Hello and Grüezi!
It’s February 2020, back in the days when international travel was still a thing,
and I’m at a railway station in Switzerland.
Now as you may have spotted,
two of my favourite things to make a video about are railways and mountains
but usually I’m forced to choose one or the other,
because like James May says, trains can’t really go up hills.
Or can they?
Here in Switzerland they don’t really listen to me or James May.
Welcome to Europe’s Highest Railway.
This is Interlaken, a traditional Alpine resort town that sits at the bottom of the majestic
Bernese Alps,
and nestles between two beautiful lakes
– which is frankly the minimum number of beautiful lakes you’d expect from a town
whose name literally means "between lakes".
Interlaken calls itself the Swiss capital of adventure sports
and you can try hang-gliding, skydiving,
and all kinds of other ways to overpay for some fleeting excitement,
which is why we’ve come to the railway station.
Where we’re going to overpay for a whole day of excitement.
This is the Berner Oberland Bahn, also known as the BOB.
And while most trains leaving Interlaken head either east or west to follow the gentle route
along the valley,
this one turns directly south and heads straight at the mountain.
The BOB has been doing this since 1890,
when steam engines would fight their way up to the terminus of Grindelwald at a height
of 1034m.
For British viewers, that’s nearly 3 times higher than the highest National Rail station;
for Dutch viewers, that’s the highest hill you’ve ever seen
multiplied by 1034;
and for Swiss viewers, that’s nothing, so we’re going to get off at Lauterbrunnen
and change onto a train that goes much higher.
And that means getting on the yellow and green train of the Wengernalpbahn.
This thing does not mess around.
I said it was a train but it almost feels like we’re taking off.
And as you can imagine the views are about to get pretty special.
Construction work on the Wengernalpbahn started in 1891, the year after the BOB opened, and
it was completed a year later.
To get up these incredibly steep gradients it uses a rack-and-pinion system,
in other words there is a cogwheel underneath the train
that engages with the teeth of a serrated third rail to give it extra grip and traction,
which of course also helps with safety on the way back down.
It’s a system used by many mountain railways around the world; this one is the longest.
And one of the reasons the Wengernalpbahn is so long is that it doesn’t just go up
the mountain,
it also goes back down the other side.
So we’re getting off in the middle, 2061m above sea level, at Kleine Scheidegg,
partly because it’s the highest station on the Wengernalpbahn,
but mostly because it’s the lowest station
on the railway that we’ve actually come to see.
And this is it. The Jungfraubahn.
It's named after the Jungfrau mountain, which is that beast up there,
and in the most literal way possible,
I think you can see where this is going.
The railway was the brainchild of a Swiss entrepreneur called Adolf Guyer-Zeller,
who received planning permission for it in 1894,
two years after the completion of the Wengernalpbahn.
And what he had been permitted to do was completely insane.
This map of the project from 1903 shows the already completed section up to the Eiger glacier,
followed by the start of a tunnel as far as the temporary Rothstock station at 2520m.
From here the plan was to continue tunnelling through solid Alpine rock,
under the Eiger itself to Eismeer station at 3153m
where a window would be cut out of the side of the mountain
just so passengers could stop and admire the view.
And then the tunnel would barrel upwards, underneath the Monch,
and through a station at Jungfraujoch,
before finally reaching a terminus directly below the summit of the Jungfrau,
where a lift (or an elevator, for American viewers) would pop passengers out above ground
at a record-breaking 4166m above sea level.
Now I famously love climbing mountains but these altitudes are something else.
By the time we get to the even first station I am already on higher and possibly colder
ground than I have ever been before;
and these guys are up here building a railway.
In a tunnel.
Through solid rock.
Upwards.
In the 1890s.
Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.
Guyer-Zeller was a visionary and a pioneer.
Or in other words,
he was a man with a ludicrous money-making idea and just happened to be rich enough already
that he could get other people to make it happen even if it was going to kill some of them.
In the end sadly Adolf himself went first, dying of a heart attack in 1899,
and he never saw the completion of his dream.
But on the plus side he avoided having to face some increasingly dissatisfied employees,
who went on strike on 6 separate occasions,
and at one point management tried to reduce staff turnover among the mostly Italian workforce
with a bottle of red wine per worker
per day.
Progress doesn’t seem to have accelerated after this, and money began to run out,
and in 1912, 16 years into a 7 year project,
it was decided that the railway would be cut short
and construction would stop here at Jungfraujoch.
Which was still, and is still, the highest railway station in Europe.
And yes, that means Europe’s Highest Railway station is, bizarrely, underground.
But it would be a shame to come all the way up here without seeing the view.
*generically epic music*
To be fair to Guyer-Zeller, his legacy is not just a money-making tourist trap.
The railway opened the door for all kinds of scientists to come up here
and do high-altitude research into important stuff like astronomy, meteorology, glaciers
and medicine.
And even if you are just a tourist, it is pretty incredible to experience the mountains
in a way that’s normally reserved only for serious mountaineers
with serious mountaineering equipment.
But now I’ll have to leave you there
because I’ve got some very important scientific research to do.
If you’d like to travel on Europe’s Highest Railway,
and visit Europe’s highest Indian restaurant,
or several other of Europe’s highest things,
a return ticket from Interlaken costs about 200€
200€?!
How on arse does it cost that much for a 23km train journey?
Er right sorry everyone,
normally the whole point of this channel is to show you things that are free or at least
affordable for you to do
and I didn’t actually realise quite how pricey this was when I planned my trip.
Anyway, you can get 50% off with a Swiss Half Fare Card which is worth buying if you’re
making literally any other trips in Switzerland.
I now need about a hundred billion views on this video just to make my money back,
so thank you for watching,
please share it with 1000 of your closest friends,
and I’ll see you soon.