Bernina railway line

Interesting facts

In October 2011 the Bernina line became the first railway in the world to be photographed for Google Street View.

The line was built mainly to serve hydroelectric plants south of the pass and was financed by the power company's investors, without cantonal subsidy.

Trains were originally meant to run only in summer; year-round service began in the winter of 1913 to 1914 and required many new avalanche barriers.

The original Bernina railway company teetered near bankruptcy for decades, and in 1943 it was taken over by the Rhaetian Railway.

Between the Bernina Pass and Tirano the line drops about 1,824 metres, all without a rack, making it the highest adhesion railway in Europe.

A steam rotary snowplough built in 1913 is still brought out in winter, drawing railway enthusiasts from around the world.

To control avalanches in late winter, the railway has artillery fired at the slopes where slides typically start.

At Pontresina one platform track has overhead wiring that can switch between alternating and direct current, letting trains from two electrical systems share it.

In the village of Le Prese the line runs down the street like a tram, and at Madonna di Tirano it crosses the main square.

The RhB later straightened the scenic but avalanche-prone curves on the pass's north ramp, yet the old trackbed can still be seen in the mountains.

Why it is worth it

The Bernina line is the railway that proves a train can climb like a mountain road. Running 60.7 km from St. Moritz in the Engadine to Tirano in Italy's Valtellina, it crosses the Alps over the Bernina Pass without a single rack section, relying on adhesion alone on gradients of up to 7 percent, among the steepest of any conventional railway in the world. Opened in stages from 1908 and completed in July 1910, it runs on metre gauge with 1,000-volt overhead wires, operated by the Rhaetian Railway. In 2008 it was inscribed together with the Albula line as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Rhaetian Railway in the Albula/Bernina landscapes.

What makes the ride exceptional is how much of the high Alps it shows in a short distance. From the Engadine the line passes the Montebello curve, where the Morteratsch Glacier and the Bernina massif open up across the valley, then climbs to Ospizio Bernina at 2,253 m, the highest point, beside the pale waters of Lago Bianco. The lake sits on the divide between the Danube and Po basins: rain that falls on one side reaches the Black Sea, on the other the Adriatic. Just beyond, Alp Grüm stands at the tree line as the last station before the language changes to Italian, and from there the track drops in a series of loops and hairpins towards the Valposchiavo far below.

The most photographed piece of engineering is near the bottom. At Brusio the line loses height by turning a full circle on a curving stone spiral viaduct, a structure that has become the emblem of the whole route. The panoramic Bernina Express covers the line alongside the ordinary regional trains, and the contrast it offers, from glacier ice to the Italian valley floor at Tirano within a single morning, is hard to match anywhere in Europe.

Getting there

The line runs between St. Moritz in Switzerland and Tirano in Italy; Sondrio, the capital of the Valtellina, is about 29 km from the Italian end, and Il Caravaggio International Airport at Bergamo (BGY) is some 86 km away in a straight line. Trenord RegioExpress trains link Milano Centrale with Tirano via Lecco and Sondrio in about two and a half hours, and regional trains between Sondrio and Tirano take around 40 minutes. From Tirano the journey over the pass to St. Moritz takes about two and a half hours.

From the encyclopaedia

The Bernina railway line is a single-track 1,000 mm metre gauge railway line forming part of the Rhaetian Railway (RhB). It links the spa resort of St. Moritz, in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, with the town of Tirano, in the Province of Sondrio, Italy, via the Bernina Pass. Reaching a height of 2,253 metres (7,392 ft) above sea level, it is the highest railway crossing in Europe and the third-highest railway in Switzerland. It also ranks as the highest adhesion railway of the continent, and—with inclines of up to 7%—as one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world. The elevation difference on the section between the Bernina Pass and Tirano is 1,824 m (5,984 ft), allowing passengers to view glaciers along the line.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Bernina railway line

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia