The Most Spectacular Rack Railways in Switzerland
6 places · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most spectacular rack railways in Switzerland are Gornergrat Railway, Jungfrau Railway and Pilatus railway. The list covers 6 rack railways. Last updated 5 October 2026.
Switzerland is where the mountain railway came of age. In the late nineteenth century, as the Alps became a magnet for travellers, Swiss engineers developed the rack-and-pinion systems, named after Riggenbach, Abt, Strub and Locher, that let trains climb gradients no ordinary wheel could grip. Lines were driven up to summits and high passes chosen for their views, and many of them still run on the routes laid out more than a century ago, making the railway itself a way to reach the high Alps.
The Vitznau–Rigi railway, opened in 1871, was the first mountain railway in Europe, climbing from Lake Lucerne to the summit of the Rigi. Across the lake, the Pilatus railway is the steepest rack railway in the world, with gradients of up to 48 percent, made possible by a special horizontal cog system. In the Valais, the Gornergrat Railway climbs from Zermatt to a ridge above 3,000 metres facing the Matterhorn and a great ring of glaciers.
In the Bernese Oberland, three lines work together. The Wengernalp Railway, the longest continuous rack railway in the world, runs from Lauterbrunnen over Kleine Scheidegg to Grindelwald beneath the north face of the Eiger. From Kleine Scheidegg the Jungfrau Railway tunnels through the Eiger and the Mönch to the Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe. And the Brienz Rothorn Railway climbs above Lake Brienz, most of its trains still pulled by steam locomotives.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gornergrat Railway | Rack railway | |
| 2 | Jungfrau Railway | Rack railway | |
| 3 | Pilatus railway | Rack railway | |
| 4 | Wengernalp Railway | Rack railway | |
| 5 | Vitznau–Rigi railway | Rack railway | |
| 6 | Brienz Rothorn Railway | Rack railway |
01 Gornergrat Railway
Gornergratbahn
Switzerland · 38.8 km from Sion46.024° N 7.750° E
Kabelleger / David Gubler ( http://www.bahnbilder.ch ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 At the top, the view takes in 29 peaks above 4,000 metres, the Monte Rosa massif, the Gorner Glacier, among the longest in the Alps, spilling down below, and, on a clear day, the Matterhorn. The summit station has a hotel and an observatory, and the ridge is a starting point for high walks in summer and skiing in winter.
Did you know? The track is 9,339 metres long, including 3,790 metres of double track, and it gains about 1,469 metres in height.
02 Jungfrau Railway
Jungfraubahn
Switzerland46.585° N 7.961° E
Salamanamanjaro ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The journey has its own set pieces. At Eismeer, trains stop long enough for passengers to look out through windows cut into the east face of the Eiger, over a chaos of crevassed ice. Near the old Eigerwand station a person-sized tunnel opening called the Stollenloch leads directly out onto the Eiger's north face. The line is also a technical curiosity: it is one of very few railways in the world still powered by three-phase current, which is why its trains carry two pantographs. At the top, the Jungfraujoch holds a research station and the Sphinx Observatory, and the high Alpine landscape around it belongs to a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Did you know? An earlier 1869 scheme proposed a pneumatic railway and sledge rides behind reindeer or polar dogs across the Aletsch Glacier.
03 Pilatus railway
Pilatusbahn
Switzerland · 6.8 km from Sarnen46.956° N 8.277° E
SchmalspurDVZO · CC BY-SA 4.0 The line has no ordinary points: cars are shifted between tracks on turntables and traversers, and the rails sit directly on the rock, anchored without ballast. Some of the original rack rails are still in use, having simply been turned over when their teeth wore down. New energy-efficient railcars built by Stadler entered service in 2023. The railway runs seasonally, roughly from May to October; a cable car approaching from the other side of the mountain runs year-round apart from a short maintenance break.
Did you know? The line opened with eleven steam railcars, each combining a boiler and passenger compartment in a single vehicle.
04 Wengernalp Railway
Wengernalpbahn
Switzerland46.576° N 7.944° E
Kabelleger · CC BY-SA 4.0 The railway belongs to the Jungfrau group of companies, and at Kleine Scheidegg passengers change to the Jungfrau Railway, which tunnels through the Eiger to the Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe. In winter the Wengernalp line serves the ski slopes around Wengen and Grindelwald. In practice trains run in two sections, from each valley up to Kleine Scheidegg, and most travellers combine both halves into a loop.
Did you know? A turntable at Kleine Scheidegg was replaced in 1947 by a triangular junction whose tail track runs 110 metres into the mountain in a tunnel.
05 Vitznau–Rigi railway
Bahnstrecke Vitznau–Rigi Kulm
Switzerland · 10.1 km from Stans47.010° N 8.483° E
Image by Sarah_Loetscher from Pixabay At the top, Rigi Kulm opens one of the great panoramas of Switzerland: the chain of the Alps along the southern horizon, and on the lower side the lakes spread out like a map.
Did you know? A small rack line in the Ostermundigen quarry near Bern ran in 1870, a year earlier, though for marketing reasons it was only officially opened in October 1871.
06 Brienz Rothorn Railway
Brienz-Rothorn-Bahn
Switzerland · 20 km from Sarnen46.787° N 8.037° E
Johnw · Public domain The line has had its setbacks: it closed at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 and stayed shut for seventeen years until June 1931. Since then it has run every summer season, and the arrival at the top is the reward for its persistence — a broad panorama over Lake Brienz and the surrounding mountains of the Bernese Oberland, from a ridge that feels remote even though the valley station is less than an hour away.
Did you know? The original steam engines have steeply tilted boilers, a so-called kneeling cow design, so that the boiler sits level on the gradient.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most spectacular rack railways in Switzerland?
- On our list, Gornergrat Railway ranks first, followed by Jungfrau Railway and Pilatus railway.
- What is the steepest rack railway in the world?
- The Pilatus railway near Lucerne, opened in 1889, with a maximum gradient of 48 percent. It uses the Locher system, with horizontal cogwheels gripping a rack from both sides.
- What is the highest railway station in Europe?
- Jungfraujoch, at 3,454 metres, the terminus of the Jungfrau Railway, which opened to the summit station in 1912 after sixteen years of construction.
- What was the first mountain railway in Europe?
- The Vitznau–Rigi railway, which opened in 1871 on the Rigi above Lake Lucerne. It was built by Niklaus Riggenbach, whose rack system it uses.
- How many rack railways are on this list in Switzerland?
- The list covers 6 rack railways.