first and second-class single-level carriages, there are some medium-distance trains with first and second-class bi-level carriages, there are purely local trains often of the “multiple-unit” variety, mostly electrically-powered, but some of them with diesel engines on board, and specifically in Zurich there are the S-bahn multiple-unit trains, largely formed of bi-level carriages. All of these can be seen running into and out of Zurich Hauptbahnhof, with most lines elsewhere in the country having only one or two types of trains on a normal basis. Similar types of stock exist on the narrow-gauge lines, but are usually distinctively different in design.

The political and social attitudes that have led to these railway system developments are part and parcel of the attitudes that have made it possible to preserve the beauty of the mountainous areas of the country while making those areas accessible to the citizenry for non-commercial recreational purposes. The methods of access may be commercial in nature, but this is achieved without turning the environment into an amusement park.

This requires a different philosophy of life from that found in the US. The Swiss believe in public transportation as a civic value greater than building roads. In the US, the National Parks (in particular) were established to prevent their despoliation by our generally favored 'private enterprise'. The ironclad guarantees against despoliation required by these American attitudes, and the US insistence on travel by private automobile prevent the kind if intimate but graceful development found in Switzerland.

The train service between Zurich Airport, central Zurich, the financial district, and Luzern is an example of what can be done when the right political and social attitudes prevail.

Luzern

To start off, we spend five nights in Luzern, visiting much of the old town and the house where Richard Wagner lived for five years, riding the railways over/through the St. Gotthard pass (including a visit to Lugarno) and the Bern-Lotschberg-Brig route (and visiting Bern) by ourselves before the tour started (missing the group walking tour of Luzern as a result). With the tour group, but still based in Luzern, we rode out to Engelberg and took the various cable car systems to the top of Mt. Titlis and the steep rack railway to the top of Mt. Pilatus, toured the Swiss railway Museum and then took a boat trip up Lake Luzern to ride the rack railways to the top of Mt. Rigi, which provided a wonderful panorama of the northernmost range of the Alps to the south.

Wednesday, May 26^th, 2004

Triebschen, Gotthard

Since we had gone to bed so early, by local time, and had not yet figured out how to open the windows wide enough to cool down the room, I awake at 5:30 am, as it starts to get light outside. By 6:30 am, I have taken some photos from the hotel room window, and Chris is starting to stir. We’re in no hurry, since our first destination today is the Richard Wagner Museum in Triebschen, the house in which he lived from 1866 to 1872 during his exile from Germany, which doesn’t open until 10 am. So, we take our time over the included breakfast, take the heels of the bread loaves with us, and walk slowly east along the south side of the lake, feeding the bread to the swans as we go. We pass the front of the station, where there is one residual segment of the old main buildings that burned in the 1990s, past the modern art museum, through a park along the lake where we find an aviary in which the birds have not yet arisen (so Chris wakes them up), past a pier where railcars of stone are being loaded onto a lake ship, past another park and a yacht club, and up the side of the hill at the promontory on which the house is located.

Even so, we’re half an hour early for the house opening, so we sit on a bench looking out over the lake, listening to church bells and admiring what turns out to be Mount Pilatus behind us as well as the lake in front until it is time to go in. The house is very nice, with Wagner manuscripts and artifacts on the ground floor and an early instrument collection on the first floor (upstairs), all of which we must wear soft overshoes to enter. The museum is interesting, but doesn’t take very long to cover, so we walk back to the center of Luzern in plenty of time for the 1117 train over the Gotthard line..

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-26-04	SBB (1667)	1119	Luzern to Arth-Goldau	SBB single level	450/460
5-26-04	SBB (ICR83)	1153	Arth-Goldau to Chiasso	SBB single level	2x420?
5-26-04	SBB (IC382)	1530	Chiasso to Lugano	SBB single level	2x420
5-26-04	SBB (IC344)	1657	Lugano to Luzern	SBB single level	450/460

The train out of Luzern retraces our route of the previous evening as far as Rotkreuz, then runs along the south shore of a lake to Arth-Goldau.. The announcements as we approach the latter make it clear that we’re on a slow train over the Gotthard line, but can transfer to a fast train from Zurich in the station. This we duly do. On looking at the timetable, it transpires that the basic service over the Gotthard line has an hourly pattern south of Arth-Goldau that becomes two-hourly north of that point. Each hour there is one slow train and one fast train in each direction. The fast trains and the slow train alternate their northern termini between Luzern and Zurich in such a way that in the hours there is not a direct express from the northern city over the Gotthard line one can achieve the same timing by changing to the train from the other city at Arth-Goldau. Travel on the slow train can be achieved by making the opposite change, if needed. The same pattern pertains for northbound trains.

South of Arth-Goldau, the line runs alongside another lake to Schwyz, then picks up the eastern end of Lake Luzern heading due south on the eastern shore. The original Gotthard line along the lakeshore is now the northbound line, and the much later southbound track runs through tunnels a bit further up the hillside. South of the end of the lake, the line enters the north slope of the Gotthard Pass, running at first on a gentle climb through the Reuss River valley. It seems that all of the ramps up to the major passes have a point in the valley at which the terrain becomes much steeper for awhile, and then levels out again for a distance before reaching the main pass or tunnel through it. The north slope of the Gotthard is like this, with a steep portion occurring at the village of Wassen. At this point, as one commentator has put it, the railway engineers artificially lengthened the slope by running the line through spiral tunnels (less than a complete circle in each case) that turn the line back on itself and then do the same in the reverse direction to resume forward travel up the valley. In some, but not all, cases, the line will cross the valley on one or more bridges in the process.

Here, there are two reversals, and in the process, the line passes the church in the village three times, once below the level of the church on a hillock, east of the church, once at the same level as the church and to its west, and once above the church and to its west. After making this climb, the valley levels out again. In the vicinity, we start to see construction bases for the new Gotthard Base Tunnel that is being constructed as part of the Swiss 2000 transport scheme to carry goods train through the Alps at the lowest possible level. I had thought that the passenger trains would also use this base tunnel, but apparently this is not so.

At Göschenen, the line enters the twin Gotthard tunnels. Each tunnel has a double track portal, even though it carries only a single through line. In each case, the two tracks entering the tunnel reduce to one a short distance inside the tunnel. These tunnels pass right below the St. Gotthard Pass and the town of Andermatt above, re-emerging in the Ticino River valley at Ariolo. At the station here, on the east side of the line, is a monument to the workers who built the tunnel in the 1870s, long before modern tunneling equipment was available.

The line now descends through the upper Ticino valley, gently at first and then more steeply. At the point where the valley floor suddenly drops, there is an Autostrada bridge (this is the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland) across the valley above the tracks. At the uppermost level, the tracks are just below the level of the road bridges. After a spiral tunnel reversal, the line is on the same hillside, but well below the bridges. After another spiral tunnel, the line emerges to cross the valley much further below the road bridges, and it becomes clear just how high above the valley floor these road bridges really are. The line then settles down to a gentle descent once more. We pass more base tunnel construction sites along the way.

At Bellinzona, there is a junction station where passengers and goods may transfer to and from the line west to Locarno. South of Bellinzona, the main line to Chiasso climbs over and through another (but much smaller) ridge and then descends into the beautiful lakeside town of Lugano alongside the lake of the same name. South of Lugano, the line crosses the lake on a causeway and remains on the east side for the remainder of its traversal of the lake. Not far south of the end of the lake, the train reaches the end of the Swiss portion of the line at the border town of Chiasso. From here, it is only a short distance to the Italian resort town of Como at the end of the eponymous lake, but that is beyond the range of our Swiss Passes and we go no further.

Getting lunch at the station café in Chiasso, we encounter our first person who has no English. But, we manage by pointing at what we want and naming the drinks we want, and the server points at the number of francs on the cash register display, which I then pay here. We’re done eating before the slow train from Luzern on which we had originally been traveling arrives in Chiasso. We’re intending to stop in Lugano on the way back, but I want to watch the procedure for changing locomotives on expresses arriving from Italy, so we don’t board the slow train to Luzern that is sitting in the station. Nonetheless, its existence has allowed us out on the platform, and I take a number of photographs from the platforms before a railway official asks me to step to the other side of the platform gate. It transpires that the gate is the only barrier between arriving passengers “in Italy” and departing passengers “in Switzerland” when the Italian train arrives; all of its passengers must step off the train and pass through the passport and customs facilities right there on the platform. (The same would have been true in the other direction, if we had continued into Italy.).

There is a difference in the overhead electricity supply between Italian Railways and Swiss Railways. Chiasso station is wired for the Swiss system, so when the train from Italy arrives, its locomotive coasts into Chiasso station platforms, where it is removed from the train by an SBB electric switcher and replaced by the Swiss locomotives and some additional carriages. (I didn’t observe the procedure for changing engines in favor of an Italian engine, so I don’t know how a train heading for Italy leaves the station prior to reaching the Italian catenary.)

We leave this train in Lugano, just twenty minutes or so up the track, and take the convenient funicular railway car down to the lakeside a few hundred feet lower than the station. We walk though the town to the lakeside, then back a different way before riding the funicular back up to the station a few minutes before our hour in Lugano is up. After a couple of local trains and a goods train (short in length so as to travel at passenger train speeds on the steep grades) pass, our express to Luzern arrives from Chiasso and we board. The route back to Luzern is the same as the route out, except that we don’t change trains in Arth-Goldau, and we’re back in Luzern by early evening. We eat dinner at the lakeside restaurant of Rossini, but indoors because of the rain outside. (We had a fine sunny day in Luzern in the morning and all day until we neared Luzern on the return.)

We’re still not completely time adjusted, and we need to be on a train before 9 am on Thursday, so we go to bed as soon as we return to the hotel after dinner.

Through the Alps, not Around Them

The route across the Gotthard Pass is one of the oldest and the most heavily traveled of the routes across the Alps, so naturally it was one of the first to attract the attention of railway line promoters. The line was built running south from Luzern, along the north shore of Lake Luzern and around the north side of Mt. Rigi, before rejoining the lake shore following the river valley upwards from the south end of the lake. This is the time-honored route of the track and then pack road over the pass. Similarly, the route on the south slope of the pass follows the original track and pack road. However, in the middle of the pass, the pack road climbs up out of the river valleys on either side on the ends of their box canyons to reach a much higher mountain valley near Andermatt, where the Gotthard Pass pack road met the pack road over the east-west mountain passes from Brig to Chur, and over the Gotthard massif to the south of Andermatt. Since a railway carrying any substantial traffic could not easily climb the north slope to Andermatt, and there was no route at all suitable for a railway on the upper end of the south slope, development of a successful railway over the Gotthard Pass required digging a lengthy tunnel between the ends of the box canyons, passing below the pack road crossing near Andermatt.

The technology for digging such a long tunnel, and making sure it went were it was supposed to, was not available until the 1870s—and even then, the Gotthard tunnel was the pioneer in the development of railways through such rugged terrain. Although the promoters of the line were from Zurich, most of the workers who actually dug the tunnel were from Italy, or the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland south of the pass. The 10 mile long tunnel was built between 1872 and 1881, with railway traffic over the line commencing in 1882. Due to the rigors of constructing the line, it was originally built as single track, with the second track on the line from Arth-Goldau through to Bellinzona and the second tunnel between Göschenen and Ariolo built starting in 1904. Some parts of the original Gotthard line to Luzern, and the later line to Zurich, west and north of Arth-Goldau, are still single to this day. The line was originally worked by steam, with conversion to electric operation commencing in 1909.

Until the road tunnel was built in the later 1970s, the Gotthard railway remained the only way to cross the Gotthard pass other than climbing over the top through Andermatt—often impassable in winter. With the Swiss decision to limit the passage of heavy goods vehicles along the road route, more capacity for goods trains is needed, and will be provided when the 38 mile long base-level railway tunnel under the Gotthard Pass opens in another few years. The current line sees an average of 200-250 trains a day

The Gotthard Line has two branches north of Arth-Goldau—the original main line from Luzern, along the north shore of the eponymous lake to Küssnacht am Rigi, and then around the north side of Mount Rigi to Immensee and along the west shore of that eponymous lake, and the later but now more heavily used line south from Zurich through Enge, along the shore of Lake Zurich, departing the lake shore after the junction at Thalwil and through the Albis tunnel to Zug, the along the east shore of the Immensee. Both of these still have quite lengthy single-track sections, especially through tunnels. South of Arth-Goldau, the line is double track throughout, but in places the lines take quite distinct paths due to the difficulty of doubling the line in its original location, especially along the east shore of Lake Luzern. Arth Goldau station has a central set of platforms in the vee formed by the two lines from the north, with an eastern platform on the Zurich line and an island platform with two faces on the west side of the Luzern line. There are locomotive facilities and a goods yard on the east side of the line south of the station. The terminus of the Rigi to Arth-Goldau rack railway is on the west side of the Luzern line, at right angles to the main line and at a higher elevation than the main station.

From Arth-Goldau, the line heads east to Steinen, and then turns south through Schwyz. Heading south, the line comes alongside Lake Zurich again at Brünnen, There are three tunnels along the newer segment of line along Lake Zurich, generally used by southbound trains, while the older section, generally used by northbound trains hugs the lake shore itself. South of Flüelen, the line leaves Lake Zurich behind and begins the climb up the Reuss River valley, through Erstfeld and Amsteg-Silenen. After passing through a short tunnel, the line turns southwest through another short tunnel and then Intschi. After Gurtnellen, there is a clockwise spiral tunnel in the west wall of the valley, followed by the three tunnels and two reversals of direction as the line climbs the west side of the valley at Wassen. After one more tunnel, and a curve to due south, the line reaches Göschenen and enters the 10 mile long Gotthard Tunnels. Göschenen station has a main platform on the west side and an island platform with two faces on the east side.

From the south portals of the tunnel at Ariolo, the line turns east-southeast as it descends the Leventina River valley through Ambri-Piotaa and Rodi-Fiesso. Just south of the latter, the line turns east-northeast, passes through an anti-clockwise spiral tunnel in the east (north) wall of the valley, crosses the valley in a south-eastward direction and then passes through a clockwise spiral tunnel in the west (south) wall of the valley, emerging heading due east and much lower in altitude than at the north entrance of the upper spiral. At Faido, the line turns southeast, and a little further along, due south and then south-southeast through Lavorgo, an anti-clockwise spiral tunnel in the east wall of the valley, and then through Giornico, Bodio, Pollegio and Biasca, where it turns due south. The line then continues through Osogno-Cresciano, Claro and Castione-Rebedo, and gradually curves to the southwest as it reaches Bellinzona. Bellinzona station has a main platform on the west side and an island platform with two faces on the east side, and serves as the junction station for passengers changing to and from trains on the Locarno line.

There are two short tunnels immediately southwest of Bellinzona, and at Giubiasco, the Locarno line continues straight ahead, while the main line turns southeast and then southwest again as it climbs the east wall of the Ticino River valley, eventually turning due south through the Monte Ceneri tunnels to leave the Ticino valley entirely, emerging at Riviera-Bironico. The line then descends in a southward direction towards Lake Lugano, passing through Mezzovico, Taverne-Torricella, and Lamone-Cadempino along the way. From Lugano, the line runs along the west side of the eponymous lake to Melide, where it turns east, crosses the lake on a causeway, and then continues south along the east side of the lake. At Capolago (head of the lake), the line leaves the lake, climbing to Mendrisio, passing through a tunnel, turning southeast and descending through Balerna to the border station at Chiasso, just a few miles short of the Italian town of Como San Giovanni at the foot of Lake Como. Here, the Gotthard Line of the Swiss Federal Railways meets the Italian State railways line north from Milan.

The Italian line is electrified on a different system from the Swiss line, so although trains can continue across the border, locomotives must be changed. Chiasso station has a main platform on the east side, and an island platform with two faces on the west. There are locomotive facilities for Swiss locomotives on the west side of the line, north of the station, a goods yard on the west side of the station itself, and Italian locomotive facilities some distance down the line into Italy.

Thursday, May 27^th, 2004

Bern, Lotschberg, Brig

Our second side trip is for the purposes of traveling the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon railways line through the Lötschberg Tunnel between Spiez and Brig. Getting there from Luzern requires a change of train, and IRT has supplied us with timings for a change of trains in Bern. The two-hourly direct trains from Luzern to Bern provide only a four-minute connection with the brig trains at Bern (and in the other direction). The intermediate hours provide longer connections at Bern, but into trains that require a four-minute change at Olten between a Bern-Zurich train and a Basel-Luzern train. It later transpires that the BLS trains pass through Olten north of Bern, and there might have been a better connection at Olten directly into/out of the BLS trains, but we don’t have a comprehensive timetable at the time and so were unaware of this.

In the morning, we rise quite early, have a leisurely breakfast, feed the swans along the lake, walk across the wooden covered bridge into old town and walk through old town before heading to the station for our train to Bern. The train is headed for Geneva, and we will ride it for less than half its journey. The consist is push-pull, being pushed.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-27-04	SBB (IR1814)	0857	Luzern to Bern	SBB single-level	SBB 45-/460
5-27-04	BLS (IC869)	1122	Bern to Brig	BLS single-level	BLS 465
5-27-04	BLS (IC868)	1359	Brig to Bern	BLS single-level	BLS 465
5-27-04	SBB (IR1629)	1524	Bern to Luzern	SBB single-level	SBB 45-/460

The line from Luzern to Bern is a single-track line winding through bucolic valleys in the foothills of the Alps, but with wooded hillsides not rocky mountain faces in sight. Departing Luzern, the line curves around clockwise, passing through a couple of tunnels and crossing the Reuss River where it flows out of Lake Luzern in the process. Once across the river, heading north, the original St. Gotthard line curves away to the east, and then the line towards Bern curves away to the west from the line on which we had arrived from Rotkreuz (and taken to and from Arth-Goldau the day before).

The line to Bern passes through a tunnel and then through Littau, Malters, Schachen, Werthenstein and Wohlhusen. At the latter, a line traversed by railcars turns away to the north, and the main line makes a sharp turn to the south, through Doppleschwand-Romoss, Entlebuch, Hasle, and Schüpfheim before turning southwest through Esholzmatt and Wiggen and then northwest through Trubschachen and Langnau. West of the latter, another line curves away to the north, and the main line turns southwestward again through Emmenmatt, Signau and Bowil, and then west through Zäziwil and Konolfingen. The latter appears to be the terminus of commuter trains from Bern. At Tägertschi, the line turns north and passes through Worb SBB before joining the BLS main line for the rest of the run into Bern.

At the western end of the line, as far as Konolfingen, work is in progress to double the line, or at least extend the length of the passing loops, in a region that has clearly become commuter territory for Bern. What will eventually be an improvement causes us to be two minutes late into Bern, and the doors of our connecting Euro-City train from Bern to Brig close in our faces as we reach the train, No matter, as I have planned to spend an hour or two in Bern on one leg or other of the journey, and this just means we will do that now.

Bern, the federal capital of Switzerland as well as the capital city of the Kanton of Bern, is an old city with cobbled streets traversed by tramcars, and colonnaded buildings alongside those streets. At intervals, there are sculptured fountains in the middle of the streets between the tram tracks. Outside the station, we cross the tracks and platforms of the central tram station and turn down the main street leading towards the Minster, passing the “Curia” building on the way. Most of the way, we walk through the colonnades, because a light rain is falling, even though the only traffic on these streets seems to be the tramcars. The Gothic Minster at Bern is quite beautiful, and the interior gives us a great sense of peace. Appropriate photography is impossible, especially since the outside light is quite low, so we purchase a guide book in English that has the needed color picures. We walk back to the station along the parallel colonnaded street, past a church with fascinating clocks on its tower and a gatehouse from the old city wall (Bern is located within a sweeping river bend, so was quite easy to defend) in good time for the next hour’s train to Brig, Rather than the fancy foreign carriages on the train we almost caught, this is a simple Swiss Inter-City train, but its first class cars are comfortable and dry so we’re content.

The BLS line to Spiez and Brig leaves from the north end of the station—the same end at which we had arrived—and repeats our route from Luzern as far as the junction with that line some miles out of town. From that point, the line heads south to Spiez, at the west end of lake Thun, where an SBB line from the other end of Bern station joins from the west, as does the line from Zweisimmen. South of Spiez, the joint SBB/BLS line to Interlaken diverges to the east. The BLS line heads directly into the mountains, and as the valley steepens requires spiral tunnels to raise its altitude quickly enough. There is no road across the mountains here, so at Kandersteg there are auto-shuttle facilities for loading cars onto wagons for train transport through the tunnel. On the south side of the tunnel are similar facilities for loading and unloading cars in a small side valley, after which another, much shorter, tunnel takes the line out onto the mountainside high above the valley of the river Rhône.

As built in the early 20^th-century, this line was single track built on a ledge carved out on the side of the mountain. In the 1970s, the line was doubled throughout, at least on the southern slope, in many cases by cantilevering bridges out from the mountainside to carry the second track. Amazingly, there are stations along this highly elevated section of the line, some of them used for access to and from a hiking path that follows alongside the railway line affording wonderful views of the valley below and the mountains across the valley to the south. On the valley floor, we see the town of Visp, where the meter gauge rack line to Zermatt diverges from the main railway route along the valley, and then the meter-gauge line’s workshop facilities before our line reaches the valley floor and crosses some through-truss bridges into Brig station.

This is our turnaround point for today, although we’ll be here again in the next week or so. We buy sandwiches and juice at the grocery store right in the station, and eat them sitting on the station platform. Several small birds appear and are gratified with crumbs from Chris’ sandwich. After awhile, during which we see the SBB locomotive specially painted for the Märklin anniversary, we re-board our train set, still sitting in the platform. Our return to Bern uses the same route on which we came, and in Bern (largely because we had ascertained the platform during our visit earlier in the day) we make our four-minute connection to the direct train to Luzern. This train gets us into Luzern somewhat after 5 pm (1700).

The official tour starts today, with a walking tour of Luzern at 4 pm. Without taking the 0657 train out of town and making both four-minute connections (and thus not seeing any part of Bern), we could not have been back in Luzern for this time, so we made no attempt to do so. We do walk though old town Luzern on our own, over several different days, however, but without benefit of a guide. We meet the other tour members for the first time, along with tour leader Werner Schorn, at a reception in the hotel, before having the first of our group dinners in a hotel dining room

Soon after dinner, we go to bed, so as to be ready for the first group excursions the following morning.

Private Mainline Railways (Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon)

All of the major standard gauge railroad lines, and many of the narrow gauge lines, in Switzerland were originally built by private finance, usually from Germany, with private ownership and operation. The growing power of newly-united Germany to the north and newly-united Italy to the south led the Swiss to conclude that they would prefer that the ownership of the strategic railway lines be in Swiss hands, and to this end the major extant standard gauge lines, and some of the meter-gauge lines, were gradually taken into Swiss federal ownership between 1889 and 1909. The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB is the German language acronym) were actually constituted in 1901, following a plebiscite in 1898.

After the Simplon Tunnel opened in 1906, a demand arose for a direct connection northwards from the new route to and from Italy. This demand was met, not by the Swiss Federal Railways but by a new private standard gauge line—the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon Railway (BLS). This company constructed the 9.5 mile long Lötschberg Tunnel between Kandersteg to the north and Goppenstein to the south between 1908 and 1913. The tunnel was intended to be built in a straight line, but after the tunnel collapsed not far from its north portal because the bottom of the Gastern Valley, where the Kander River flows, turned out to be filled with glacial debris rather than solid rock. To avoid this area, the tunnel was rerouted through three separate curves to a point under the Gastern Valley some 1100 ft. further east, where the valley floor comprised solid rock.

The BLS main line runs from Bern south to Brig. This general direction notwithstanding, it starts out from the Bern Hauptbahnhof heading northeast, along the same tracks used by train heading for Basel to the north and Zurich to the northeast.  A couple of miles out, there is a wye where the BLS turns around to the south, and those other two routes jointly turn to the north. There are stations at Ostermindigen and Gumligen, both apparently still within the Bern urban area. South of Gumligen, the SBB line to Luzern departs to the east. The BLS line continues southward through Aubingen, Münsingen, Wichtrach, Kiesen and Uttingen. An SBB line that is used by a commuter-style service from Bern (leaving the station there in the opposite direction from BLS trains) trails in from the west, and another SBB line, used by a purely local railcar service, trails in from the east immediately north of the station at Thun.

The line then runs along the southwest side of Lake Thun, through Dürrenast, Gwatt, Gwattstutz, Einigen, Kumm, and Spiezmoo Nord. Just south of the latter, an SBB line from Zweisimmen trails in from the west, and just a little further south, the BLS line reaches the main station at Spiez. This is a multi-platform interchange station (five platform faces), with regular cross-platform connections between services on different routes. The BLS main works are on the west side of the line south of Spiez. At the south end of Spiez, on a segment of line heading southeast, the joint BLS/SBB line to Interlaken continues straight ahead, while the BLS main line makes a sharp turn southwest, passes through a tunnel, and then turns due south again. As it climbs up the Kander River valley (Kandertal) passes through Heustrach Emdthal, Mülenen, Reichenbach im Kandertal, and Wengi before reaching Frutigen, another main station.

As it continues up the valley, the line passes through Kandergrund, and then reaches one of those places where a sudden rise in the altitude of the land requires artificial lengthening of the railway line. At Blausee-Mitholz, there are three levels of line, with several tunnels. The line makes a half circle to the east before the station, and another half circle, to the east afterwards, continuing southward a little further east than it had started. Not much further south, the line reaches Kandersteg, where there is a facility for loading automobiles onto flat cars for a shuttle service through the Lötschberg Tunnel to Goppenstein. (Unlike the Gotthard line, where such a service used to exist but was terminated after the Gotthard Road Tunnel opened in 1980, the Lötschberg Tunnel car shuttle continues, since there is no road crossing of the Bernese Oberland mountains under which the tunnel passes.)

Goppenstein, at the south end of the tunnel, has similar auto-shuttle facilities, and is located in a small valley draining towards the much larger Rhône Valley to the south. Not much further south, after passing through a number of short tunnels, the BLS line reaches the north wall of that Rhône Valley—1500 feet above the valley floor (Goppenstein is 1650 ft. above Brig). Descending the mountain face directly is clearly impossible, but instead of attempting this, the BLS line turns east along the valley wall and descends slowly on a ledge cut into the mountain face until it reaches the valley floor many miles further east, at Brig. (While the original single track was entirely located on a ledge cut into the mountainside, the second track added in the 1970s had to be located, in some places, on a platform cantilevered out from the mountain face.)

The line descends through many short tunnels and mountainside stations at Hohtenn, Ausserberg, Eggerberg and Lalden. On reaching the valley floor, the line crosses over the Rhône on heavy through truss bridges, and then over the narrow gauge line to Andermatt, and enters the station at Brig not far beyond the river crossing. Brig station has a main platform on the south side, along with several double-faced island platforms that serve trains on the SBB (nearer to the main station buildings) and BLS (further away) lines entering the station from the west, and the SBB line through the Simplon Tunnels, which leaves the station to the east. There are locomotive facilities on the south side of the line east of the station, and a goods yard on the north side of the station. International goods trains, including some that operate with German Railways locomotives as well as SBB and BLS locomotives, serve the latter.

The 24 mile long Lötschberg Base Tunnel, between Frutigen and the Rhône Valley floor, west of Visp, due to come into use in 2007 as part of the improvements needed for carrying freight across Switzerland on trains, not on roads,, is to be equipped with a traditional signaling system in case the European Train Control System (ETCS) is not ready in time; there will be signals at both portals, and the capacity with traditional signaling will be 42 trains a day instead of 110 with ETCS.

Friday, May 28^th, 2004

Engelberg, Mount Titlis, Mount Pilatus

This is the first full day of the tour. After breakfast, we tell Werner that we’re leaving for the station ahead of the other to give Chris time to feed the swans and then leave the hotel. We arrive at the station, after feeding the swans, at about the same time as the others. This morning, we’re heading into the mountains south of Luzern, using the meter gauge services of the Luzern Stans Engelberg railway (LSE) to reach the mountain town of Engelberg. The LSE uses the trackage of the SBB (Swiss federal railway) meter gauge Brünig Line as far as Hergeswil, on the shore of the south arm of Lake Luzern, then turns further south through Stans and climbs up a rack-assisted segment of track to reach Engelberg at an altitude of over 3,000 ft. back in the mountains. LSE trains typically use platform 14 at Luzern (meter gauge tracks are found at platforms 12 and above), and we board our LSE train there. We’re in a first class section of a composite driving car at the front of the train,, and Werner arranges for small groups of us to sit up front with the driver during the morning ride up the Engelberg. At different times, both Chris and I take advantage of this.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-28-04	LSE (RB6728)	0914	Luzern-Engelberg	LSE loco-hauled	LSE
5-28-04	LSE (RB6753)	1345	Engelberg-Hergeswil	LSE loco-hauled	LSE
5-28-04	SBB (RB2474)	1522	Hergeswil-Alpnachstad	SBB loco-hauled	SBB
5-28-04	Pilatus	1553	Alpnachstad-Pilatus	Self-powered car	―
5-28-04	Pilatus	1705	Pilatus-Alpnachstad	Self-powered car	―
5-28-04	LSE (RB6371)	1742	Alpnachstad-Hergeswil	LSE loco-hauled	LSE
5-28-04	SBB (RB5709)	1752	Hergeswil-Luzern	SBB loco-hauled	SBB

The Brünig Line is single track with passing places, as soon as it leaves the vicinity of Luzern station. It passes closer to the SBB sheds than does the standard gauge trackage, affording view not otherwise available. Not far out of town, the line is under reconstruction, slowing the progress of our train. Along this stretch, Werner has arranged for tour group members to ride in the cab of the EMU, and a number of us take him up on the offer. This permits us to ask some questions of the operator (which Werner translates), as well as to observe the line straight ahead and the signals by which the train is governed in its passage along the line.

After running alongside Lake Luzern for awhile, we take the left-hand tunnel to the west of Hergeswil, emerging on a causeway across the lake to reach Stans. In the station at the latter, I see a terminating SBB train, and Werner explains that SBB runs local services this far, and LSE has some local service rights on the Brünig Line. In fact, SBB has plans to sell the whole of tis meter-gauge trackage to LSE in the next year or two.

A little way to the east of Stans, our train stops at a station to wait for an opposing train, and while there we observe that the gradient ahead has the start of a rack section to assist in ascending and descending the grade. When the opposing train has passed, our train sets off up the rack section, with a great clatter as the cogwheels on the train engage with the rack in the middle of the track. A lineside sign with the letter A marks each section of rack, and the end is marked with the letter E, denoting the German words for start and end, respectively. Werner points out a location where a “base” tunnel to lead to Engelberg without the need for rack assistance commences. Just the week previously, great flows of water had broken into the tunnel works, and currently it is not known if the works can be continued.

The rack section ends just before reaching Engelberg, which has a two-platform station. Here, we leave the train and walk over to the Titlis-Rotair base station a few hundred yards southwest of the station on the edge of the town. Here, we board four person gondolas on the lowest level of the cable tramway up Mt. Titlis. We share our car with tour members Robert and Shirley Carter, from Fort Worth. On this section of the tramway, there is an intermediate station at which hikers can alight, followed by a much longer span to the next station further up the mountain. On the second segment, we hear many cowbells and then sheep-bells from the devices attached to the animals in the meadows over which we are passing. I’m surprised by how loud the sounds are, based on our distance from/above the animals. The sky is overcast, with occasional light rain, so we don’t really have a view of the mountains surrounding us.

At the upper station for the four-person gondolas, we transfer to a cable tramway with a much large car in which we all must stand. This takes us up to a yet higher station, where we again transfer to the rotary tramcar (like the one on the Palm Springs tramway) that turns as it travels, giving everyone an equal share of the view. Again, we all must stand in this car. Unfortunately, there isn’t much view beyond the immediate surroundings of the car, but even that is quite spectacular. At the top of the mountain, the clouds have limited visibility to only a couple of hundred yards, so we decline to walk over to the glacier that we can’t see, and instead go back inside the summit station to eat lunch.

Our descent starts nine minutes late, for reasons that we never learn (apparently something at the lower end of the rotary tram segment). Werner has warned us that we must hurry when we get to the bottom, because the IRT schedule shows only a seven-minute connection in Engelberg. After all of the transfers, and sharing the four-person cabin with the Carters again, we arrive at the base station at the time shown on the IRT schedule, and set off for the LSE station. I am near the front of the group, with only Dawn Anderson ahead of me, when, as we’re still quite a way from the station the LSE train leaves without us. In fact, it takes us another two minutes to get to the station (and the stragglers another ten minutes or so after that), so a seven-minute connection is impossible. I’m not sure that we would all have made it if the descending tram has left the summit on time!

Werner makes a few telephone calls, and we have a revised schedule that will still permit us to go up Mount Pilatus this afternoon. We while away the hour to the next train with cold drinks we have bought at the “Kiosk” (something like a 7-11) at the station, while others bemoan the lunchtime closure of antique shops with interesting window displays. We take this train down the mountain as far as Hergeswil, where we get off to await our connection onto an SBB train heading west. While we’re here, a couple of Golden Pass Panoramic trains pass through. I pass the time by engaging Werner in conversation about the makeability of the four-minute connections in Bern, and he responds with comments about new styles of management in SBB that are more concerned with punctuality then passenger service. When he says the same thing has happened with the German rail system, with which he has a close relationship, he struggles with the appropriate English words to explain his views on labor relations in the modern privatized world.

When our westbound local train arrives, we board and ride it through the right-hand tunnel at the west end of the station and along Lake Luzern to Alpnachstad, where we alight and walk over to the Mt. Pilatus railway station a few yards away. This cog railway has very steep gradients, up to 48% in places, with 25% being almost the shallowest, and the cars are stepped like funicular railway cars in recognition of this steepness. The line uses a different type of rack system, with horizontal teeth engaged by car-mounted cogwheels on both sides rather than the vertical teeth engaged by single cogwheels found on more conventional rack systems (such as that on the LSE). This different system is required by the steepness of the line, as the cars might otherwise disengage from a vertically oriented rack.

The Mt. Pilatus line climbs directly up the hillside and later mountainside, with one passing place to meet opposing trains. This has special trackwork that slides the switches sideways en masse, rather than moving points as in conventional switches. The top of the mountain affords sweeping panoramic views of the region, including Lake Luzern and parts of the city of Luzern itself. (While I don’t definitively identify any of the latter, the many places from which the summit of Pilatus is visible from the city suggest that on a clear day, which this now has become, those parts of the city can be seen from the top of the mountain.)

We descend the mountain the same way we came up. (Other groups descend the other side of the mountain using a cable tramway.) Werner is expecting a wait at the bottom for our train back to Luzern, but in the (free) local timetable, I have noticed an earlier way back to Luzern involving a short connection at Alpnachstadt and a transfer at Hergeswil. Werner is dubious, but we get down a minute or two early, and the local train is a few minutes late, so we all make it back to Luzern about 45 minutes earlier than had been expected.

After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, Chris and I take a walk through another part of old town Luzern, and then have fish and chips at Mr. Pickwick’s Pub, a local take off on the English institution.

Mountain Railways and Tramways [1]

One of the glories of riding trains in Switzerland is to ride the trains (of various types) up into the mountains, and in some cases up the mountains themselves. The Luzern-Stans-Engelberg (LSE) is a conventional meter-gauge line in the vicinity of Luzern, but uses a couple of rack sections, on the Abt rack system, with several mutually offset rack rails, to climb from Obermatt LSE to Engelberg. Although the LSE runs trains from Luzern to Engelberg, the LSE-owned trackage only begins at the junction at Hergeswil, the trackage between Hergeswil and Luzern being part of the SBB Brünig Line, over which the LSE has operating rights. SBB also has right to operate trains over LSE tracks into Stans.

At the south end of Hergeswil station are two tunnels, the westerly one comprising the Brünig Line towards Interlaken and the easterly comprising the LSE line to Engelberg. The LSE line curves sharply east through that tunnel, emerging onto a causeway between the end of Lake Luzern and the Alpnachsee (which looks as if it would be part of the lake, if the causeway were not there). At the east end of the causeway, there is a station at Stansstadt, after which the line turns southeast through Stans and Oberdorf and then south through Buren, Dallenwil, Niederrickenback, Wolfenschiessen, Dörfli, and Grafenwald to Obermatt. All along this stretch, the wooded valley sides have been closing in on the line, and the valley floor rising. But at Obermatt, the valley floor rises much more sharply, and the railway has to resort to the use of rack-assistance to allow it to go any further. There are two rack sections, using the Riggenbach ladder-type cog rail, with a rack-free section through the station at Grünenwald. The second rack section ends within sight of the terminus station at Engelberg, as the line curves eastward into that station. As with the SBB Brünig Line, the entire LSE is electrified suing overhead catenary.

The Titlis Rotair tramway is a system of three different aerial tramways that rise on the south side of the town of Engelberg that lifts travelers in stages up the north side of Mount Titlis, one of the peaks in the Aare Massif that runs east-west across the country on the south side of the Aare watershed and the north side of the Rhône valley. Although each of the three aerial tramways works on very similar basic principles, the three different segments use three different types of cars. The lowest segment has many small cars that carry four people on two facing seats, and operates more like a ski lift than an aerial funicular system; the middle section has a somewhat larger gondola in which a larger number of passengers stand for the direction of the trip, and operates by balancing the weights of one upward and one downward gondola on the funicular principle, and the upper section uses rotating gondolas carrying an even larger number of people, also operating on the funicular principle. There is an intermediate station on the lowest segment, and passengers are free to break their journeys there and at the stations where each segment terminates and the next begins.

Mount Pilatus is on the north side of the Alpnachsee, and is the mountain that appears in the background of the standard postcard photographs of Luzern, looking westward.  There are both a rack railway and an aerial tramway up the mountain, with quite different base stations many miles apart. The rack railway is much steeper than any other (at least in Switzerland), and operates using the world’s only installation of the Locher system, with a horizontal twin-rack rail toothed on both edges. Because the railway is so steep, it uses cars in which each transverse bank of seats is a foot or so higher than the one below. The line is electrically powered, and has a passing place in the middle of the climb that uses traversers for switching between tracks, so that no breaks in the rack are required while a car is passing over the switches. Beginning with a passage through tall trees on the north side of the see, the line eventually emerges onto sheer rock faces, which it climbs on ledges hewn out of the rock. There are no intermediate stations on this railway.

Saturday, May 29^th, 2004

Swiss Transportation Museum, Lake Luzern Boat trip, Mount Rigi

This morning, we’re going first to the Swiss Transportation Museum on the north shore of Lake Luzern, somewhat to the east of old town. Werner’s choice for getting there is to take the trolleybus from the plaza in front of the main railway station, so as usual Chris and I leave earlier than the group so that she can feed the swans on the lake. Chris insists that Werner will remember from yesterday, but apparently he doesn’t and waits around the hotel for a  few minutes looking for us. We do all meet up at the bus station in plenty of time and ride across the lake and out to the museum. When we get there, it transpires that we have an hour to wait before the museum opens. I ask why we are so early, Werner’s answer has to do with the light on the lake for photography, which doesn’t satisfy me. Had I known that we would be waiting here, I would have opted to walk from the hotel (it’s no further than to Triebschen, directly across the lake) to the museum and we would still have been here in plenty of time.

Just before 10 am, we go into the museum and meet our guide, a senior manager in the railway department in the museum who speaks good English when taking about his area of expertise, and less good otherwise. Our group spends its time in the railway area of the museum, discussing the large model of the Gotthard line and major exhibits in that area (‘Krokodil’ electric locomotives, for example), then the history of steam locomotion in Switzerland followed by the history of electric locomotion in Switzerland. We also touch on the history of the tramcars in the museum, and the early Mt. Pilatus car that is on display. Other items on display include examples of Riggenbach, Abt and Lother rack and pinion segments, a 1947 replica of the 1847 first steam locomotive in Switzerland, Limmat, 1858 steam locomotive Geneva, the oldest preserved locomotive in Switzerland, a model of the scaffolding for the Langwies viaduct on the Arosa line, a section 1909 steam locomotive from the Brünig Line, an early electric locomotive from the Burgdorf-Thun line, the test locomotive for single phase alternating current traction, which has been sectioned to show how it works, a drivers cabin from a 1940 electric locomotive, and a model of a patented automatic coupling device that was never implemented in practice.

From the main railway galleries, we go into the underground exhibit on the building of the Gotthard Railway. This exhibit has many dioramas telling the story, with lights and sound orchestrated as the replica tunnel workers’ car moves through the exhibit. We have handsets that provide the audio in English, keyed to its timing in German in the main exhibit. To finish, we transfer from the miners’ car to a replica original passenger car that covers the opening and early passenger trains on the line.

Returning to the main level, we have some free time to visit other areas of the museum, or patronize the gift shop. The latter has a couple of books in English, which we buy. The gift shop has trouble verifying our charge card, so we go outside and have no trouble getting the ATM outside to give us the needed cash, which we use to pay inside. Group members then walk over to the nearby boat pier to wait for our boat down the lake to come over from downtown Luzern and stop at the museum location. On the boat, we have a leisurely ride east, stopping at several locations on the north shore of the lake, finally reaching Vitznau, from which the railway up Mount Rigi departs. Here we leave the boat and board the train..

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-29-04	Mt. Rigi (RB1119)	1300	Vitznau-Mt, Rigi	Electric cars	—
5-29-04	Mt. Rigi (RB158)	1505	Mt. Rigi to Arth-Goldau	Electric cars	—
5-29-04	SBB (R5266)	1617	Arth-Goldau to Luzern	Local EMU	—

The line up the mountain is entirely rack-moderated, and we head steadily and surely to the top. At the top, we take photos of the panoramas on the various sides of the mountain, including the Aare Massif to the south, in which we can identify Mt. Titlis (yesterday’s destination), just about due south (actually, a little bit to the west) of where we are today. We also eat lunch up here. The railway down to Arth-Goldau is parallel to the one from the lake, for the first hundred yards or more from the summit, but then diverges to the east side of the mountain and descends through quite different scenery. Because Chris and I have already ridden the main SBB line from Arth-Goldau to Luzern through Rotkreuz, I tell Werner that we will be riding the local train on the original Gotthard Railway line along the shore of Lake Luzern, instead. Since this leaves only four minutes later, and gets to Luzern only seven minutes later, than the main line train, Werner decides to take the whole group on the local train. Since it is an EMU, he arranges for some of us to ride up front next to the driver and get photographs directly ahead on the line. On the main line section, before the lines diverge, we see a couple of goods trains heading the other way at a rapid pace. Nearing Luzern, we pass by the museum we had visited in the morning.

Back in Luzern, Chris and I walk some more of the old town, including walking on the old city wall, high behind the town, petting a cat on a pathway in the residential area beyond the wall, and visiting the ‘dying lion’ sculpture near the cathedral. The sculpture is quite the most affecting piece of art I have ever seen (it commemorates the deaths of the Swiss Guards in the French Revolution in 1792). For dinner, we stop for Pizza at Rossini, the same restaurant we had patronized three days earlier.

Mountain Railways and Tramways [2]

The Vitznau-Rigi was the first rack railway in Switzerland, built in 1871, and uses the Riggenbach system along with overhead electrification on its meter gauge track. It departs from the lakeside in Vitznau, adjacent to the boat pier there.  At this point, the lakeshore is running north-south (with the lake to the west). Immediately east of (and above) the Vitznau station, the line turns north and climbs along the side of the mountain, paralleling the lake and providing views back along the lake section towards Luzern. The line passes through Mittlerschwanden,, where it turns away from the lake but still hugs the mountainside, Grubisbalm, Friebergen, Romiti Felsentor, Rigi Kaltbad-First, and Rigi Staffelhöhe, all while heading north. The line then turns east to Rigi Staffel, where it is paralleled by the line from Arth-Goldau coming in from the south on the other side of the station building. The lines run side by side in an easterly direction the rest of the way to the terminus at Rigi Kulm.

Downward from Rigi Staffel, the standard gauge line to Arth-Goldau heads southeast to Rigi First, then turns east through Rigi Klösterli, Früttli, and Kräbel, descending into a deep mountain valley, and then emerges from the valley east of Kräbel to curve around to the north to enter Arth-Goldau. The terminus station is at street level, the same as the height of a footbridge leading over to the main buildings of Arth-Goldau SBB station.

Interlaken

Leaving Luzern, we rode the meter gauge line over the Brunig Pass to Lake Brienz, where we rode on the steam-powered rack railway up the Rothorn (as far as the residual snow and ice pack would let us go) before continuing our trip along the lake (both by lake steamer and later as a side trip by train to fill in the gap). From these railways, we had clear views of the Monch, Eiger, and Jungfrau off to the west.  We spent two nights at Interlaken, during which we rode up to Kleine Sheidegg via Lauterbrunnen, taking the railway inside the mountains (Monch and Eiger) from the former to Jungfraujoch in the high valley between the Eiger and the Jungfrau. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate while we were up there. We returned to Interlaken via Grindelwald.

Sunday, May 30^th, 2004

Brűnig Pass, Rothorn Bahn, Lake Brienz

This morning, we pack our bags and check out of the hotel. The bags are going by truck to our next hotel so we’re unencumbered by them on our excursions during the day. Chris and I leave early to feed the swans as usual (for the last time), letting Werner know this time, and we meet the group at platform 12 in the station, from which our Brünig Line train will depart.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-30-04	SBB (D2456)	0834	Luzern to Brienz	Red coaches	Class 120
5-30-04	SBB (D2481)	1530	Interlaken Ost-Brienz	Golden Pass Obs.	Class 101
5-30-04	SBB (D2474)	1611	Brienz-Interlaken Ost	Golden Pass 1st	Class 101

The route this morning is the same as we have covered before, as far as Alpnachstad. West of the latter, we run along the south side of a couple of lakes, and then enter a rack-controlled section for the climb up to Brünig Pass. While on the climb, Werner points out that the mountains we can see over the pass are the Monch, Eiger and Jungfrau, that we will be visiting the following day. Unbeknownst to us, this is the clearest view we will have of them. On the west side of the pass, with clear views of lake Brienz, we descend to Meiringen, where the train reverses direction, our locomotive running around the train to change ends. On the descent, Werner point out the famous Reichenbach Falls, the high waterfall where Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is defeated by his arch-rival Moriarty and falls to his supposed death. Our train now runs alongside Lake Brienz to the small town of Brienz, where we leave the train.

We’re going to ride the Brienzer Rothorn Steam Railway, a rack railway up the Brienzer Rothorn Mountain that is operated by steam locomotives specially built and rack-fitted for this line. (They are similar to those on the Snowdon Mountain or Mount Washington Cog Railways.) We had planned to ride the entire line, a multi-hour event, but because the snow and ice has not melted completely from the summit area, the railway is only operating up to the midpoint. (Werner tried to get them to take us all the way up, on the proviso that we would not leave the train at the summit, but they would not do so.) As on Mt. Pilatus, the cars on this line are stepped from seat bank to seat bank to accommodate the gradient, although the gradient here is nowhere near as steep as on that line.

We have an hour or more to wait for our train up the mountains, so we spend it sitting by the lake chatting with the Carters and photographing trains on the Brünig Line. When it’s time for our mountain train, we first get photos of some of the steam locomotives, and then take the first few compartments of the lead train up the mountain. The scenery is spectacular, looking south across Lake Brienz, and the locomotion equally so. At the station to which the railway is operating, many of the passengers not with our group depart on their mountain hikes, whereas we move to seats directly behind the locomotive (which, as on all such railways, is at the lower end of the train) for the descent. The descent is even more spectacular than the climb, and is too soon ended.

Back at Lakeside, we walk over to the pier to take a steamer along the lake to Interlaken. This will compensate, at least timewise, for the shorter ride up the mountain. On the boat, I want to sit outside to take photographs of the scenery, but Chris wants to sit inside and have lunch. So we, the Carters, and John & Bonny Collins sit down at a table (and other group members sit at other tables) and try to decipher the menus, which are entirely in German. When the others at our table realize that I am reading out the menu to Chris, in a (very) rough English translation, they all want to hear what I have to say. Based on my reading, five of us order the Chicken Cutlet, which proves to be exactly what we expected. Bob Carter mentally adds a word to my translation of “Rosti”, making it into ‘Roast Meat’, and orders that. He is disappointed (to put it mildly) when his meal of potatoes cooked with melted cheese arrives. The side-wheel steamboat zigzags along the lake, stopping at every pier first on one side and then the other, finally reversing into the river between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun and stopping at the pier adjacent o Interlaken Ost railway station. From here, it is just a short walk to our hotel for the next two nights, the Beau Rivage, and we walk over there as a group.

Once we’re in our room, I want to take the train back to Brienz to cover the missing piece of line. So, we walk back to the station, where a Golden Pass Panoramic train set is waiting in the meter gauge platforms, forming the next train to Brienz. (Golden Pass Panoramic is a marketing concept covering the whole distance from Montreux to Luzern, with quite separate specially-painted and outfitted train sets on the Montruex-Zweisiimen and Interlaken-Luzern meter-gauge segments.) We check out the panoramic observation car, and find that not every seat in it is marked reserved. So, we sit down in some unreserved seats. Chris is uncomfortable with this until the train has left and the ticket collector passed by, without any objections to our presence. The scenery along the lake is quite different, as seen from the train. In Brienz, we only have a short while before our return train to Interlaken Ost, in which we ride in a standard first class car next to the observation car (which is clearly full).

Dinner this evening is a group dinner in the hotel restaurant, during which we manage a long conversation with Werner. After dinner, we sit out on the balcony of our hotel room until the weather cools off and rain starts. This does not look good for our mountain excursions in the morning.

Meter Gauge Main Lines [A]

The Brünig Line is the sole remaining SBB meter gauge line (at least of any length). As such, it shares the SBB station in Luzern; the station has 16 total tracks (and platform faces), eleven of which are standard gauge and five are meter gauge. The line departs Luzern heading directly south out of the station, as the standard gauge lines curve away to the west. The Brünig Line is single track with passing places (mainly at stations), but the first stretch out of Luzern is in the process of having a second track added at least for the first few miles through Horw to where the line comes along the west shore of Lake Luzern. Passing through Hergiswil Matt, the line reaches the junction station at Hergiswil, where the LSE line to Stans and Engelberg leaves through the easterly tunnel, and the Brünig Line heads through the westerly tunnel at the south end of the station.

Through the tunnel, the line curves southwest along the shore of the Alpnachsee to Alpnachstad, with Mount Pilatus to the northwest of the line, across from the see. The Mt. Pilatus railway runs from a station adjacent to the SBB station at Alpnachstad. Turning south-southwest after Alpnachstad, the Brünig Line enters a valley and starts climbing gently, through Alpnach Dorf, Sarnen and Kerns-Kägiswil, comes along the southeast side of the Sarner See, and passes through Sachseln along the shore. At the far end of the see, the line starts to climb in earnest, through Giswil, Kaiserstuhl, and Lungern to the summit at Brünig-Hasliberg, making use of the Riggenbach rack for adhesion assistance along the way.

Here, the line turns abruptly southeast as it descends to Meiringen, at the bottom of the narrowing Aare valley upstream from Lake Brienz. In Meiringen station, the locomotive that has brought the train from Luzern is removed, and a different locomotive is added to the other end of the train. Just northwest of the station, the line down from Brünig Pass joins with the line from Lake Brienz; so all trains enter Meiringen station from the same direction and must reverse to continue their journeys.  The SBB meter-gaueg workshops are on the west side of the station complex at Meiringen. The line onward leaves Meiringen along the Aare valley floor, heading first northwest, turning west at Unterbach and continuing through Brienwiler before turning northwest again for a short stretch to pass around the end of Lake Brienz to gain the north shore of that lake at the eponymous town of Brienz. Here, the Rothorn Bahn starts from a station adjacent to the SBB station, and climbs the adjacent Rothorn.

From Brienz, almost all the way to Interlaken, the line runs along the north shore of the lake with a steep mountainside rising just beyond the track, passing through Brienz West, Ebligen, Oberried am Brienzersee, Niederried and Ringgenberg, passing through a number of tunnels along the way.  At the end of the lake, the line crosses the river joining lakes Brienz and Thun, turns west, and enters the junction station at Interlaken Ost. This is another station that has both narrow gauge and standard gauge platforms, with several island platforms having two track faces each as well as a single platform adjacent to the main buildings on the south side of the tracks. The most southerly platforms serve the narrow gauge lines heading into the Bernese Oberland mountains to the south, the middle narrow gauge platforms serve the Brünig Line, and the more northerly, standard gauge platforms serve the joint SBB/BLS line that runs along the south shore of Lake Thun to Spiez.

The growth of Interlaken dates only to the latter half of the 19^th-century. The narrow gauge railway was built to the east end of Lake Brienz to bring in the materials needed for the construction of a large hydro-electric power station at the end of the valley, beyond Meiringen. The power was needed for operating the Gotthard line. After the railway was in Interlaken, both a large railway workshop and the hotels for the tourist trade were built here. Prior to that, all that existed was a small community serving travel between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun.

Monday, May 31^st, 2004

Jungfraujoch, Grindelwald, Interlaken

When I awaken this morning, the rain has stopped and there is clear visibility in the mountains across from our room (albeit under higher cloud cover). However, by the time we go down for breakfast, a thick cloud layer has formed at a level that will be fog by the time we reach the first level of villages in the mountains. This means that there is no point going to Murren to ride an aerial tramway that will be entirely in the clouds. The railways we will ride today include the Berner Oberland Bahnen (BOB), Wengeralpbahn (WAB), worked by BOB, and Jungfraubahn (JB) also worked by the BOB.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
5-31-04	BOB (RB734)	0805	Interlaken Ost-Lauterbrunnen	Electric cars	N/A
5-31-04	WAB (RB341)	0835	Lauterbrunnen-Kleine Scheidegg	Electric cars	N/A
5-31-04	JB (RB543)	1002	Kleine Scheidegg-Jungfraujoch	Electric cars	N/A
5-31-04	JB (RB554)	1300	Jungfraujoch- Kleine Scheidegg	Electric cars	N/A
5-31-04	WAB (RB454)	1400	Kleine Scheidegg-Grindelwald	Electric cars	N/A
5-31-04	BOB (RB256)	1520	Grindelwald-Interlaken Ost	Electric cars	N/A

After breakfast, we walk over to Interlaken Ost where we take a train up the meter gauge line to Lauterbrunnen, back in the valley that is directly across from our room. There, instead of going to Murren, we board a train going directly on to Kleine Scheidegg. This climbs the mountains in earnest, with rack assistance almost all the way. Kleine Scheidegg is at a level where snow still lays upon the ground. We find a souvenir shop to patronize, a café that provides coffee and tea, and at Saint Bernard dog outfitted with a little barrel under his chin, to photograph. During our over an hour here, I manage to photograph all of the different kinds of train that serve this station.

We continue onwards on the Jungfrau Railway, which is built almost entirely in tunnel through the Monch and Eiger mountains up to the small high valley between the Eiger and the Jungfrau known as Jungfraujoch. Here, there is a multi-story building, with “viewing” platforms affording nominal views of the various mountaintops, at an altitude of 11,782 ft.. To us, they provide excellent views of the nearby snowfields, and that is all, but they do give us a feel for the temperature at this elevation, even at the end of May. In fact, snow is flying while we’re outside on one of the platforms.

We have a group lunch in the restaurant at the top of the mountain, largely because a group reservation is the only way to get a good meal in a timely manner. After lunch, Bonny Collins, having discovered that I worked for Xerox and knew people in Palo Alto, asks me if I have known of or met some of the people she used to work with up there, including Doug Engelbart with both SRI and Tymshare and Charles Irby and Jeff Rulifson with Sun Microsystems. I had met both of the latter when they were with Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

We depart the summit early, after Werner has made the arrangements rather than face a group revolt. At Kleine Scheidegg, we board a train going down to Grindelwald, a different route from that by which we had ascended from Lauterbrunnen. This is also very scenic and the difference is interesting. Werner is expecting that we will all spend the afternoon in Grindelwald, returning to Interlaken on the originally scheduled train. However, Grindelwald is a tourist town, and those of us not interested in shopping in such a town, including Jim Compton, Jimmy Hughes and ourselves, let Werner know we will be heading down on the next available train and return to the station. Some of the descent is different from our upward route, but the last few miles are the same as our outward route. We walk back to the hotel from Interlaken Ost after our arrival, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading out on the balcony of our room.

In the evening, we walk west into downtown Interlaken, on the way meeting Jim Compton returning from his dinner. He directs us to an Italian Restaurant on a side street, where I have excellent lasagna. After dinner, we walk on further into town, perusing the windows of a model railway shop among others, and then walk back on an adjacent street that is outside the tourist area. This takes us alongside a large park and then through a farmyard with sheep and then cows, all with bells hanging around their necks, as well as a cat for Chris to fuss over, before returning to the hotel via the street directly across from the hotel, visible from our room in the center front of an upper floor.

Mountain Railways and Tramways [3]

The Brienzer Rothorn Bahn is the only rack railway in Switzerland that is still universally steam worked.  It uses the Abt rack system. This line is steep enough that the steam locomotives are designed to operate on the angled track, and have boilers that point downwards when they are on relatively level track. The line of the Brienzer Rothorn Bahn departs its station in a northwesterly direction (initially parallel to the SBB line along the lakeshore below), climbing at an angle up the steep mountainside, affording magnificent views of the lake below and the mountains to the south. (Interestingly, however, while the Monch, Eiger and Jungfrau are visible from the top of the Brünig Pass, they are not visible from the Rothorn Bahn, at least anywhere below Planalp.)

After climbing up quite some distance, the line passes through a 3000 ft. long tunnel along the mountainside. Emerging from that tunnel, the line turns east into a side valley, then makes a counter-clockwise half circle and traverses the other wall of the side valley, well above its traversal of the south wall, which can be seen below (as the north wall traversal can be seen from below). After emerging from the side valley, the line curves around the mountainside and turns northeasterly into a broad valley, to reach the ‘station’ and passing track at Planalp. (This is as far as we were able to go, due to the ice fields remaining at higher altitudes.)

Above Planalp, the line continues northeasterly for awhile, then makes a sharp turn to the southeast and later a semicircle to the left to head back northwesterly, further up the slope, and finally another turn clockwise around to the east to reach Brienzer Rothorn Kulm, the station at the summit..

In the valleys leading back into the high peaks of the Bernese Oberland south of Interlaken, there are six railway routes owned by four different railway companies, all operated by a single one of those owning companies. All of these lines are narrow gauge with power supplied by overhead electric catenary. All are single track with passing places. Two routes operate from Interlaken Ost—one to Lauterbrunnen and one to Grindelwald. There is a route from Lauterbrunnen back to Murren (on which we did not travel due to the inclement weather), and routes up to Kleine Scheidegg from both Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. Finally, there is a single route from Kleine Scheidegg up to Jungfraujoch. These are collectively among the most spectacular mountain railways in existence, anywhere in the world. Of course, for the Jungfraujoch line it is the destination that is spectacular, since all but a few hundred yards at the lower end of the line are located inside a tunnel!

The routes from Interlaken Ost are owned by the Berner Oberland Bahnen (Bernese Highland Railways)—BOB; those from Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg are owned by the Wengeralpbahn (WAB),, and the line upwards from Kleine Scheidegg is owned by the Jungfraubahn (JB). The BOB operates all of these lines. Leaving Interlaken Ost, there is but a single route starting out in an easterly direction, but curving south immediately east of the station. The line crosses the valley and turns southwest adjacent to the BOB shops and the station at Wilderswil. The line then turns southeast and enters the narrow valley of the Lutschine River back towards the high mountains. At the southern end of this cleft, the valley splits into two separate valleys (each carrying a branch of the Lutschine River) at Zweilutschinen (“two Lutschines”). The railway also splits here, with one branch heading due south to Lauterbrunnen (the only remaining station on that branch), up the valley of the Weisse Lutschine, and the other heading east to Grindelwald, climbing the valley of the Schwarze Lutschine through Lutschental, Burglauenen and Schwendi bei Grindelwald to the mountain resort town of Grindelwald, with the final stretch of the line running up the north slope of the valley. The BOB lines are meter gauge, electrified at 1500V DC, and use the Riggenbach ladder rack system.

From Lauterbrunnen (a station that provides for cross platform connections between BOB trains and WAB trains in both directions), the line up to Kleine Scheidegg starts out southward and almost immediately curves a half circle to the east, heading back north as it climbs up the east side of the valley. After passing the whole town of Lauterbrunnen, down below, the line on the valley side makes another half circle to the east, through Wengwald, and then heads south, still climbing up the mountainside on the east side of the valley, through Wengen, Allmend and Wengenalp before making another sweeping turn to the east and heading northeast into Kleine Scheidegg, still climbing along the side of the mountain, with the valley now to the south. There is an old line up from Lauterbrunnen to Kleine Scheidegg, with a maximum gradient of 25%, that is used once a year for carrying up trucks with ski equipment. Unlike the new line, the old one has no tunnels and thus can be used for large loads. The entire WAB is 800mm gauge, electrified at 1500V DC. Its steepest gradient is 25% on the Grindelwald side, 19% on the Lauterbrunnen side, operated with the aid of the Riggenbach ladder rack system.

At Grindelwald, the BOB platform track is adjacent to the WAB platform track, with the platforms themselves on the outer sides of the tracks. Connection between trains requires walking to the station end of the platform and then walking back on the other platform. The line from Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg starts out heading west, parallel to the line from Interlaken, but descending the mountainside below that line. On reaching the valley floor, and Grindelwald Grund, the line reverses, then turns southwest and climbs up the mountainside through Brandegg, and Alpiglen, with the mountain slope to the southeast and the valley to the northwest. There are a number of snowsheds along this section of the line, which is still climbing steeply just before it enters Kleine Scheidegg station from the east (the opposite direction from the Lauterbrunnen line).

Kleine Scheidegg (a location seemingly marked only by the railway facilities and a hotel) sits on a saddle between downslopes in two different directions, and upslopes in two different directions. The upslope to the south is the route taken by the line up to Jungfraujoch. This line heads steeply upwards along the northeast and then east side of the mountain face as far as Eigergletscher, and then turns due east into a tunnel portal in the mountainside. In tunnel, the line climbs steeply (a 25% gradient) in an easterly direction (just inside the North Wall of the Eiger) as far as Eigerwand, turning southwesterly (still in tunnel inside the Eiger) through Eismeer, and then in tunnel inside the Monch to the underground station at Jungfraujoch. The latter has very basic platforms in different arrival and departure tunnels, permitting one train to load and depart while another is arriving. The Jungfraubahn tunnel is almost 24,000 feet (four and a half miles) in length. The Jungfraubahn is meter gauge, electrified at 1125V AC 3-phase, and uses the Strub rack system. The dual motor coach trains on the Jungfraubahn are equipped with regenerative braking and travel at maximum speeds of 16 mph on the upward journey and 8.5 mph downward.

Montreux

The next day, we rode the "Golden Pass" line from Interlaken to Montreux, using the standard gauge line along the shore of Lake Thun to its end at Zweisimmen and the meter gauge Montreux Oberland Bernoise line beyond. After a dull walking tour of Montreux and an interesting visit to the Chateau of Chillon, we took a side trip along the lakeshore to Geneva to visit the old town there in early evening. The next day was occupied with the “Chocolate Train” excursion in old-style passenger cars to the small city of Gruyère and the chocolate factory at nearby Broc.

Tuesday, June 1^st, 2004

Golden Pass, Montreux, Chillon, Geneva

We check out of the hotel after breakfast, and walk over to Interlaken Ost station. We’re heading west on the remainder of the Golden Pass line, today, but because that line has segments of both meter gauge (at both ends) and standard gauge (in the middle), we’re taking a standard gauge SBB train from Interlaken Ost to start our journey. After I take some photographs in the station, we board our train to Zweisimmen, changeover point to the westerly meter-gauge segment of the line. After departure, this train crosses the river between the lakes twice, passing directly behind our hotel on the opposite side of the river, turns south through Interlaken West station, and then west again along the south shore of Lake Thun. (SBB also runs trains to Bern and long distance trains beyond Bern.) The standard gauge line leaves Interlaken Ost to the west, crossing the river on a through truss bridge, running along the north bank for a short distance, and then crossing the river again as it turns southwest to pass through Interlaken West. The line continues southwest to the east end of Lake Thun, and then turns west along the south shore of that lake.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-1-04	SBB (RE2364)	0935	Interlaken Ost-Zweisimmen	SBB single-level	Class 420
6-1-04	MOB (D2364)	1050	Zweisimmen-Montreux	MOB Panoramic	N/A
6-1-04	SBB (JR1730)	1739	Montreux-Geneva	SBB single-level	450/460
6-1-04	SBB (JR1745)	2118	Geneva=Montreux	SBB single-level	450/460

It passes through Därligen and Leissigen, turning northwest through several tunnels and passing through Faulensee before the BLS main line from Brig trails in at the south end of Spiez station, at the west end of the lake

Spiez is the junction with the BLS main line, which we had passed through six days before. Here, our train sits for awhile, making connections with other trains. BLS also serves the line from Interlaken Ost, and a BLS EMU packed with schoolchildren, whom we had seen in Interlaken, pulls in across the platform from our train and disgorges that mob of children, who wait on the platform for a connecting train to pull in after their EMU has left. Mainline trains both north and south then call in the station, as does an SBB train from Bern to Interlaken. Then, our train leaves, turning away west some way beyond the end of the station onto the line to Zweisimmen. This line heads southwest through Spiezmoos Süd, Lattigen bei Spiez, Eifeld and Wmmis. It then turns west through Burgholz, Oey-Diemtigen, Ringoldingen, and Weissenburg, turning southwest at Oberwil im Simmental, and then passing through Enge im Simmental and Boltigen. Here, the line turns south and passes through Weissenbach and Grubenwald before reaching the junction station at Zweisimmen. The westward trending valley gets narrower as we near Zweisimmen, becoming quite close in by the time we actually reach the exchange point.

In Zweisimmen station, we change from our standard gauge train to a Golden Pass Panoramic meter gauge set owned by the Montreux, Oberland Bernoise (MOB) railway. Our seats are all the way at the front of the train, and as we board the car, Werner points out that eight of our available seats are, in fact, all the way at the front of the train, and have a forward view. The train’s driver sits in an elevated cab, above these forward observation seats. Since only half of our group can sit up front, I elect not to do so immediately, with the idea of moving up front later on in different countryside.

Not long after our train leaves Zweisimmen in a westerly direction, it passes over the summit marking the local watershed and curves south, making a diversion from the direct route to pass through the important tourist town of Gstaad. For many miles further west, through narrow valleys, the line descends gently all the way to Montbovon. Somewhere along this section, we move from the German-speaking part of Switzerland to the French-speaking part, and the initial/primary language used in train announcements changes from German to French. I enquire of Werner if we will now have a French-speaking guide; his response is ‘Oui, monsieur!’ The view directly ahead is quite fascinating, especially when we reach the junction town of Montbovon, where the Gruyère Railway from the north meets the MOB’s east-west line. West of Montbovon, the MOB line starts to climb until it reaches the top of the ridge separating Canton Gruyère from Canton Vaud; after passing through the tunnel here, we descend through a series of zigzags across the face of the mountain through the rain to Montreux on the shore of Lake Geneva, initially quite far below.

We reach Montreux not long after midday, and go directly to our hotel, straight across the street from the station. After checking in, Chris and I return to the station to buy lunch at the Kiosk, taking it to our room to eat. At 2 pm, the group gathers in the hotel lobby for our walking tour of Montreux. We’re not sure what is going to happen, since rain is falling steadily outside. We head off out of the hotel and down the street towards the southwest, into the center of Montreux, turning onto a cobblestone side street that heads quite steeply uphill. It transpires that old town Montreux is quite a bit higher up than the streets down by the lake (and even the street in front of the hotel is three stories up from the street alongside the lake at the rear of the hotel). The combination of steep hills and rain causes several group members to drop out of the walking tour, which means they also miss out on the tour of the Chateau of Chillon, later in the afternoon.

Perhaps because of the rain, our local guide does a lousy job of explaining what we are looking at as we walk the streets of old town, and why it is important to look at it. Eventually, we walk down the hill at a different place from where we ahd come up, and gather in the old covered market place, by the lake. The original plan had been that we would walk along the lakeside in the direction of Chillon, with a view to getting there by the 4 pm time of our tour arrangements there. However, Werner now decides that we should get on the trolleybus right here and go directly to Chillon, where he will arrange for the time of our tour there to be advanced.

In contrast to Montreux, which seems quite uninteresting, Chillon is a wonderful place to visit, and the Chillon-specific guide who takes us around does a good job of explaining it all to us. We visit the dungeon where Lord Byron wrote his famous poem ‘The Prisoner of Chillon”, and scratched his name on a support column, as well as three or four different great halls at various levels and within various parts of the castle buildings themselves. Most of this is accomplished without us having to step out into the rain. At the end of the tour of Chillon, we have a few minutes in which we buy an illustrated guide book and a video (both in English, the latter for US TV) before we take the trolleybus back into town along the street that passes the back of the hotel.

We have no group function this evening, so Chris and I drop off some of our stuff in the room, and then cross the street to the station to take a train west along the shore of Lake Geneva to Geneva, where I want to take Chris around the old town that I had visited in December, 1994. Montreux is a combination station, with two main through platforms for the SBB trains, several meter gauge platforms for the MOB train, cross-platform from the westbound SBB track, and a platform in the rear for the 800 mm line that climbs the hillside in a different direction from the MOB line. To depart for Geneva, we take a train from the eastbound SBB platform on the side of the station nearest the hotel. In fact, this platform is at the same level as our hotel room, and I can see (and photograph) the balcony doors of our room from the platform.

From the diagrams that show where the first class cars are located in the trains departing from this station, we see that the first class cars will be quite a way down the platform from the main buildings, more or less out in the rain, so we don’t go that far down the platform until the train itself is announced. The line from Montreux to Geneva is the main line along the Rhône valley, and our train will have come from Brig, if not Italy. East from Montreux, the line runs along the north shore of Lake Geneva for its entire route. The line starts out heading northwest, passing through Clarens and then gradually curving west through Burier, La Tour de Peilz, Vevey, St, Saphorin, Rivaz, Epesses, Cully, Villette V.D., Lutry, Pully and then the trailing junctions with the line down the hillside from Bern before entering the main station at Lausanne. Even through this stretch of line runs along the lakeshore, there are several short tunnels between stations.

Lausanne has a large station, as befits its junction status, with multiple island platforms and at least eight total faces. East of Lausanne, the traffic splits into two major streams: one to Brig and Italy, and another to Bern and Zurich or Luzern. This split requires not only a large passenger station, but also large goods marshaling yards, which are to be found on both sides of the line west of Lausanne station.

The line continues through Remens V.D., then swings sharply southwest at a wye with the line north to Neuchâtel (another reason for the large station and goods yards), and passes through Denges-Echandens, Lonay-Preverenges, Morges St. Jean, Morges, Tolochenaz, St. Prex, Etoy, Allaman, Perroy, Rolle, Gilly-Bursinel, Gland, and Prangins to Nyon. Turning almost due southward, the line continues through Crans, Céligny, Founex, Coppet, Tannay, Mies, Pont-Céard, Versoix, Creux-de-Genthod, Genthod-Bellevue, Les Tuileries and Chambésy before reaching Geneva. There are more large goods yards along the tracks east of Geneva, followed by large carriage sidings and a motive power depot. Geneva station has eight platform faces, with three island platforms, of which two faces (one island) are dedicated to trains to and from France, with immigration and customs facilities located between the passenger subway and the platform above.

The ride to Geneva through Lausanne takes a little over an hour, and during the ride we’re concerned that we will be turning right back, since the rain gets very heavy about three-quarters of the way there. However by the time we reach Geneva the rain has stopped, and conditions remain relatively clement for the entire time we’re walking around the town.

We walk down to the lake along one downtown shopping street, across the main bridge that divides the lake from its outlet into the Rhône River, and up the cobblestone street into the old town area, past the cathedral. We walk around these pleasant streets, architected in an idiom quite different from that in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland (and noticeably different from the streets of Montreux) for an hour or so, paying attention to things like the ornamental door knockers on many of the older office buildings in the old town, and then back across the Rhône on another bridge, heading abck towards the station. When rain starts to fall, we abort the search for a restaurant, and eat in Burger King (next door to McDonalds) adjacent to the entrance to the station shopping area.

After dinner, we return to the station to watch the train traffic until it is time for our train to Montreux. In the station as we arrive is a train from France with a distinctive French locomotive at its had. The light level is too low for a good photograph although I do try for one), and the engine soon moves off into the yards where earlier we had seen a French TGV train set that I also couldn’t get a photograph of. We notice in the pedestrian subway under the platforms that the two furthest platforms are exclusively for trains to France, with passport control and customs facilities provided between the subway and the platform level. We return to Montreux in the deepening darkness, going directly to bed

Meter Gauge Main Lines [B]

The Montreux, Oberland Bernoise Railway is a meter-gauge line that runs up the face of the mountainside behind Montreux, and then crosses the mountains into the Aare watershed in Simmental where it makes an end on junction with the SBB line onward to Spiez. The single-track line is powered by overhead electrification at 850V DC. There are no grades on the MOB that require rack assistance.

The line departs the meter gauge platforms of the Montreux station heading southward, but almost immediately enters a tunnel that makes a half circle eastward to emerge climbing the mountain face behind Montreux in a northerly direction. The line up the side of the mountain provides a local commuter service, and thus has many stations located only short distances apart. On the first northward stretch climbing along the mountainside the line passes through Collège, Vuarennes, Belmont and Châtelard, then turns northeast through Planchamp. At Fontanivent, the line makes a half circle turn in a clockwise direction and continues to climb the mountain face in a southerly direction through Chernex to Sonzier. Here it makes another half circle counter-clockwise and climbs in a northerly direction to Chamby. North of Chamby, a line heads directly ahead, and the main MOB line makes a clockwise semi-circle through a tunnel to emerge heading southward along the mountain face once again. At the top of the climb, the line makes a sweeping turn to the east and continues with a gentler climb through Sendy-Sollard, Les Avants and Jor to reach the west portal of the mile and a half long Jaman Tunnel.

East of the tunnel, the line descends gently through a wooded valley in a northeasterly direction through Les Cases, Allières and Les Sciernes, and then makes an eastward sweeping curve to enter Montbovon from the north. As it does so, the Gruyères Railway’s line from the north comes alongside and the lines enter the Montbovon station together. There are connecting tracks within the station area. The MOB line continues onward, in a southerly direction, to La Tine, where it turns east, and climbs gently through Rossinière, La Chaudanne Les Moulins, Chateau d’Oex, La Palaz, Les Granges, Les Combes, Flendruz, Rougemont, and Saanen BE before making a turn to the south into the ski resort of Gstaad. From Gstaad, a semi-circle eastward takes the line back north to Gruben and then northeast through Schönried, Saanenmöser and Oeschette. Approaching the east end of the line at Zweisimmen, the line makes a sharp turn to the south, followed by another sharp turns back to the north through Moosbach Tunnel and on into Zweisimmen. Just south of Zweisimmen station, an MOB line down the upper part of Simmental trails in from the south on the east side of the line.

The Gruyères Railway serves the canton of Fribourg in the area north and northwest of Montbovon. We only traveled on this line from Montbovon to Bulle and then down the branch to Broc-Fabrique. This line is meter gauge, overhead electrified at 850V DC, single track and without rack assistance. From Montbovon, the line head north down the valley through Lessoc, Albeuve, Neirivue, Grandvillard, Enney, Estavannens, Gruyères, Le Pauier-Montbarry and La-Toure-de-Trême before passing through the junction with the branch to Broc and entering the multi-platform station at Bulle from the south. The old walled hill-town of Gruyères is visible to the east of the line in the vicinity of its station, and also from the Broc branch in the vicinity of Epagny. The landscape in this area is fields between wooded hills, and contains some of the largest forests in Switzerland.

The branch to Broc departs to the east from its junction south of Bulle, and passes through La Tour-Village, Epagny, Les Marches, Broc-Village and the end of the line at Broc-Fabrique. Normal passenger service on the branch goes only as far as Broc-Village.

Wednesday, June 2^nd, 2004

Chocolate Train, Gruyėres

Today sees the first running in the 2004 season of the “Chocolate Train”, an MOB-run excursion train, with old-style first class cars painted as Wagons-Lits parlor cars. This train goes up the hill and over to Montbovon, then reverses north on the Gruyères Railway’s line to Gruyères and Broc. Since this is a meter-gauge train, naturally it starts from the MOB’s platforms at Montreux station.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-2-04	MOB	0934	Montreux-Gruyères	Chocolate Train	MOB
6-2-04	MOB	1405	Gruyères-Broc	Chocolate Train	MOB
6-2-04	MOB	1550	Broc-Montreux	Chocolate Train	MOB

The group heads across the street to the station quite early before train time, ready to board the train as soon as it arrives in the platform. This proves to be expeditious, since it seems the MOB has double-booked one of the “Wagons-Lits” cars, and Werner has to intervene forcefully to secure our reserved seating. MOB adds another car to accommodate those with later, duplicate, reservations for our car. Because our reserved section has 18 seats, and there are only 17 of us, there is one legitimate other reservation for a seat in our area, that proves to be held by a woman from South Africa whose husband works in Geneva.

As far as Montbovon, the route is the same as the previous day’s Golden Pass Panoramic train, although in considerably more luxurious accommodations. Included in the price are morning coffee/tea and a croissant, which we consume readily. In Montbovon, our locomotive moves to the other end of the train and we head north on the single track Gruyères Railway to its namesake station. Here, we detrain and are given a tour of the “cheese factory” adjacent to the station. This is quite crowded, what with an extra unexpected carload of passengers on the train and some tour buses that arrived at about the same time. Due to Swiss health laws, groups cannot tour actual food factories, so this is a “simulated” factory, with actual cheese-making equipment, but not in actual production.

Next,, we take a motor coach up to the hilltop town of Gruyères itself. This is located in a defensively strong position, with castle at the rear of the town. Buses are not allowed inside the town, so we must walk from the other end of town along the cobblestone streets amid picturesque houses. For lunch, Chris and I choose to eat the local cheese fondue at one of the inns along the main street, which is excellent. Then we take our included walking tour of the castle, as rain starts to fall again. The castle is an interesting place to visit, making a good contrast with Chillon the day before. At the appointed time, group members congregate at the stop where the bus will pick us up to return to the train, waiting in intermittent rain.

Back on the train, we head further north to the station at Bulle, where our train again reverses direction with a locomotive run-around. Then we head up the branch line to the east, to its terminus at the Broc-Fabrique (factory) station adjacent to the Cailler chocolate factory. Here we get another tour of a “simulated” food-making process, following a video introduction to Cailler, and followed by a tasting session and opportunity to purchase the factory’s products. We return to the train in the rain, and can board because Werner has a key to open the locked carriages.

The return to Montreux is by the same route on which we had come, with the same two reversals of direction. Refreshment service this afternoon is by the normal food-service cart that we have seen on so many Swiss trains, requiring purchase of our coffee, tea, apple juice, or “still” water. This evening we have a group dinner at the hotel in Montreux. It is the last group function for the Rogers, who are leaving the tour at the end of its first week. We will separate from them as we travel onward, on Thursday.

Castles for Control and Defense

The two castles that we visited on successive days, at Chillon and Gruyères, are stark reminders of the eras of history in this much-contested part of the world. Although there were settlements in the vicinity of Chillon as long ago as the Roman period, the eras that can be seen today in the castle of Chillon are the Savoy period, from the 11^th to 16^th centuries, the Bernese period from the mid 16^th to the very end of the 18^th century, and the Vaudois period (leading to the modern Swiss canton of Vaud) since 1798. The castle at Chillon can be viewed in various layers, with the lowest parts of the buildings dating to the early Savoyard period, and the upper layers, although built during the Savoyard period having been restored and preserved as representative of the Bernese period.

Although the earliest functions of the castle of Chillon were to control the traffic and trade over the road from France and Geneva into northern Italy, the most famous events in the history of the castle, at least in the English-speaking world (as recounted in Lord Byron’s poem ‘Prisoner of Chillon’) concern the Bernese period, when the French-speaking inhabitants of the region centered on Geneva were demanding their independence from Bernese rule. In between the settled periods of Savoyard, Bernese, and Vaudois control were, of course, unsettled periods when the Bernese were struggling with the Savoyards for control of the area (with the Bernese ultimately successful in 1536) and the events of the Vaudois revolution against Bernese control in 1798. In all these eras and events, the struggle for control of the castle was overlaid with the struggle for control of the whole region along the north shore of Lake Geneva, since whoever controlled Chillon controlled the region.

In both purpose and form, the castle of Chillon strongly reminds me of Henry II’s castle at Chinon, on the lower Loire River, and the various castles that Edward I erected in North Wales—Conway, Caernarvon, Harlech—to consolidate his control of that region in the 14^th century.

The castle and hilltop town of Gruyères date from the period when the House of Savoy was in full control at Chillon, and represent one of the outer bulwarks of the defense of the French-speaking land to the south and west against to pressures coming from German-speaking peoples to the north and east. The Counts of Gruyère did not long outlast the fall of the region to the Bernese in the mid 16^th-century, after which the formerly autonomous Gruyères was subject to the overlordship of Fribourg. Freedom was only restored in the popular revolution of 1781.

The castle today, is restored and preserved as it was in the time of the Counts of Gruyère, and thus depicts an earlier period than that of the restored Chillon (although some rooms contain much later wall paintings and the like). With the adjacent hill town, the castle is to be seen in a largely original context, unlike that of Chillon, which is beset by the artifacts of the modern era (streets with cars and trolleybuses; railway; superhighway above it on the hillside). The contrast of visiting these two beautifully restored castles on successive days was remarkable. Perhaps the most remarkable sight at Gruyères is the room with the wall-size tapestries depicting medieval glories.

Zermatt

After two nights in rainy Montreux, we moved on to Zermatt, where we rode up the Gornergratt rack railway, but got only fleeting hazy glimpses of the upper reaches of the Matterhorn. Most of the group members, including ourselves, used the following day to ride through the Simplon Tunnel into Italy, cross the northern tip of Italy to Locarno, ride north on part of the Gotthard line to Goschenen, up the steep north side of the pass itself to Andermatt, and back across the meter gauge line through the Furka Base Tunnel to Brig and Zermatt. This day was clear and sunny, and (may have) provided long-range views of the Matterhorn from the mountain side east of Domodossola.

Thursday, June 3^rd, 2004

Zermatt, Gőrnergrat

Again, we check out of a hotel in the morning, with our bags being loaded on a truck. We cross the street to the station and take an SBB train heading east, up the Rhône Valley. As before, the first class cars stop well down the platform to the east, so we have to walk out there before the train comes.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-3-2004	SBB (IR1715)	0920	Montreux-Visp	SBB single-level	450/460
6-3-2004	Gotthard-Matterhorn	1038	Visp-Zermatt	Meter gauge cars	HGe4/4I
6-3-2004	Gőrnergrat		Zermatt-Summit	Rack EMU	—
6-3-2004	Gőrnergrat		Summit-Zermatt	Rack EMU	—

The line runs south along the edge of the lake, through Territet, past the castle of Chillon, through Veytaux-Chillon, and soon runs past the upper end of the lake at Villeneuve. For some miles, the line heads almost due south, following the river valley, through Roche V.D., Yvorne, and Aigle. East of the latter, there are many sidings full of oil tank cars. The line continues southward through St. Triphon, Bex, where a line departs to the east, St. Maurice, where a line trails in from the west and a tunnel intervenes before the station is reached, Evionnaz and Vernayaz to Mortigny. Between the latter two places, another line runs just to the west, with stations in the villages.

At Mortigny, the line turns east northeast, again following the valley, through Charrat-Tully, Saxon, Riddes, Chamoson, Ardon, Chateauneuf-Conthey, and Sion. The valley floor has numerous small and medium-sized towns, some of them with much industry, some of them with castles perched on rock outcroppings. East of Sion, these include St. Leonard, Granges-Lens, Noës-Chalais, Sierre/Siders, Salgesch, Leuk, Turtmann, and Gampel-Steg.

At the latter, and the rest of the way to Visp through Raron, we see the bridges and viaducts of the BLS, high up on the north wall of the valley. On reaching Visp, we say goodbye to Bill & Phyllis Rogers, detrain and walk outside the main station to board the Gotthard-Matterhorn train in the forecourt.

This meter-gauge train turns away from the Rhône Valley in a southwesterly direction, and immediately starts to climb steeply. There are a number of rack sections along the line between Visp and Zermatt, with intervening segments of relatively level track. From the train we can see some interesting old road bridges, the towns along the way, and the huge rock pile resulting from a 1991 rock slide on the west side of the valley that had originally blocked the valley completely. Zermatt is closed to private transportation, so even the tour buses have to park at Tasch, the next station down the valley and their passengers use railway shuttles up the last segment of the Gotthard-Matterhorn line to reach the town.

In Zermatt, we go directly to the hotel, where new group members David & Mirian Vinton are waiting to greet us. We check in and are given the time for this afternoon’s train. Chris and I, along with Hamp & Sue Miller, elect to lunch at the McDonald’s directly across the street from the hotel. Several minutes later, Werner appears to have his lunch there, and is giving a rousing welcome from the four of us. He looks quite embarrassed at the episode.

After lunch, we ride the Gőrnergrat rack railway from its station adjacent to both the hotel and the Gotthard-Matterhorn railway’s station, and ride it up the Gőrnergrat Mountain, across the valley from the Matterhorn. On the way up, at the top, and on the way down, we have spectacular views of every mountain in the vicinity, except the Matterhorn, which remains stubbornly shrouded in cloud. A number of us elect to descend on the first available train, rather than patronize the expensive cafes at the top of the mountain, and we spend the remainder of the afternoon shopping in Zermatt and walking around the town. This evening, we again have a group dinner at the hotel, with the changed composition of the group.

Mountain Railways and Tramways [4]

The meter-gauge line from Visp to Zermatt was built as the Visp-Zermatt Railway (VZ). Later, when it was desired to run a through service with the Furka-Oberalp Railway, which reached Brig from the east, the VZ was extended alongside the SBB line east to Brig, and became the Brig-Visp-Zermatt (BVZ). In 2004, the BVZ has combined with the Furka-Oberalp to form the Gotthard-Matterhorn railway. The original VZ line was built to connect the mountain resort of Zermatt, located at the foot of the Matterhorn, with the main SBB line at Visp, in the Rhône Valley.

From the forecourt of the SBB station at Visp, the VZ line makes a sharp turn to the south, following a side stream, and starts its climb up the ever steepening valley, aided by several rack sections, and passing through Stalden-Saas, Kalpetran, St. Niklaus, Herbriggen, Randa, and Tasch to reach Zermatt, with rack sections between St. Niklaus and Herbriggen, between Herbriggen and, Randa, and between Tasch and Zermatt.

 The Gőrnergrat rack railway starts from its own station, across the plaza to the south from the Gotthard-Matterhorn railway’s station. The Zermatt station is bigger on crowd control (snaking passage ways with glass partitions separating them) than it is on platform space on the single platform. The single track Gőrnergrat line is electrified at 725V AC 3-phase. Its steepest gradient is 20%, rack-assisted all the way..

The line departs Zermatt climbing steeply away to the south as far as Findelenbach station, with views over the town of Zermatt and the end of the valley beyond it, as the train climbs. South of Findelenbach, the line turns west, passes through an anti-clockwise semi-circular tunnel and heads east to Riffelalp. Above the latter station, the line makes a sweeping right-hand curve up the face of the mountain, and passes through snow sheds as it heads generally southward with the valley to the west, to Riffelberg, at 8471 ft, altitude, then south southeast to Rotenboden (9235 ft.) and southeast to the upper terminus at Gőrnergrat (10,132 ft.), with all of the last stretches of the line in deep snow, even in early June.

Friday, June 4^th, 2004

Simplon, Gotthard, Furka

This is a completely free day, planned to permit an Falternate opportunity to ride up the mountain in the event of totally inclement weather on Thursday, and to allow lots of time for shopping in Zermatt. However, Werner has planned an excursion using our Swiss Passes that will occupy more of the day than any excursion so far. Most of the group members elect to go with Werner on this optional trip. This requires that we get up very early, and that the hotel provide breakfast early, since we’re leaving Zermatt on a train just after 7 am.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-4-2004	Gotthard-Matterhorn	0710	Zermatt to Brig	Meter-gauge		HGe4/4II
6-4-2004	SBB (train CIS45)	0902	Brig to Domodossola	ETR 450		—
6-4-2004	FART/SSiT	0946	Domodossola-Locarno	EMU		—
6-4-2004	SBB	1200	Locarno -Bellinzona	Single-level		?
6-4-2004	SBB (train D1580)	1305	Bellinzona-Göschenen	Single-level
6-4-2004	??	1515	Göschenen-Andermatt	Substitute bus		—
6-4-2004	Gotthard-Matterhorn	1540	Andermatt-Brig	Meter-gauge		HGe4/4II
6-4-2004	Gotthard-Matterhorn	1823	Brig-Zermatt	Meter-gauge		HGe4/4II

We first take an early morning Gotthard-Matterhorn train back down the valley from Zermatt to Visp, continuing along the 1930-built meter-gauge tracks to the station forecourt in Brig. The line east from Visp runs generally along the south side the SBB line, all the way to brig. Nearing the latter, the Gotthard-Matterhorn (formerly BVZ) shops lie on the south side of the line. All the way along this line, which has no intermediate stations, the BLS line can be seen descending the mountainside on the north side of the valley. On the way, we see a number of trains up on the BLS viaducts on the hillside to the north. The G-M station in Brig is in the forecourts of the SBB station to its north.

In Brig, we move into the mainline station, and after an interval in which we see a number of goods trains come into the yard both from the BLS tracks and the SBB tracks to the west, our Cisalpino train, formed by Italian Railways ETR 450 tilting EMU stock arrives, to take us onward through the Simplon Tunnel into Italy and down through a spiral tunnel to Domodossola, changeover point between Swiss and Italian railways. The train on which we’re riding can handle both of the types of overhead power supply that meet at Domodossola, and so it can continue straight through at this point. On entering the Simplon Tunnel’s north portal (with the staggered twin portals that are so well know), I’m surprised to see that it is down at the level of the floor of the Rhône Valley, and is essentially within the built-up area of Brig!

We leave this train and head down the platforms stairs and east in the pedestrian subway until we come to some platforms aligned east west (below the main station’s north-south) in the tunnel. Here, we board the basic-transportation EMU cars (basically, a long-distance tramcar replacement) cars of the F.A.R.T. (or SSiT) operation across an Italian valley to the east of Domodossola and back into Switzerland (in the Italian-speaking area) to the lake front station in Locarno. This train climbs northward up the hillside east of Domodossola, through Masera where it curves around to head back south along the same hillside, affording views both of Domodossola below to the west, and of snow-capped mountains to the west of the town that might include the Matterhorn. (Today, of course, there is no cloud cover at all!)

Reaching the altitude of the side-valley floor, at Trontano, we turn away to the east and continue along first the south side of the valley, and then the north side, through lovely wooded hills with delightful villages on the valley floor. The line passes through the delightful small Italian towns of Verigo, Marone, Coimo, Gagnone Orcesco, Druogno, Buttogno, Santa Maria Maggiore, Prestinone, Zornasco, Malesco, Re, Villette, Folsogno-Dissimo, Isella-Olgia and Ribellasca. After about an hour, at Camedo, we cross the border back into Switzerland and begin the winding descent to Locarno, with the eponymous lake coming into view for the latter part of the descent. The number of people traveling in our group today is such that Jim Compton finds himself in a different seating bay on this train, and soon shares this seating bay with an Italian-speaking family with three young children. After awhile, the rest of us notice that the little girl is seated on Jim’s lap, and he has a big smile on his face! On its descent, the line passes through Borgnone-Cadanza, Palagnedra, Verdasio, Corca-polo, Intragna, Cavigliano, Verscio, Tegna, Ponte Brolla, Solduno, Locarno-San Antonio and Locarno-Piazza Castello.

The last few miles into Locarno are in tunnel along the lakeshore, with the terminus platforms still in the tunnel. The SBB station in Locarno, also a terminus, is located directly above these subterranean platforms, and this is where we board our onward train to Bellinzona at the foot of the south ramp of the Gotthard route. In just a few miles, at Tenero, we leave the lake behind and run through the Leventina River valley to the main Gotthard line and then north on that line a little way to the interchange station at Bellinzona, passing through Gordola, Riazzino-Cugnasco, Cadenazzo (where another line trails in from the south side of the lake), San Antonino and Guibiasco, at the junction with the main Gotthard line. In Bellinzona, we buy sandwiches for lunch at the kiosk in the station and then notice that the SBB ticket offices here still have copies of the full Swiss timetables for 2004. (In Luzern, we had been told that they were all sold out.) Werner helps Chris purchase a set of these timetables (one volume for trains, another for buses and ships).

While we’re eating lunch on the platforms here, we see a number of goods trains heading in both directions on the Gotthard line, as well as a number of passenger trains in each direction. One of these trains in each direction comprises an Italian ETR450 EMU set, like the one we had ridden in earlier in the day on the Simplon line. I had never seen one of these until today, and now we’ve seen three of them in just a few hours! Eventually, our local train up the south ramp and through the Gotthard tunnel to Göschenen arrives, and we board. This is the same track that Chris and I had ridden nine days earlier, on an express train, so we’re already familiar with much of what there is to see and are able to point out some of the Gotthard Base Tunnel constriction sites, and the autostrada bridge that we can see from three different levels as we traverse the spiral tunnels, to other members of our group. I’m also able to get some more photographs of some of these places, including the Gotthard monument at Ariolo, just south of the south tunnel entrance.

After running through the tunnel, we leave the train at Göschenen, immediately north of the north tunnel entrance. Here, some of us sit on the platforms and watch/photograph the train activity during the hour we have to wait for our replacement-bus connection up the north side of the pass itself to Andermatt. (The railway line covering this short segment of the route is under reconstruction at present, as we see during the bus ride, so there is a replacement bus service making the normally train connections between the Gotthard line at Göschenen and the Gotthard-Matterhorn line at Andermatt. We will count this segment as traveling over that line, nonetheless.) When the bus arrives (right before the next local train from Bellinzona, for which its is obviously intended as a connection arrives), I see to my surprise that it is a double-deck bus—the first that I have seen in Switzerland. Chris and I manage to ride in the front seat of the upper deck, giving us a fine view of the many curves on the steep road up the old mountain pass.

In Andermatt, the bus (which is running a few minutes late because the SBB local train was a few minutes late) pulls up to the Gotthard-Matterhorn line’s station, where there is a train waiting to head in each direction, and we board the westbound train that will take us back to Brig. This running along the high mountain valley between the range of the Alps that includes Titlis, Monch, Eiger and Jungfrau, to the north, and that including the Matterhorn and other mountains to the east of it, to the south. Currently, we’re at the watershed between the Reuss River to the north and the Ticino to the south.

Soon after leaving Andermatt, the train passes through Realp, to the west of which is a museum of old Furka-Oberalp railway equipment on the north side of the line, and enters the long Furka Base Tunnel that has replaced to tortuous route over the Furka Pass. The latter route was snowbound every winter, the electrical overhead equipment had to be dismantled for the winter, and for many years even a bridge had to be dismantled every winter and replaced in the spring along with the overhead electrics. The line through the base tunnel, dating back to the late 20^th-century, permits year-around travel on this line connecting winter sports resorts. The tunnel is single track, but has at least two passing places within the tunnel. It also has segments heading in three different directions—initially southwest, then west southwest and finally west-northwest to return to the original Furka-Oberalp alignment.

The line now descends through the upper Rhône Valley, passing through a spiral tunnel whose lower end disgorges directly onto a bridge on the way. Even with the base tunnel, there are rack-worked sections along the descent to Brig. Nearing Brig, we can see the portals of the Simplon tunnel off to the south, after which the line curves around the north side of Brig, passes under the west end of brig mainline station, and enters the meter-gauge station in the main station forecourt from the northwest.

In Brig, there is another connection of almost an hour, se we buy some sandwiches from the grocery shop inside the station building and eat them sitting on the main station platform watching the parade of goods trains on both the BLS and SBB through the west end of the station. We return to Zermatt along the valley floor to Visp, observing trains up on the BLS viaducts along the way, and then turn up the side valley to Zermatt retracing our route of earlier in the day and the day before.

Long Mountain Tunnels

In the course of the daylong excursion described above, we passed through three of Switzerland’s five longest Alpine tunnels: Simplon, Gotthard, and Furka Base. We had already traveled through one of the others (Lötschberg) and would travel through the remaining one (Vereina) later in the trip. The Gotthard and Lötschberg routes and tunnels have been described earlier.

After the main line up the Rhône valley reached Brig in 1878, attention naturally turned to the possibility of tunneling through the mountains to the south, to make a connection into Italy. However, the terrain beyond brig is such that any tunnel in that direction would have to be a “base” tunnel, at the level of the floor of the valley, since there is no practicable route to a tunnel location at a higher level. This meant that means would have to be developed for constructing a tunnel through a mountain massif reaching to more than 7000 ft. above the level of the tunnel. A tunnel at the base level would be some 13 miles in length;

It was decided that, although double track would be required through the mountains, tunneling would create two parallel single-track tunnels, with connecting passageways, rather than a single double-track tunnel. Simplon Tunnel 1 was constructed from 1898 to 1906, while tunnel 2 was constructed between 1912 and 1921; these are both “base tunnels”, being at the same altitude as Brig and the River Rhône. The north tunnel portals are on the south side of the river, just east of the outskirts of Brig. There are crossovers between the two tunnels located about halfway between the north and south portals, with each crossover having its own angled tunnel connection. The construction of the first Simplon tunnel was delayed over a year by the difficulties in building through a stretch of plastic, deformable, rock at a location where the overburden is about 7000 ft. deep. Overcoming these problems required that the engineers develop a tunnel support system capable of supporting the plastic rock that lay above the tunnel. The lower St. Gotthard, now under construction, is encountering the same thing.

Heading east from Brig, the line runs alongside the river and very shortly turns to the south and enters the Simplon Tunnel through the famous twin portals. The tunnel runs in a southeasterly direction. When the line exits the southern portals in Italy, it is not at the base level and must descend the river valley to reach Domodossola.  The line turns east, through Iselle di Trasquera, descends through a not quite two mile counter-clockwise spiral tunnel in the north wall of the valley, passes through Varzo, and then turns south through a sequence of short tunnels in the east valley wall, passes through Freglia, and arrives at Domodossola station.

The former Furka-Oberalp Railway’s line, now part of the Gotthard-Matterhorn railway, runs from the forecourt of the SBB station in Brig to an end on junction with the Rhätian Railway in Disentis, crossing under the Furka Pass and over the Oberalp Pass on the way. The tortuous line over the Furka Pass, which was closed in winter and indeed had the electrical overhead and a girder bridge dismantled every winter, was closed in 1981 after the 9.5 mile Furka Base Tunnel was opened. The meter-gauge rack-assisted railway was built between 1912 and 1915, and has operated continuously since 1926.

From the forecourt of the SBB station in Brig, the single-track F-O line starts out heading west, curves immediately to the north, under the west end of he SBB stations platforms, and emerges heading east up the Rhône valley. Still in the Brig urban area, the line passes through Naters, after which the twin portals of the Simplon Tunnel are visible across the river to the south. The F-O line now heads northeast up the narrowing valley, through Bitsch, Mörel, Betten and Grengiols, where it crosses the Rhône on a 101 ft. high bridge, plunges directly into a tunnel in the mountainside, turns anti-clockwise in that spiral tunnel, and emerges on the mountainside heading southeast above that bridge, turning immediately to head northeast again. This spiral tunnel is the only one in Switzerland with a rack inside the tunnel. The line continues upward through Lax, Fiesch Feriendorf and Fiesch, and then makes a clockwise curve back to the southwest followed by an anti-clockwise curve back to the northeast (all on the north valley wall), continuing through Furgangen-Bellwald, Niederwald and Blitzingen.

After a short tunnel, the line continues through Biel (Goms), Guringen, Reckingen, Münster, Geschwinen, Ulrichen, Obergestein and Oberwald. East of the latter, the line turns east and enters the Furka Base Tunnel. Within the tunnel, there are two passing places, and the tunnel turns from east to northeast, and then to almost due north as it approaches its eastern portal. Exiting the tunnel into the Reuss River valley, the line again turns northeast, passing through Realp, and Hospental to Andermatt. The F-O maintains its shops at Andermatt, on the north side of the station in the curve of the branch at the east end of the station down to Göschenen. The station buildings are on the south side of the line, with an adjacent platform and two further tracks on an island platform to the north.

East of Andermatt, the F-O begins the most difficult (and most scenic) part of its line, across the Oberalp Pass. The mountains rise abruptly on the east side of Andermatt, and the line turns southeast to climb along the side of the mountain, passing through a tunnel, making an anti-clockwise half circle back to the northwest, passing through another tunnel, curving back to the southeast, and then to the northwest again in another tunnel, and with one final half circle clockwise reaches the top of the escarpment at Natschen. Here, the gradient lessens and the line resumes its generally northeasterly direction to the summit at Oberalppasshöhe-Calmot (6670 ft.). The line begins its descent into the Rhine valley with a southward jog in the generally northeasterly trend, passes through two more tunnels and then through Tschamut-Selva, Dieni, and Rueras, turning east to Sedrun, Bugnei, and Mompé-Tujetsch. The line now resumes its northeasterly course through Segnas and Acla de Fontauna to the end of F-O trackage at Disentis.

The newest of the long mountain tunnels in Switzerland is the Vereina Tunnel between Klosters and the Lower Engadine, built in the late 1990s, which we will travel through on Monday. The less-than-ten-year-old Vereina Tunnel was built to provide a better connection between the communities of the Engadine and the rest of Switzerland, previously only possible using the Albula Line between Chur and Samedan. The tunnel is 12+ miles long, with three passing sidings provided within the otherwise single-track tunnel.

Chur

We then rode the Glacier Express east northeast from Zermatt to Chur, retracing our ride of the previous day as far as Andermatt, and then crossing the Oberalp Pass to Disentis and running down the upper reaches of the Rhine valley to Chur. That evening, Chris and I took a side trip up to Filisur and back to Chur via Davos and Klosters on the Heidi Express. In Chur, where we spent three nights, we rode the Arosa line back into the mountains, and some of us took the train north to St. Gallen, with its baroque minster and library, for the afternoon. The next day, we rode up through the 1995-opened Vereina tunnel into the Engadine valley, then over the Bernina Pass to Tirano (in Italy), before retuning to Chur on the Bernina Express. The meter-gauge Rhaetian railway that runs all of these lines (except the route to St. Gallen) uses the revenue from the summer tourist trains to provide essential transport services for the residents of Kanton Graubunden.

Saturday, June 5^th, 2004

Glacier Express, Heidi Express

Today, we’re taking the famed Glacier Express from Zermatt to Chur (as a group). This train leaves Zermatt a full hour later than the previous day’s excursion had started, so we can take breakfast at its normal 7 am starting time. This means that we’re subjected to the full mannerless crush of a Japanese tour group pushing and shoving to get at the breakfast buffet, which leaves us no choice but to push back hard if we want to be able to get to any of the food. We check out of the hotel, leaving our bags to a truck as usual, and walk over to the station, where we board our observation car on the Glacier Express. Because the train will reverse direction in Brig, I sit facing backwards for the segments of track we’ve done three times and then twice before. On the entire route of the glacier Express (to St. Moritz—we’re not gong that far, today) there are 281 bridges and 91 tunnels.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-5-04	Gotthard-Matterhorn and then Rhätian	0850	Zermatt to Chur	Meter-gauge obs.; Articulated diner	G-M HGe4/4II RhB Ge4/4!!!
6-5-04	Rhätian (train 561)	1554	Chur to Filisur	Glacier Express	RhB Ge4/4!!!
6-5-04	Rhätian (train 502)	1717	Filisur to Landquart	Heidi Express	RhB Ge4/4 I
6-5-04	Rhätian (train 881)	1920	Landquart to Chur	Meter-gauge 1^st	RhB Ge4/4 I

The descent to Visp and the segment to Brig are as before. This time, we see passenger as well as goods trains up on the BLS viaducts. In Brig, some additional cars and a period diner are added to the front of the train for the run to Chur, and a different locomotive added to the new front of the train. As we leave Brig, I manage to get some photographs of the Simplon Tunnel portals. As far as Andermatt, the route is the reverse of the day before, passing through the spiral tunnel in the upward direction, and then passing through the long Furka Base Tunnel.

East of Andermatt, we climb up the east side of the Reuss valley, with rack assistance, snaking back and forth, ever nearer the snow, up to Oberalp Pass. On the east side of Oberalp Pass, we enter the Rhine Valley at the headwaters of the long river to the North Sea. Here, also, we pass a construction camp for a shaft entering the middle of the new Gotthard Base Tunnel permitting boring from the center as well as both ends. There are considerable works associated with removing the spoil from this shaft, as well as a branch railway line connected to the track on which we’re traveling for carrying away the spoil.

At Disentis, we see the large monastery to the north of the track as we enter the town from the west. Here, the track ownership changes from the Gotthard-Matterhorn railway to the Rhätian railway on which we shall spend so much time in the next few days. (The railway covers almost all of the towns and villages in Graubunden, a canton named after the “grey leagues” that founded it, centuries ago.) After the G-M locomotive has left the train, a couple of additional coaches plus a magnificent articulated Restaurant Car, as well as Rhätian locomotives, are added to the front of the train. We have walked down the platform to the head of the train, since will be riding in this Restaurant Car for the remainder of the trip to Chur. We’re each handed a menu that seems to promise a three-course meal, but all we get is the main entrée listed on that menu; second helpings are offered by the waiters from the ‘silver service’, but many group members are clearly annoyed at not getting the soup and/or desert listed on the menu.

We continue to descend the Rhine Valley, on a line (indeed, the whole railway) that has been engineered not to need rack assistance anywhere. We pass between towering cliffs along a lushly wooded valley floor. Approaching Reichenau, we cross over a branch of the Rhine near the Niederrhein-Vorderrhein confluence, visible to the left of the train. Here, also, the RhB Albula Line joins with the Disentis line for the rest of the way into Chur. As we leave the station at Chur, it is clear that the whole station area, including the pedestrian subway under the tracks, is under reconstruction. Werner observes that it seems normal for Switzerland to be under construction.. In Chur, we leave the train and walk to the Hotel Stein back on the edge of old town Chur. Here, Chris and I discover that we have an attic room in the hotel’s annex in the office building next door. For the next three nights we have to watch our heads as we avoid the roof beams running through our room. Our luggage arrives after we do (for the first time this trip), but is soon in our room.

We will not be traveling on the Filisur-Davos-Klosters segment of the RhB on the official tour, so I want to do those with the rest of today. (It’s only 3 pm.) I have looked up the times in my comprehensive timetable, bought the day before, and ascertained that we can do this easily before it’s time for dinner. So, Chris and I walk back to the main station and board what proves to be an additional group of coaches to be added to a later version of the Glacier Express, as it arrives in Chur and reverses to continue along its journey to St. Moritz. Even in these additional, quite ordinary, first-class coaches, we get the special Glacier express commentary.

The onward route of the Glacier Express returns along the Disentis line to Tamins-Reichenau, where it turns southeast and begins to climb into a deep gorge, with many bridges as the line runs first along the southwest side of the valley, then along the northeast. Just before we reach Filisur, the commentary announces the famous curved Landwasser Viaduct, which directly enters a tunnel on the south end. The announcement is in time for me to open a window (much to the vocal disgust of a local traveler) and take a picture of the viaduct with te head of our train on it. Once we’ve passed through the adjoining tunnel, Chris and I leave this train at Filisur.

This well-used three-track station, high above the eponymous village, is currently under wide scale reconstruction of its tracks and platforms, with no continuous smooth platform surfaces to be seen anywhere in the station. There are several large diagrams explaining what is being done, but they’re not in a place where I can capture them photographically, and there are no leaflets available. As we wait in Filisur, rain starts to fall lightly. Soon, our Heidi Express (a train from the mountains to the south that heads for Davos and Landquart rather than Chur) comes around the bend on the mountainside to the south and pulls into the furthest track in the construction zone. We scramble up to the first-class cars at the front of the train, noting the entry to the observation car is by reservation only, and take seats in the normal first-class car in front of it.

As the train turns away from the Albula Line onto the Davos Line, the rain starts to fall harder, although not yet obscuring the view as we pass through the tunnels and over the viaducts on the run to Davos. In this world-famous ski resort, the train sits for twenty minutes (it is a special train set running on the schedules of some regular trains that operate all years round, and must wait for the departure time of the next regular train from Davos to Landquart) before continuing through the rest of Davos, past a nice lake and then down the zigzag line down the mountain face to Klosters. The Vereina Line from the Engadine valley, which we will be riding on Monday, joins with the Davos line right at the southeast end of Klosters station. By now, the rain is coming down in torrents, and the rivers on this side of the mountain are running quite near flood stage.

As we run along the valley floor down to Landquart, the rain is completely obscuring the view, and the effect is one of deep twilight even through sunset is still over two hours away. We start to be concerned about the rivers overflowing their banks and preventing our passage along this line two days hence. At Landquart, the line makes a big turn to the southwest to enter the RhB meter-gauge platforms at the station, where we are able to make a quick cross-platform connection into the RhB train to Chur. Back in Chur, we observe some special railway cars holding pre-built track switches at an angle that permits them to travel within the loading gauge, as well as cars of straight track sections and track ballast, all clearly connected to the ongoing construction here.

Because of the continuing heavy rain, we return directly to the hotel and eat in the restaurant there (the first time we have done such a thing outside a group dinner), before going to bed.

Rhine, Rhône, Danube, Po

Because Switzerland straddles the Alps, it is not surprising that the rivers in Switzerland flow in all directions. Although the places we stay at are all in the Rhine watershed (Luzern—Reuss; Interlaken—Aare; Chur—Rhine; and Zurich—Limmat), heading for the North Sea or Rhône watershed (Montreux and Zermatt), heading for the Mediterranean during our time in Kanton Graubunden we also travel into the Danube watershed (in the Engadine valley watered by the Inn River), heading for the Black Sea and the Po watershed (which we also visited on the south ramp of the Gotthard line, at Bellinzona, Chiasso and Locarno), heading fro the Adriatic, on the south side of the Bernina Pass. In fact, we pass through all of these watersheds in just the span from Saturday, June 5^th, to Monday, June 7^th! On Monday alone, we pass through three different major watersheds—Rhine, Danube and Po.

The Rhône rises in a glacier on the west side of Furka Pass (southeast of Meiringen on the other (north) side of the mountains), waters the south side of the Bernese Oberland and then passes through Brig, Visp and Sinn in a generally westerly direction before turning north and flowing into Lake Geneva. At the west end of Lake Geneva, the Rhône flows westward into France. The Rhine rises on the east side of Oberalp Pass, flows east to Chur, north to Lake Constance and then west through Schaffhausen and along the northern Swiss border to Basle before turning north to from the border between France and Germany.

The Aare rises above Meiringen, flows west through Lakes Brienz and Thun, turns north through Bern and then northeast through Olten, Aarau and Brugg before reaching the Rhine at Koblenz. The Reuss rises on the north side of the St. Gotthard Pass, south of Andermatt, and flows north into Lake Luzern and then northwest to Olten where it flows into the Aare. The Limmat arises as the streams flowing into Lake Zurich, leaves that lake to the northwest (through Zurich) and passes through Baden before reaching the Aare north of Brugg,

The Inn rises southwest of St. Moritz and flows northeast through the Engadine Valley and on into Austria and then Germany, where it joins the Danube. The Leventina rises on the south side of the St. Gotthard Pass and flows southeast and then south to Bellinzona, where it joins the Ticino to flow into Lake Maggiore near Locarno and on into Italy. The Poschiavo rises on the south side of the Bernina Pass and flows into Italy at Tirano. Both of these rivers carry water that eventually flows into the Po.

Sunday, June 6^th, 2004

Arosa Line, St. Gallen

Today is nominally a free day, although Werner is leading an excursion up the Arosa Line in the morning, and some of us intend to go to St. Gallen (us, the Carters) or Liechtenstein (Jim Compton and others) this afternoon. The Arosa Express that we will take is at 10 am, so we don’t get up until quite late and have a leisurely breakfast before leaving the hotel by 9:30 am.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-6-04	Rhätian	1002	Chur to Arosa	Arosa Express	Ge4/4 I
6-6-04	Rhätian	1105	Arosa to Chur	Arosa Express	Ge4/4 I
6-6-04	SBB (RX2830)	1242	Chur to St. Gallen	SBB single level	450/460
6-6-04	SBB (RX2823)	1605	St. Gallen to Chur	SBB single level	450/460

We’re down in the station forecourt, from which the Arosa train leaves by about 9:30, and it seems that almost our entire group is already on the train. The cars for the Arosa Express are painted dark blue (rather than the standard RhB red) and decorated with yellow stars and the like. Inside, our first class car is partly booths with tables and part fancily arranged lounge seats. On the way up, we have to use the latter, because all of the tables are already taken. Between us and a tour group from the British Isles, the car is almost full, long before departure.

The Arosa Line starts out running through the streets of Chur, past the Graubunden Kantonalbank building where I had had a meeting in December, 1994, and then alongside the river. There is a passing place still within the town, alongside the Arosa Line’s maintenance building, but the line is generally single track with passing places only at stations. Once out of the city, the line starts to climb quite steeply—about as steep as is possible without rack assistance—and hugs the side of the valley as it rises well above the valley floor. There are many small bridges and viaducts taking the line across side valleys; some of the viaducts are curved. One side valley has been eroded away, with just a few pillars (“earth men”) left standing where harder rocks had limited the erosion. The effect is similar to a small version of Bryce Canyon, but colored grey rather than red.

The railway highlight of the line is a large concrete bridge—the Langwies viaduct—by which the line crosses the valley just beyond a station. Those with cameras duly photograph the bridge as the train approaches it. Arosa itself is just another alpine resort town, mainly serving skiers in winter and hikers in summer. We, and the majority of our group, elect to return to Chur on the same trainset as it returns ten minutes after arrival. With the departure of the other tour group, we get to sit at one of the tables, and have the window open for better photography, on the way down.

Back in Chur, we descend to the pedestrian subway under the station platforms, where we buy sandwiches and drinks for lunch at the Kiosk. Then we make our way to the standard-gauge platform in the station, where those of us going to St. Gallen and to Liechtenstein board the SBB train for St. Gallen. Five minutes before our train leaves, a train for Zurich that will run the same way as far as Sargans leaves from an adjacent platform. Werner is along with us, to make sure that people get where they want to go. The line runs north alongside the Rhine, through Landquart (with no intermediate stations on the SBB line), Maienfeld, where it turns northwest, and Bad Ragaz before curving away northeast from the Zurich line and stopping at its own separate platforms in Sargans. Continuing northeast through Trübbach and Weite, the line turns due north through Gevelen and Räfis-Burgenau. At Buchs, there is a stuffed-and-mounted steam tank locomotive on a plinth at the southwest corner of the station. Here, those heading to Liechtenstein leave the train and take a Postbus for their onward journey. (Liechtenstein is a small country, mostly comprising a large mountain, but with an inhabited area along the east bank of the Rhine, just across from the rail line we’re traveling on.)

The line continues through Haag-Gams, turning north northeast through Salez-Gennwald, Rüthis and Oberriet to Altstätten. Once we’re past Liechtenstein, the far bank of the river is in Austria for quite a distance. The line to St. Gallen continues through Rebstein-Marbach, Heerbrugg and Au to St. Margrethen, where another line trails in from the east.. Near Lake Constance, at St. Margrethen, the line turns northwest to run along (but not always alongside) that large lake, through Rheineck and Staad. As we enter Rorschach station, there is a large cloud of smoke over the platform nearest to the station buildings. It turns out to be a steam tank engine, heading a small excursion train. With some difficulty, due to the presence of other moving trains between our train and it, I manage to snatch a photograph of the steam locomotive as we leave the station. The line now turns due west, away from the lake, and heads directly west to the old cathedral town of St. Gallen, passing through Goldach, turning south through Mörschwil and St. Gallen-St. Fiden, where another line trails in from the west side of our line, and then southwest through the Rosenberg Tunnel on the way. St. Gallen is a large station with an overall roof, with the station buildings on the southeast side and several double-faced island platforms extending away from it. Our trains operate from the farthest platform away from the station buildings, with access through a pedestrian subway.

In St. Gallen, Werner heads for the Swiss Tourist Office, hoping to supply the Carters (and us) with some information on the baroque library and cathedral church that we want to visit. When all he can find is a large fixed placard with a map of the town, I suggest that the street plan in the guide book that IRT had sent us would do just as well, and that we would find these places on our own. Werner then leaves to return to Chur; Bob and Shirley follow along with us. Based on the street plan, I head southeast through the streets, turning south and then east into a small square. Here I announce that the building in front of us is the library, and just to its left is the west end of the cathedral. So it proves to be.

Entering the doors next to the rear of the cathedral, we find an exhibition that requires purchase of tickets at the main library entrance. So, we walk through the hallways to find that location, and go into the library first (after putting on the obligatory slippers to prevent scuffing the polished wood floors). This baroque interior is one of the greatest architectural spaces it has ever been my privilege to enter. It is quite stunning just to stand within the library, looking at the carved wooden books cases, the ornamental windows and the painted ceiling. The books themselves are also interesting, with manuscripts as early as the 9^th-century on display in glass cases. But again and again I keep coming back to the space itself, and it is the impression of that which stays with me after we leave.

We return to the other exhibition, which is a collection of stone building fragments from an earlier era, along with descriptive panels (all in German, of course). Then we open a door out of the hallway adjacent to the exhibition entrance and step into the west end of the cathedral itself. This is another wonderfully decorated baroque space, with every piece of stone sculpted into decorative shapes and colored to enhance the effect. As an architectural space, this pales only in the face of the library we had just visited. We leave the cathedral on the north side, opposite from the library, into the cathedral close. The old town is located mostly just to the north of this grassy sward, along with a church that has an interestingly patterned roof—one that reminds me of St. Stephen’s in Vienna. We walk north through the streets of medieval buildings to the market square, and then west back to the station in time for our return train to Chur. The route back is the same as the way we came.

In Chur, we drop our bags off at the hotel, and then Chris & I take a walking tour of the old part of Chur, located northeast of, and uphill from, but adjacent to our hotel. The old streets are again of great interest, as are the buildings of the Bishops’ Palace atop the hill. The cathedral would also, doubtless, have been interesting, if it were not for the fact that it was under a complete reconstruction and renovation activity that had completely taken over the inside of the nave and apses. Returning down the hill, we look for a place to eat; Chris wants sauerkraut, and we find a restaurant that has it on the menu, but will not open again until after we have left the city! So, we settle for Lasagna at an Italian place less than a block north of the hotel.

Cathedral Architectural Styles

As we visited the major towns and cities throughout Switzerland, we took the time to walk through the old town sections and to visit the cathedrals to be found in those cities. In particular, we visited the inside of the cathedral in Bern, the cathedral and medieval library at St. Gallen, the cathedral at Basel, and a parish church, the cathedral, and the Frauenmünster (women’s “cathedral”) In Zurich. We also visited the exterior of the cathedrals in Luzern, Geneva, and Chur—the former two we didn’t go in because of the time of day/evening, and the latter was under intensive interior reconstruction preventing more than peripheral entry. This was of interest because of the wide range of architectural styles we encountered across this set of buildings.

The cathedral of Bern is the largest and most important example of late Gothic architecture in Switzerland, built between 1421 and 1596, with the tower and spire completed in neo-Gothic style between 1889 and 1893. The cathedral was designed along the lines of a basilica, with three naves and no transepts. The chancel was built between 1430 and 1445, and contains the most important cycle of medieval stained glass windows in Switzerland. Each window tells a particular story in its sequence of panes—the Magi, the Life of Christ, the Passions, “Medieval Mill” (story of the Eucharist and its usage) and the Legend of the 10,000 Martyrs. The main portal, built in 1460 to 1485 contains a representation of the Last Judgment, based on contemporary mystery plays, that is the last comprehensive Doomsday Portal ever executed. When the Reformation reached Bern in 1528, much of the decoration in the cathedral was removed or destroyed, although some of what was removed has since been recovered and replaced, and some of what was destroyed has since been replaced by copies of the originals.

The current cathedral building in Luzern is an amalgamation of two different styles. The spires and towers at the west front are all that remains of a 15^th century cathedral that was otherwise destroyed by fire in 1633. The replacement was consecrated in 1633, and is regarded as the most important renaissance church building in Switzerland..

The cathedral of St. Pierre in Geneva was built between 1160 and 1289. In 1752-66, a neo-classical portico was added to the original Romanesque and gothic elements. Many of the cathedral’s earlier ornaments and decorations were destroyed during the Reformation, leaving the building with a rather austere appearance.

The former Benedictine Abbey of St. Gall, dissolved in 1805, was built from 1755 as a “reconstruction” of the earlier abbey and monastery buildings dating to the 17^th century and built on a site in religious use since the 9^th century. The abbey and adjacent buildings are in the late baroque style, with the Nave and Rotunda built between 1755 and 1760, the Choir 1761-64, and the twin towers in 1766. Decoration continued into the 1780s, with sculpture, ceiling paintings, rococo stuccowork in and on the choir, rotunda altars, chancel, confessionals and choir stalls. In the west wing of the adjacent monastery buildings, the second and third floors were devoted, as a single space with the upper floor accessed as an interior balcony around the walls of that space, to a new library, rebuilt concurrently with the abbey church in the same late Baroque style, between 1758 and 1767, when the interior was completed. The ceiling frescoes depict the first four Ecumenical Councils, with rococo stuccowork surrounding them. The two levels of polished wood bookcases contain 150,000 volumes and 2000 medieval manuscripts, with cultural treasures from the 8^th to the 13^th centuries. Some of these are on view in display cases placed out on the inlaid-marquetry wooden floor. The interior space of the library is 94 feet long, 33 ft. wide and 24 ft high.

The cathedral in Chur is located on a fortified hilltop, surrounded by a wall that also encloses the bishop’s palace, overlooking the old town of Chur from the southeast. The cathedral is being completely restored between 2001 and 2007. Construction on this Romanesque building started in 1178, with the west tower being completed in 1200, the high altar and choir, including sculptures, in 1208, and the whole building in 1272. The screens date from 1252 and 1300-1320. The present decorations, altars and paintings date from 1484-1500.

The cathedral in Basel was constructed as a wholly Romanesque building, consecrated in 1019. Much of that building was destroyed in an earthquake in 1356, with the choir, the tower on the crossing, and all four corner-towers collapsing. Only the two west towers were reconstructed, along with the choir, with reconstruction in late Gothic style completed in 1500. Original Romanesque parts of the church that remain include various sculptural panels from 1100, 1160 and 1200, the capitals in the choir (1180), and the central arch of the west portal (1280). Late gothic pieces include the vaults of the transept (1400-01) and the pulpit (1486). At the Reformation, in 1529, 60 altars and the rich church treasures were removed. Since then the cathedral has been a Reformed parish church. The great humanist Erasmus (1466-1536) is buried beneath the cathedral floor. The current stained glass windows are neo-Gothic, from 1857.

The parish church of St. Peter in Zurich dates back to the 7^th century, and has a Romanesque exterior, although it’s present interior dates to 1705. The clock, added during the Reformation in 1534, has the largest clockface in Europe, almost 29 ft. in diameter

Zurich cathedral (grossmünster) is a Romanesque structure built between 1106 and 1200. The towers cover the entire stylistic development of the Gothic period (which began in the 13^th century), and were completed in 1781 when the current domes replaced the former pointed roofs. One of the major decorative features on the exterior is the seated figure of Charlemagne on the Limmat side of the south tower. There are stained glass windows by Augusto Giacometti, dating from 1921-31, and bronze doors by Otto Münch dating from 1944-1955.

The Zurich Frauenmünster (women’s “cathedral”) originated as a new church built on the site of a long-extant abbey on the west bank of the Limmat River in Zurich, across from the grossmünster there. The late Romanesque building was constructed in the second half of the 13^th century, with the crossing and vaulting completed in a transitional (to Gothic) style. Ornamental catholic objects were removed in 1524 when the Reformation arrived in Zurich. The north tower, now housing a belfry, was made much taller during a reconstruction in 1728-32 and capped with a copper-clad spire in 1789. The exterior of the church is undergoing a complete restoration in 2004. All of the stained-glass windows are from the 20^th century, the most famous of which are March Chagall’s 1969-70 windows in the choir, on the topics of Prophets, Law, Jacob, Zion and Christ, and his 1978 small rose window in the south transept.

Monday, June 7^th, 2004

Vereina Tunnel, Bernina Express

Today’s travel is advertised in the IRT schedules as being the “Bernina Express”, but actually that title applies only to the return trip in the afternoon. In the morning, we’re going a long way around, so that we can travel through the Vereina Tunnel and along the Engadine Valley. We arise early, with another special early breakfast, because the first train today leaves at 7:20 am. We leave the hotel at 6:45 am, and walk over to the station, where I check the yellow signs for our platform, but most group members seem to prefer to wait for Werner to do that for them! Of course, they all appear on the platform to which we have already gone!

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-7-04	Rhätian (D19)	0721	Chur to Landquart	RhB first-class	AC Ge4/4 I
6-7-04	Rhätian (RE321)	0748	Landquart to Sagliains	RhB first-class	AC Ge4/4 III
6-7-04	Rhätian (RB721)	0855	Sagliains to Pontresina	RhB first-class	AC Ge4/4 I
6-7-04	Rhätian (R425)	1103	Pontresina to Tirano	RhB first-class	DC Abe4/4
6-7-04	Rhätian (D500)	1450	Tirano to Chur	Bernina Express	DC Abe4/4/ AC Ge4/4 III

The first train just gets us the few miles over to Landquart, where the service up the valley to Klosters and then through the Vereina Tunnel begins. The second train retraces the route east of Landquart that Chris & I had traveled on Saturday evening, although the weather is clear and sunny today and we can see the mountainsides. The river seems almost as high today as it had then, however. At Klosters, our route today departs from the Davos line at the southeast end of Klosters station, passing a car shuttle terminal and then directly entering the Vereina Tunnel as the Davos line turns away to climb the hillside.

At the southeastern end of the tunnel are wye tracks, permitting trains to go either way on the Engadine Line that passes within a few yards of the tunnel mouths (one on each leg of the wye). Our train turns northeast at the end of the tunnel, to head for the lower end of the valley, and stops at Sagliains, within sight of the tunnel mouth, where we change trains.

Our train from Landquart is a few minutes late, today, having waited for an SBB connecting train at Landquart (an event that had caused Werner to rush off to ensure that our connection would be held at Sagliains. Sure enough, the westbound train is waiting for us across the platform, and as soon as we’re aboard it departs. This train is heading up the Engadine Valley, running initially along the north side of that valley. Across the valley to the south is Switzerland’s first National Park, a curiosity in Switzerland where most of the valleys and mountainsides have been inhabited so long that their preservation in a pristine natural state has not been possible. (Which is not to say that they are, thereby, in a despoiled state for the vast majority of the countryside.)

After some running on the south side of the valley, the line is again on the north side when we meet a steam-hauled excursion train running east from Samedan (but quite a bit further east when we see it), hauled by RhB 2-8-0 108 with a train of vintage carriages. At Bever, the Albula Line curves in from the northwest (the Engadine valley runs southwest to northeast as the Inn River in its center drops towards Austria). At Samedan, where the steam locomotive is based, the line straight ahead goes to the famed winter resort of St. Moritz, while our train takes the line curving away southeast to Pontresina where it terminates. Here, we have over an hour to wait for our onward train to Tirano.

We take the opportunity to get some coffee and tea at a small café near the station (there had been no refreshment carts on any of the trains we had ridden on so far today), and admire the horse drawn carriages awaiting tourists to ride them in a field nearby. At the station Kiosk, I buy route guides in English for the Glacier express and Bernina Express, and then watch the change of locomotives on trains running through from the Samedan direction to the Bernina Pass.  The original Bernina Railway line had been electrified on a system with Direct Current (DC) on its overhead catenary, while the Engadine Line (the first segment of the rest of the Rhätian to be electrified, was electrified with Alternating Current (AC) on the overhead catenary. While the voltages are similar, the requirements of AC and DC are not and the separate systems remain in place to this day. The line from St. Moritz through Pontresina to Tirano is DC, while the lines north from Pontresina and St. Moritz through and beyond Samedan are AC. St. Moritz is a terminal station with no through trains, but Pontresina has a number of through trains (including the Bernina and Heidi Expresses) that must change locomotives while standing in the station here. The current applied to the overhead in the platforms is switched from one system to the other by the local track controller in his booth on the station platform, as he switches the point to enable one set of locomotives to leave and another to back down onto the train. (There are usually two DC locomotives on the line over Bernina Pass, one AC locomotive to the north.)

We watch this procedure for a couple of southbound trains, including the southbound Bernina Express, before our train from St. Moritz (which thus needs no engine change) to Tirano appears and we board. It takes Werner’s expertise to remove some German-speaking travelers (with 2^nd class tickets) from our reserved 1^st class seating area before we can settle in to our seats. Our train heads southeast into the mountains, curving back and forth up the valley sides until it reaches the bleak, snowy and icy, reaches of the Bernina Pass, stopping at one station that has an adjacent ski lift for an opposing train to pass, and then at another station with an adjacent ski lift, before reaching the watershed between the Inn River that flows into the Danube and thus the Black Sea, to the north, and the Poschiavo River that flows into the Po and thus the Adriatic Sea to the south. Here, also, is the Bernina Hospice.

The south(east) side of the Bernina Pass is the most spectacular we’ve seen on the trip, at least partly because of the total height it covers. Tirano is the lowest point on the Rhätian system, while the Bernina Pass is the highest, this giving rise to the greatest climb/drop anywhere on the system. After crossing the top of the pass, the line runs along a ridge that gives us the first glimpses of Lake Poschiavo far below and the Bergamo Alps beyond it (and Tirano), further to the southeast. Then the line passes through a strongly curved tunnel and emerges on a cliffside across from a magnificent glacier. Werner informs us that when he had first seen this glacier, some 45 years earlier, it had descended twice as far as it does today. The line swings around another semicircle in tunnel and emerges lower down the same cliff face from which the glacier can now be seen from the other side of the train.

Another long curve takes us out onto the mountainside above the town of Poschiavo, far below, after which we spend a long time making successive passes, first one way and then the other, down the mountainside to pass by some villages on the valley floor and enter the town of Poschiavo itself. From here to Tirano, the toilets on the train are closed, partly because of the street running through the towns, and partly because the lake is the water supply for the surrounding communities. The lake is south of the town, and we run along its southwest side to the southeast end. The lake was created centuries ago, by a rock slide from the northeast wall of the valley that closed the valley and blocked the free flow of the river.

Below the lake, we descend the reminder of the valley to Tirano. This is another place where the descent demands artificial lengthening of the railway line, and in addition to a couple of back and forth traverses across the valley floor at Brusio, the line traverses a complete spiral in the open air, partially on a stone viaduct, below that town. Many photographs are taken from the train at this location. In Tirano, where RhB has a station separate from but adjacent to the Italian Railway station, we pass through passport control and into the town for lunch. There is an Italian steam locomotive in steam adjacent to the RhB station, and some of us take photographs of it both before and after eating. At the restaurant, we pay by the proven mechanism of placing a credit card down on the table and receiving prompt attention to it, while we notice that other group members seem to have more difficulty paying for their meals.

Heading back to Chur, we travel in one of the observation cars of the RhB, essentially identical to the one we had ridden in on the Glacier express, two days before. Chris and I take care to sit on the opposite side of the train from the outbound ride over the pass. The ride back over the Bernina Pass and down the north(west) slope as far as Pontresina and Samedan is as spectacular going this way as it had been the other. At Samedan, we observe that the steam locomotive is in the roundhouse and its excursion cars in the yard. At Bever, we turn away from our earlier route onto the Albula Line, passing almost immediately through the Albula Tunnel into the Albula River valley. This is another place where artificial lengthening of the line is required to avoid rack assistance, and this is achieved by three spiral tunnels, two stacked one above the other, and four crossings of the river in a short stretch of geography. Beyond this part of the line, we reach Filisur, where Chris and I had been on Saturday, and continue across the Landwasser Viaduct (where many more photographs are taken) into the Albula Gorge through Tiefencastel. We return to Chur by the route Chris and I had taken before, and have a group dinner at the hotel before packing and heading for bed.

Rhätian Railway—A Meter Gauge System

The Rhätian railway was built in the last decade of the 19^th century and the first decade of the 20^th century to connect the disparate areas of Canton Graubunden. Some lines were built initially as separate concerns, and thus may have different technical specifications from others. While all of the RhB is meter gauge, and has been engineered so that none of its grades need rack assistance (even though the maximum grade reaches 7%), and all are electrified with overhead catenary, the Line from St. Moritz to Tirano, over Bernina Pass, was built before there were other connecting railways and is electrified using a different system from the rest of the RhB. RhB is the largest employer in the canton.

The first RhB line that we encountered was the continuation of the Glacier Express route, from Disentis down the Rhine gorge to Reichenau and Chur. This single-track line leaves Disentis/Muster in an east northeasterly direction, passing through Rabius-Surrein, Trun, a couple of tunnels, Tavanasa-Breil/Brigels, Waltensburg/Vuorz, where it curves east, Rueun, Schnaus-Strada, Ilanz, where it curves east northeast again, Castrisch and Valendas-Sagogn, The line then curves east and then north before reaching Versam-Safien, then heads east again before slowly curving back to the east northeast to Trin. The line then curves east again, crosses the segment of the Rhine it has been following and then curves northeast to cross one that comes up from the south to enter Reichenau-Tamins. The Albula Line trails in from the south west of the point where the rivers converge.

East of Reichenau, the line, now double track, runs through the Ems chemical complex—the second largest employer in the canton, with its own station at Ems Werk, and then again curves east-northeast, following the river as the valley broadens, through Domat/Ems, and Felsberg to Chur. The track is dual-gauge between Ems and Chur to permit standard gauge chemical wagons to reach the chemical complex from the SBB line at Chur. The station at Chur is another one with both standard gauge and meter gauge trackage, with the station buildings to the south, the standard gauge platforms nearest to the station buildings, and the meter gauge platforms further out. The western end of the platforms, west of the station buildings, has a classy overall roof with a second floor comprising the local Postbus station incorporated therein. The Arosa Line “platform” is outside the front of the station, adjacent to the street on which it starts its journey through the town.

Albula Line trains start from Chur, at an altitude of 1,920 ft., and head west through Reichenau-Tamins before turning south through Bonaduz, Rhäzüns, Rothenbrunnen, Rodels-Realta and Cazis, to Thusis. Here, the valley narrows to a deep gorge, and the line curves sharply northeast to Sils im Domleschg, crossing the gorge from the southwest side to the northeast side in the process, then turns southeast along the Albula River, passing through four tunnels to Solis and two more to Tiefencastel. From Tiefencastel, the line heads east through Surava and Alvaneu, running along the north wall of the valley, then turns sharply south, crossing the river on the famous Landwasser viaduct enters a tunnel directly at the south end of the viaduct, and emerges where the line from Davos comes in from the east, and the two lines enter Filisur station side-by-side. The Filisur station buildings are on the southwest side of the line, with three tracks through the station served by one side and one island platform. The village of Filisur is on the valley floor below, at an altitude of 3,556 ft.

From Filisur, the line continues southeast along the northeast side of the valley (about halfway up, most of the way), through two tunnels, Stugl/Stuls, two more tunnels and Bergün/Bravougn, climbing 2,296 ft. in just 7.5 miles. Southeast of the latter, the line has reached the valley floor (which has risen up to this level of 4,514 ft.), and must take some ‘artificial line lengthening” steps to cope with the rate of rise of that valley floor. This is accomplished with two semi-circular tunnels, three spiral tunnels, and five crossings of the river in just a few miles of geographical distance. First, the line curves counter-clockwise through a semi-circular tunnel to emerge further up the northeastern hillside, and then passes through a clockwise semi circular tunnel to emerge yet further up the hillside, passing above the first tunnel as it again heads southeast along the hillside, still overlooking Bergün. The line then turns southwest, along the hillside, through two short tunnels, turns due west and crosses the river into a clockwise spiral tunnel in the southwestern hillside, emerging further up on the southwest side of the river. Then, it heads east across the river, turns south along the east bank and enters a counter-clockwise spiral tunnel into that eastern hillside, crosses the river again immediately on leaving that tunnel, makes an anti-clockwise half circle on the west side of the river and crosses to the east side again to enter another anti-clockwise spiral tunnel partially stacked above the previous one. The line emerges from that tunnel heading south, crosses over its trackage entering that tunnel, curves west to cross the river again, and then curves southeast along the west side of the valley, having climbed another 1,364 ft. in 7.82 track miles.

After passing through Preda, at 5,866 ft. above mean sea level, the line enters the north portal of the three and a half mile long Albula Tunnel through the Rhine-Inn watershed, with a summit of 5,971 ft. inside the tunnel. The south portal is in a side valley northwest of the Upper Engadine, and the now descending line passes through Spinas before emerging into the Engadine valley itself and turning southwest to join with the Engadine line just east of Bever station. The line continues southwest along the valley floor to Samedan, principal town of the Upper Engadine, where the station has several platforms southeast of the main station buildings, and locomotive maintenance facilities on the southeast side of those platforms. Southwest of the station, the line to Pontresina curves away to the south and the Albula Line continues southwest to Celerina, then curves south through a tunnel and southwest again into the terminal station at St. Moritz. The Albula Line was opened throughout in 1903.

The Davos Line turns east immediately north of Filisur station, passing through six tunnels on the side of the Landwasser River gorge, as it also crosses the Wiesner Viaduct over the Landwasser River, and passes through Wiesen, Davos Monstein, where the line turns northeast, Davos Glaris, Davos Frauenkirch and Davos Islen before reaching the main Davos station at Davos Platz. The next stations northeast are Davos Dorf, Davos Wolfgang, and Davos Laret. As one might imagine from there being eight stations in Davos, this world famous winter sports center, at an altitude of 5,118 ft., is strung out along the mountain to best reach the locations with desirable winter sports features.  Before reaching Davos Wolfgang, the line turns north, and then east through Davos Laret. East of the latter, the line starts down the steep mountain face to Klosters in the valley below, making a sharp turn to the north, as it descends along the mountain through Cavadürli, then makes a half circle clockwise in Cavadürli tunnel and heads southeast through Klosters Tunnel before making another half circle counter-clockwise and crosses the Landquart River to enter Klosters station from the southeast. As it does so, the line through the Vereina Tunnel trails in from the southeast, just southwest of the bridge across the river.

From Klosters, at an altitude of 3,870 ft., the line heads northwest down the Landquart River valley, through Klosters Dorf, Serneus, Saas, Küblis, Fideris, Janetz, Furna, Schiers, turning west through Grüsch, Seewig-Valzeina, the Klus Tunnel and Malans to Landquart, where the line turns south into Landquart station. This is another station with both meter gauge and standard gauge platforms, with the latter to the west and the former to the east. The RhB line south to Chur parallels the SBB standard gauge line, first on the east and then on the west, passing through Igis and, Zizers while on the east side, and Untervaz, Trimmis and Waldenstein on the west side before reaching Chur from the north.

The Arosa Line starts from the forecourt of Chur station, and heads out into the city streets to the south., coming alongside the Plessur river at Chur Stadt, passing the Arosa Line’s maintenance base and continuing up the valley through Sassel and then turning east, climbing along the north valley wall and crossing many side valleys on bridges, through Lüen-Castiel, St. Peter-Molinis, Peist and Langwies. Above the latter, the line makes a sharp turn to the south and crosses the valley on a spectacular and justly famous concrete bridge. The valley itself turns at this point, so the line now on the west side of the valley continues climbing to the south through Litzirüti before turning southwest and then curving clockwise to the north through the Arosa Tunnel and then northeast into Arosa station.

The Engadine Line begins (for the purposes of this description) at Pontresina, at an altitude of 5,900 ft., where it shares station facilities with the Bernina Line. Pontresina station has its station buildings on the east side of the line, along with one platform, and an island platform accessed by a pedestrian subway with two platform faces. Pontresina is the interface between two different electrical systems, both of which use overhead current delivery, and as such sees locomotives (designed for each different electrical system) being changed on through trains between the line north to/from Samedan and the Bernina Line to the south.  (The lines north of Pontresina are electrified at 11KV, 16⅔ Hz, while the Bernina Line is electrified at 1000V DC.) The station building includes an office for the line controller (similar to a US ‘dispatcher”) who, among other things, controls which electrical current is applied to the overhead catenary on a particular track, so that a locomotive using one system can arrive and leave its train, followed by a locomotive using the other system backing down onto the train and departing.

North from Pontresina, the Engadine Line forms the third leg of a large ‘wye’ formed by the lines between St. Moritz (to the west) and Pontresina and Samedan. This ‘east leg’ passes through Punt Muragi station, with the Bernina Line to St. Moritz running parallel on the west side, but climbing above the Engadine Line. North of Punt Muragi (“Punt: means ‘bridge’ in Romansch), the St. Moritz line turns away west, and the Engadine line continues straight ahead to Samedan, where it curves northeast and joins with the Albula Line trailing in from St. Moritz to enter Samedan station. The line from Samedan to Bever is the same as the Albula Line.

Northeast of Bever, the Engadine Line, built in 1908-913, continues straight ahead, while the Albula line curves away northwest. At this point, the Engadine Line is running along the north side of a broad river valley (but still on the valley floor), and continues northeast through La Punt-Chamues, Madulain, Zuoz, S-Chanf, Cinuos-Chel Brail, and then two tunnels to Carolina. The line then crosses the River Inn to the southeast side of the valley, makes a sharp turn northward (across the mouth of a side valley located in Switzerland’s only national park) to Zernez, passes through a tunnel and then crosses the valley floor and river again to Susch.

North of Susch, the west leg of the wye with the Vereina Tunnel line to Klosters heads due north while the Engadine Line turns east, and at Sagliains (which has an isolated station used for making connections between trains only) meets the east leg of the wye from the Vereina Tunnel line. In each case, the tunnel portal is almost adjacent to the Engadine Line. The Engadine Line now continues east, through the Lower Engadine with the much broader valley of the River Inn, passing through Lavin, Guarda, Ardez, Ftan, and a number of tunnels along the north side of the valley, to the end of the line at Scuol-Tarasp. Long discussed plans for continuing the line eastward to the Austrian border and a connection with Austrian railways have yet to come to fruition in 2004.

The Bernina Line starts from St. Moritz, on tracks parallel to those of the Albula Line, reflecting their different electrical systems, and heads northeast through a tunnel to Celerina Staz.  It then turns southeast to Pont Muragi Staz and descends to join the Engadine line at the approach to Pontresina station. Trains from St. Moritz have no need to change locomotives at Pontresina, since they are already on the electrical system in use south of that station. South of Pontresina, the line passes through Surovas and then climbs along the southwest wall of the ever-narrowing southeast-heading valley. At Moteratsch, the line executes a half-circle to the east, climbs up the east wall heading north for a short while, and than makes another half circle turn eastward to continue climbing the east valley wall heading southeast. At Bernina-Scuot, altitude 6,712 ft., the line has reached the icy valley across the top of the pass—the only line that crosses the Alps on the surface rather than in tunnel— and continues generally southeasterly through Bernina Diavolleza and Bernina Lagalb, each of which have adjacent cable tramways, snaking across the valley floor with icy lakes to the west side and glaciers on the mountains beyond the lakes, to the summit at Ospizia Bernina (7,381 ft.), and then begins its southward descent towards Italy.

After a few miles of heading generally southward, and passing through a couple of short tunnels, the line reaches the escarpment at the north end of the Poschiavo River valley, which requires heavy engineering to make the descent to Poschiavo. At Alp Grüm, 6,860 ft., the line emerges from a short tunnel onto a cliff face with an open valley to the west, across which is a huge (but rapidly receding) glacier, the Palü Glacier. A clockwise half-circle, from which Lake Poschiavo can be seen far below and the Bergamo Alps far beyond, has the line running back to the north along that same cliff face at a lower level, and a counter-clockwise semi-circle, this time in tunnel, has the line heading south again, at an even lower level on that same cliff face. (Alp Grüm to Poschiavo is 3.5 miles as the crow flies and 10 miles by the railway.) The line then turns east, through a tunnel, and then northeast on a cliff face overlooking the Poschiavo valley itself. A series of half circles to the east (and down), sees the line heading southwest, northeast again, and finally south again, passing through Cavaglia, altitude 5,548 ft. After a sharp curve east and then back west again, the line continues southward until it again needs to zigzag down a mountain face.

In a half-circle anti-clockwise tunnel the line turns northeast, then curves southwest, further down the mountainside, through Cadera, uses another half-circle anti-clockwise tunnel to head northeast again, and finally uses a half-circle clockwise tunnel to return to a southerly heading, reaching the valley floor at Privilasco (which has been visible throughout the last four traverses across the mountain face) and entering the town of Poschiavo itself (3,326 ft.). Here, landslides in a side valley in 1987 caused two separate devastating floods to inundate the town, which has since been rebuilt. South of Poschiavo, the line passes through Li Curt and La Prese on a section of street running, and then runs along the west side of Lake Poschiavo, formed by an avalanche several centuries ago, then across the foot of the lake at Miralago to continue its descent on the east side of the much narrower valley. Passing Brusio, 2,450 ft., the line sweeps first westward and then eastward across the valley, and then loses even more altitude using the famous looping clockwise spiral viaduct, 350 ft. in length, before continuing south through Campascio and Campocologna to enter Italy and reach the southern terminus of the line at Tirano, altitude 1,407 ft., via a final curve to the east. The RhB station at Tirano has two stub end tracks either side of a single platform, with the station buildings at the stub end of the tracks. Adjacent, to the south is the Tirano station of the Italian State Railways.

The grade on the south side of the Bernina Pass has maximum gradients of 7%, the steepest adhesion worked grades in the world.

Zurich

On the way from Chur to Zurich, we visited the Rhätian Railway's workshops in Landquart before riding the standard gauge line into Zurich for the last two nights of the trip. Chris and I took a side trip to Basel in the afternoon. The last full day of the tour, we had a walking tour of the old part of Zurich, a visit to the enthusiast-run tramway museum in Zurich, and dinner on an old tramcar touring a large fraction of the tramway system in Zurich. On Thursday, we rode a train out to Zurich Airport and flew home.

Tuesday, June 8^th, 2004

Rhätian Works, Zurich, Basel

We check out of the hotel this morning after a 7 am breakfast, and walk over to the station for the train to Landquart. This is on a different meter-gauge platform from yesterday’s train between the same points.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-8-2004	Rhätian (D25)	0821	Chur to Landquart	RhB 1^st class	Ge4/4 I
6-8-2004	SBB (IR776)	1227	Landquart to Zurich	SBB bi-level 1^st	450/460
6-8-2004	SBB (EC96)	1500	Zurich to Basel	SBB single-level	450/460
6-8-2004	SBB (IR1883)	1720	Basel to Zurich	SBB bi-level 1^st	450/460

In Landquart, we walk out of the station to the east and turn south to the RhB Workshops. Our guide is waiting, but his English-speaking translator is not here yet. A little after 9 am he arrives, and we start on our tour of the shops. First, we go into the locomotive shop, where several locomotives are in the process of getting level 1 intermediate repairs (minor repairs are done at the home depot), level 2 heavy repairs, or level 4 complete rebuilds (to make them “good for another 25 years”). We see traction motors that have been removed from their trucks, and the components of refurbished traction motors that have not yet been reassembled.

At the rear of the same building, after crossing a transfer table, we walk through the carriage and wagon repair shops, where passenger carriages and hopper wagons are receiving similar kinds of repairs, including complete rebuilds. Outside, we see some DMU cars that are being tested here after construction elsewhere in Switzerland and before delivery to their purchaser in Greece in time for use during the summer Olympics there. We walk across another transfer table, past large numbers of wheelsets and axles of different sizes, and into the roundhouse used by the locomotive depot here. In addition to its use for storage of current locomotives, this roundhouse contains two operable steam locomotives: the original tank engine, RhB 1, Rhätia, and RhB 107, a 2-8-0 identical to the one we had seen in the Engadine the day before.

We then pass through a shop where an in-line wheel lathe is in operation turning down the profile on some wheels, and enter the machine shops, where the latest and largest numerically-controlled machines are in daily use, alongside a few basic manually-operated machines such as a milling machine that looks like it would have been in use in the 1950s. Another shop has a numerically-controlled (but not in-line) wheel lathe, stacks of axles,, wheels and tyres, and the machine for putting tyres onto wheels using open flame application of heat. Finally, we walk back through the locomotive shop, passing the operable preserved “baby crocodile” (Ge6/6 I) electric locomotive on the way. At the conclusion of the tour, we visit the railway’s employee sales shop, where members of the group purchase various souvenirs and model trains.

There is now time to get something to drink, and perhaps lunch, at the local Coop before returning to the station (on the standard-gauge platforms, this time) to take our train to Zurich. Chris and I eat our lunch while sitting on a platform seat, watching an older green SBB electric locomotive shunt in the goods yard and then leave with a train that includes the special cars for prefabricated track switches that we had seen three days before in Chur. Our train proves to comprise the SBB bi-level stock that is intended for inter-city use and includes 1^st-class cars (as opposed to the commuter or S-Bahn stock which is more densely seated). This train descends the Rhine Valley as we had done on the trip to St. Gallen,, as far as Sargans, where the line to Zurich uses the westerly set of platforms as it turns northwest out of the Rhine Valley and follows the shores of several lakes, including Lake Zurich.

From Sargans the line passes through Mels, Flums, and Walenstadt, where it turns due west to run along the south side of the Walensee. There are several tunnels along the lake shore, as well as the towns of Mols, Murg, Mühlehorn, and Weesen. At Ziegelbrücke, a line from Linthal trails in from the south and one to Rapperswil heads out to the northwest. The line we’re on continues northwest, over the watershed, through Bilten and Reichenburg, and then turns west again through Schübelbach-Buttikon, Siebnen-Wangen, Siegen, Lachen, and Altendorf, where it again reaches the south shore of a lake.

At Pfaffikon, a line from Rapperswil trails in across a narrow spit of land between two lakes, and the line comes along the south side of Lake Zurich. At Bach, the lakeshore and the line turn northwest, and the line then passes through Richterswil, Wädenswil, Au ZH, Horgen, and Oberrieden. At Thalwil, the line from Zug on which we had ridden two weeks earlier comes in from the south, we pass through Rüschlikon, Kilchberg, and Zurich Wallishofen, a tunnel, the station at Enge, another tunnel and Zurich Wildikon before turning sharply to the east and arriving at Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

The group walks out of the east side of the station and follows Werner east on Bahnhofstrasse, the main expensive shopping street in Zurich, for several blocks before turning south for one block to our hotel. After settling in to our room, it’s still only 2:30 pm. so I tell Chris that I want to spend the afternoon doing some more sightseeing—in Basel, and hours train ride away. She’s not happy with this, but reluctantly goes along. We walk back to the main station and take the 1520 train to Basel via Baden, Frick and Rheinfelden, including a run along the left bank of the Rhine. This proves to be a Euro-City train heading for Brussels, and is partly composed of Belgian carriages. We, however, ride in an SBB 1^st-class car at the rear of the train.

Zurich Hauptbahnhof (HB) has a magnificent headhouse to the east of 18 platforms covered by an overall roof, with two additional platforms underground at one side, and 4 additional platforms underground at the other side. There are also 4 shorter platforms outside on the south side, whose stub ends are further out than the main concourse. There is a large control tower on the south side of the main lines just west of the end of the platforms. There are storage tracks and maintenance depots on both the north and south sides of the tracks. The line to Basel heads west out of Zurich, passing through the junctions with the line south to the lakeshore and north towards the airport and beyond, and then Zurich Altstetten and Schlieren, The line then turns northwest through Dietikon and Killwangen-Spreitenbach, where the line to Olten leaves to the west.

Continuing northwest, we pass through Neuenhof and Wettingen, and then a tunnel due north into the spa and resort of Baden. Leaving Baden, the line turns west through Turgi and into the Aare valley at Brugg. At a multi-way junction west of the station, our train takes the north leg, and turns west again up the west side of the Aare valley through Villmachern, jogs south along the valley side to Schinznach Dorf and then turns northwest through a tunnel that takes it away from the Aare valley to reach Effingen. Continuing northwest, the line passes through Hornussen, Frick and Eichen before reaching the Rhine valley at Stein-Sackingen. The line now turns west, following the left bank of the Rhine through Mumpf, Möhlin, and Rheinfelden, to Pratteln, where the line from Olten trails in from the southeast. The line continues through Muttenz, with large marshaling yards on both side of the line, followed by curves through complex junctions with line north to Germany and southwest to the northwest part of Switzerland, through which our train travels very slowly into Basel. Basel SBB station has 16 platforms under a massive barrel overall roof. Many local trains are EMUs; many medium-distance trains are push-pull with electric locomotives.

In Basel, we have to walk the length of the main platform to get to the exits, while those remaining on the train to head for France and Belgium are undergoing passport checks, and those headed for those countries from Basel are being held back after going through their own passport control. Outside the station, there are two possibilities of a street to take to get us to the street plan in the guidebook. I opt for the wrong one, thus taking 15 minutes to get to the center of town rather than ten. Once in the center of town, we follow the signs to the Minster and go inside. Because of the time constraint, we spend only a few minutes inside the building, including buying the guidebook in English to read later.

We then walk through the old part of town until I conclude that we need to head for the station to catch the train that we must catch in order to make the group dinner at the hotel this evening. Chris is unhappy with the speed at which I want to walk, especially since the weather is too hot for her this afternoon. However, we get to the station with a few minutes to spare before our train leaves. It is, however, almost full even in first class, and we are just able to find two seats at which to sit together on this bi-level stock. (The timing is such that this train operates as a commuter service between Basel and the towns along the line, including Zurich.) This train takes us through a wye just to the east of Olten and then through Aarau and Rupperswil on the way back to Zurich.

The line from Basel to Pratteln is the same as on the line through Brugg and Baden, on which we came in. From Pratteln, the line to Olten and Aarau turns south through Frankendorf-Fullinsdorg and Liestal, then generally east through Lausen, Itingen and Sissach, where a secondary line to Olten turns off to the south to climb up to the old Hauenstein Tunnel, then turns south itself at Gelterkinden and passes through Tecknau, the long Hauenstein Base Tunnel, the secondary line trails in again from the west, and the line reaches the double track wye at which the line to Olten turns west (and then south), and the line to Zurich turns east in the Aare valley.

The line now passes through Dulliken, Daniken, and Schönenwerd before reaching Aarau. At this multi-platform station, there are trains from a private railway, the meter-gauge Wyrental and Sujrentalbahn using platforms on the south side of the station. The line to Zurich continues through Rohr-Buchs, Rupperswil, where a line to Brugg departs to the northeast and our line turns southeast for a short while, Lenzburg, , where the line turns east again, Othmarsingen, where another line to Brugg departs to the north, and Mägenwil. Just west of Mellingen, a line through that station departs to the northeast and our line plunges into the Heitersberg Tunnel to emerge in the Limmat valley and rejoins the Baden line at Killwangen-Spreitenbach. The remainder of the route into Zurich is the same as we had taken earlier in the afternoon.

We’re back at the hotel in plenty of time for the group dinner (but the next train from Basel would not have been in time).

Out of the Mountains to Workaday Switzerland

Ever since the first few hours after our arrival in Switzerland, we have generally been either up in the mountains or in spaces surrounded by mountains, or both. This has made both for spectacular scenery and spectacular railway operations. Leaving Chur, however, we are headed not for another mountain resort or mountain railway, but for the main financial and industrial center of the county. This is a reminder that, while the high mountains that provide most of the scenic glories of Switzerland occupy more than half the land area of the country, they do not provide either the living spaces or the employment of the majority of the Swiss population.

The more northerly and westerly parts of the country, abutting on Germany and France rather than Italy and Austria, are the regions in which the famed Swiss expertise in mechanical engineering, and to a lesser extent in chemical engineering, are centered. In addition, the vast majority of Swiss farms are located in these more lowland (but certainly not ‘flatland’) areas, as are the majority of the population centers of the country.

We will spend the remainder of this trip exploring some of the more historical aspects, cultural as well as railway-related, of these more workaday parts of the country, including the day described above as well as the one to follow.

Wednesday, June 9^th, 2004

Zurich Tour, Zurich Trams

Today, we’re not going to ride on any train at all, but will ride on various Zurich trams. We start out the day at 8:30 am with a walking tour of the old town of Zurich. The guide for this tour is the same person who led the group’s walking tour of Luzern, which we were not able to participate in. The tour starts with a short walk west along Bahnhofstrasse to a small park with a statue of a local landowner. (The land was not built on when Bahnhofstrasse was built up because a felon had been hanged on that particular plot of land.) Then we cross the main street and head north through the side streets (which, unlike Bahnhofstrasse, have automobile traffic on them) to the central police station, which turns out to have a set of art deco murals on the walls of its cellars that were commissioned and painted in the 1920s and 1930s. After a walk east along the south bank of the River Limmat, we climb to the top of a small hill (the aptly named Lindenhof) that was once covered in Linden trees (of which there are now only a few remaining). This hill affords a good view over the river and across north to the main part of old town Zurich, across the river. After a visit to nearby St. Peter’s church, where an organ is being played, we descend through the old streets on the south side of the river, including taking a passageway where Roman ruins are exposed, then through a square adjacent to the river to a bridge on which we cross the river, passing the Zurich Town Hall on the way across.

On the north side of the river, we walk up several cobblestone streets among houses and shops from the 15^th-century or so, stopping to look in the window of a shop (not a pet shop) that has two live cats visible! We also pass a large model railway shop on the way to a museum that has a scale model of Zurich as it looked before modern development started to change its appearance. From this museum, we walk back down a different set of cobblestone streets to the cathedral, while hearing about its association with Ulrich Zwingli the Zurich Reformer. The cathedral has two different towers because of fire damage to one, and has a tenth-century status of Charlemagne in the crypt. A replica of that statue reposes high on the south wall of the south tower. We then cross the river again, on a different bridge, to visit the Frauenmünster (women’s church), whose exterior is completely covered up for its ongoing restoration, but which has a magnificent set of stained glass windows done in the early 1970s by March Chagall that we view from the inside. We buy the guidebooks to the Frauenmünster, but not to the cathedral, indicating their relative architectural interest. The tour is now over, and we take the opportunity to shop at the English bookshop across Bahnhofstrasse from the hotel.

After lunch (from McDonald’s, eaten in our room), many members of the group accompany Werner on a visit to the Zurich Tramway museum, run by an enthusiasts group in a small former carbarn in a southwestern suburb of Zurich. We take a tram on line 13 from the Rennweg stop on Bahnhofstrasse near the hotel out to Wartau, running past the front of the Hauptbahnhof and then along its west side, angling away southwest and passing a number of major public transport interchanges along the way. Our enthusiast English-speaking guide is not yet present when we arrive, but soon gets off a tram (the next one behind ours) and pulls some of the old trams in the museum out onto the forecourt for our perusal. Inside the small old carbarn are some posters and placard explaining the history of trams in Zurich, all in German of course, which our guide does his best to interpret into English. The trams located here are among the very oldest tramcars that have run in Zurich (1890s), some of them painted for their original predecessor companies. Our guide is more at ease with explaining the characteristics of these old trams and the way they work than he was with the placards in the museum. The museum also has some preserved later model tramcars than these (all of which were built prior to 1910, whereas the collection has models built in at least the subsequent three decades). Of course, trams for the 1930s still ply the streets of Zurich on a daily basis, with somewhat older models (including the type nicknamed “elephant”) in use at peak periods. By the end of 2006, the museum will have moved to a much large carbarn now being vacated by the tramway, and will be able to put all of its tramcar collection on display.

After little more than an hour, we leave the museum and return to the hotel using a line 13 tram once again. (Actually, Chris and I go one stop further, to Paradeplatz, and then walk north to the Frauenmünster, since we have to exchange a guidebook supplied in French for the one in English that we thought we had bought.) On the way, there are several announcements (in German, of course) concerning trouble on some tram routes, and asking affected passengers to travel home using alternate routes, possibly including the S-bahn.  Since I don’t grasp the details, I find myself wondering if this problem will affect our evening tram tour.

At 6:30 pm, the entire group gathers in the hotel lobby to go out to the tram stop near the little park we had visited this morning (and adjacent to McDonald’s), where a little after 7 pm we will board a special tram outfitted as a restaurant, on which we will tour the city’s tramways while eating a group dinner. On the way from the hotel to the boarding location, Werner points out to me an “elephant” in rush-hour service. Our tram is a little late, but arrives safely and we board it for a wonderful ride and a sumptuous meal (once the crew understands that most of us don’t want to drink either alcohol or sparkling mineral water all evening long). The route we cover on this tour appears to be as follows:

• Line 13 east from our starting point to Bahnhof Enge
• Line 5 north across the end of the lake to Bellevue
• Lines 2 and 4 along the shore of the lake to the turnaround at Bahnhof Tiefenbrunnen and return
• Line 4 and 15 continuing from Bellevue to Central along the north bank of the river
• Line 6 north from Central via the University to the turnaround at the Zoo
  and return via line 5 as far as Kunsthaus
• Lines 3 & 8 from Kunsthaus to Romerhof
• Line 15 from Romerhof to Bahnhof Stadelhofen and again along the river bank to Central
• Line 7 from Central to Paradeplatz
• Line 11 from Paradeplatz to Burklplatz
• Line 5 again in the reverse direction from Burklplatz to Bahnhof Enge
• Line 6 to Stocker Strasse (the location where the street is torn up exposing the tram tracks)
• Line 8 to Stauffacher
• Line 14 to Bahnhofplatz and Stampenbachplatz
• South along the river to Central
• Line 11 to Rennweg where we leave the tram

So, the tour comes to a close. All that remains is to pack and get ready to return home in the morning.

There’s more to Zurich than Gnomes

My only previous visit to Switzerland had been a business visit to Geneva, Lausanne, Chur and Zurich in December, 1994. In Zurich, we stayed out by the airport, near where the company offices are, and visited austere financial institutions in the area west of the city center and south of the railway lines extending west out of the main station. In crossing between these locations, we once passed close enough to the Hauptbahnhof building for me to know what it was, but never saw any of the city center area, much less the historical parts along the Limmat.

On this trip, I was happy to find out that there are historical areas of the city well worth visiting—two of them, in fact, on either side of the Limmat rather more towards the lake than to the HBf area. Since Zurich was spared the depredations of the 20^th-century European wars (as was the rest of Switzerland), these historical areas are largely intact and retain their historical flavor as well as the fabric of the buildings. In addition, the university area, on its shelf above the north bank of the Limmat, seems to be an area of interest. As an example of city architecture, of course, the colonnades of Bern are unapproachable.

On the other hand, while the shopping area along Bahnhofstrasse is doubtless a good example of its genre, it is of no interest to me (or to Chris), and in spite of its pedestrian (and tram) only nature, seemed to be too crowded (and hot) for comfortable strolling. Part of this impression of heat stems from our descent from the mountains to the lower altitudes of Zurich, and part from having moved later in the spring to a time period approaching summer, both of which have led to higher temperatures than we had experienced in the previous couple of weeks. But I could have spent more time sitting at the top of the Lindenhof, under the trees, overlooking the activity along the river quays than we had time for. There is more of interest here than just the business-like financial center of international repute, but on balance I would prefer Luzern as a place to spend some time.

Thursday, June 10^th, 2004

Zurich to Zurich Airport and return to Los Angeles

Our flight is at 1 pm, so we make plans to leave the hotel around 9:30 or 10 am, to take a taxi to the Hauptbahnhof and a train out to the Zurich Airport station. We have breakfast (with no other tour members in sight), and say our goodbyes to Werner in the hotel lobby as we leave. He is headed home to Bonn on a Euro-City train leaving the station at 1 pm. Our taxi ride to the station is simple, and we’re able to catch a Euro-City train headed for Munich from a platform in the main station (rather than the S-Bahn platforms off to the side) for a comfortable 10 minute ride out to the airport, albeit some ten minutes later than the schedule advertised due to the late arrival of a connecting train in Zurich.

Date	Train Operator	Time	From-To	Train Stock	Loco
6-10-04	SBB (EC183)	0933	Zurich-Z. Flughafen	Single-level 1^st	450/460

No matter, we are in plenty of time for our flight. In fact, the gate isn’t even posted when we first check in, so although we can go through passport control we can’t actually go through security. So, we stop in a café and have some coffee or tea. Once our gate is posted, we go on through security and out to the gate. Here there is a large sign asking those with US passports to check in with US marshals at a table near an adjacent gate. We do this before taking seats at our gate. When boarding starts for our flight, it transpires that everyone headed for the US must check in with these US marshals, causing a rush of this with non-US passports over to their table.

Our flight takes off to the southeast, turns west and flies over Luzern, and then northwest over the Champagne country of France, up the very length of England (passing between Leeds and Ripon, so almost over the top of my sister, Jill, who lives just north of Leeds and out over the Atlantic Ocean off Scotland. We pass over Greenland’s icy mountains, over Labrador and northern Quebec’s frozen tundra, over icy Hudson’s Bay, just north of Winnipeg, across North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Las Vegas, Nevada, turning west for final approach to Los Angeles over Beaumont Pass. We’re on the ground an apparent 15 minutes early, but take 20 minutes to get to the gate. Nonetheless, we’re through immigration, through customs, on a taxi and home our five miles south of the airport by a little after 4:30 pm. Of course, this is 1:30 am on the time we had arisen on in Zurich, but it’s still broad, sunny daylight here.

What a glorious sixteen days (on the ground in Switzerland) it has been.