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.

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