To celebrate the 175th anniversary of Switzerland's first railway, the country's rail industry came together to run the world's longest-ever passenger train.
High in the Swiss Alps, St Moritz made its name as a place for pushing the boundaries of winter sport. By the time it hosted the second Winter Olympics Games in 1928 its reputation as a playground for wealthy adventurers was already well established.
Like the legendary Cresta Run toboggan track, the Albula Line is famous for its endless swooping curves and steep descents. A world-renowned masterpiece of civil engineering, the 62-kilometer line between Thusis and St Moritz took just five years to build despite requiring 55 bridges and 39 tunnels. The record attempt was organized by the Rhaetische Bahn , supported by Swiss train-builder Stadler, and is perhaps even more astonishing for taking place on a narrow gauge railway.
"We all know the Albula Line very well, every change of gradient, every incline," said lead driver Andreas Kramer, 46, ahead of the big day."It goes without saying that we're going through the process again and again." Specially modified software and an intercom between the seven drivers allowed the 25 trains to work in harmony. Any mismatch in acceleration or deceleration during the journey would have exerted unacceptably high forces on tracks and power supplies, creating a major safety issue.
Three satellite uplinks, 19 cameras in drones and helicopters, on the train and along the track filmed the train, providing a unique record of this once-in-a-lifetime event. This alone was a major challenge in a remote, mountainous region with limited mobile telecoms coverage.Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
They traveled 19.7 billion passenger kilometers by rail in 2019, the last"normal" year before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021 this fell to 12.5 billion passenger kilometers but as Switzerland celebrates 175 years since its first railway opened between Zürich and Baden, ridership is well on the way back to pre-pandemic levels.So high are the expectations of public transport users in Switzerland that even a small delay is a source of quiet dissatisfaction.
Decades of long-term investment have created a core network of intensively used main lines linking all the country's major cities. Feeding into this are high-frequency S-Bahn systems around the biggest cities plus regional and local railway lines, tramways and mountain railways, many of which provide a critical link to the outside world for rural and upland communities.
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