The Glacier Express is a 291 km train journey between the two mountain resorts of St Moritz and Zermatt, which respectively serve Piz Bernina and the Matterhorn, in the Swiss Alps. The train ride takes almost 8 hours and en route it crosses some 291 bridges and passes through 91 tunnels. The service was first operated in 1930 and is marketed as a tourist attraction carrying more than 250,000 passengers each year. It is particularly notable for numerous spiral sections including turn tunnels, high bridges and viaducts, some very long tunnels (including the 15 km Furka Base Tunnel), large sections of rack railway and the crossing of the Oberalp Pass at 2033 metres altitude. A section of the original route at the Furka Pass, which was bypassed in 1982, is operated as a steam heritage railway. The entire route of the Glacier Express over several separate railways is on metre gauge lines. It rates as one of the world’s great train journeys.
Here is a map showing the entire route. This first part of this series covers the journey on the Albula Railway from Sankt Moritz to Thusis which is the first 60 km of the trip.
Here is the journey in more detail with a series of maps. In order to help fill in the details I recommend the Map SwitzerlandMobility online topos. These have much better detail than Google Maps which contains many glaring inaccuracies and I would never have been able to fill in much of the detail without the topos.
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| The journey begins at Sankt Moritz at 1775 metres altitude on the shore of Lake Sankt Moritz. Sankt Moritz is known as the home of the Winter Olympics of 1928/1948 and many subsequent sporting championships. This line is called the Albula Railway. | Heading north some 7 km the line turns west at Bever (a junction), climbing to Spinas where it encounters the 5.8 km Albula Tunnel, dropping down to exit at Preda. The gradient is about 1 in 31, comparable to our Otira Tunnel. |
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| Between Preda and Muot the line drops 203 metres in a track distance of 6 km. In order to help achieve this there are two complete spirals in this section, the first of which is a spectacular double spiral. In all, there are 5 tunnels and 4 major viaducts in the section. | A similar rate of descent is needed between Muot and Bergün/Bravuogn which is partly accomplished by this spectacular series of horseshoe curves with the track crossing under itself in a tunnel. The Val Tisch is a 100 metre viaduct in this section. |
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| The descent continues to Filisur where another spiral is encountered and the train passes through 13 tunnels. | Shortly after the railway junction at Filisur the line passes through the Landwasser Tunnel exiting onto the spectacular curved Landwasser Viaduct, a 136 metre long limestone structure which is 65 metres high and is on a radius of 100 metres. |
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| Just outside Solis the train crosses the 164 metre Solis Viaduct which is also of limestone and is 89 metres high. | Between Solis and Thusis the route traverses 10 tunnels in 8 km. Just outside Thusis is the 228 metre Hinterrhein viaduct (shown). On reaching Thusis the train has descended to altitude 697 metres having lost almost 400 metres since Filisur. The line in between has grades of up to 1 in 26 (about the same as the Roa or Rewanui inclines in NZ). |
Well that’s Part 1. The next part covers the Oberalp section with the eponymous pass at 2033 metres.
