Vitznau–Rigi railway

Interesting facts

It was only the second mountain rack railway in the world, preceded solely by the Mount Washington Cog Railway in the United States.

With its summit station at 1,752 metres, the Rigi line ranks as the highest standard-gauge railway in Europe, and the highest railway in both the cantons of Lucerne and Schwyz.

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.

The last stretch to Rigi Kulm lies in Schwyz, where the railway had no concession, so it used track leased from its rival on the other slope.

For over a century the two Rigi railways ran side by side to the summit as competitors, linked only by a transfer table outside their shared depot.

A track connecting the two lines was not laid at Rigi Staffel until 1990, two years before the companies merged.

In its early years the railway ran only in summer; winter services came later as skiing and winter tourism developed on the mountain.

The section between Freibergen and Rigi Kaltbad has been double-tracked since 1874, letting trains pass each other on the climb.

On the way up the train crosses the 80-metre Schnurtobel bridge over a ravine and passes through the 67-metre Schwanden tunnel.

Why it is worth it

On 21 May 1871 a small steam train pushed its way up from the shore of Lake Lucerne towards the Rigi, and Europe had its first mountain railway. The engineers behind it — Niklaus Riggenbach, Ferdinand Adolf Naeff and Olivier Zschokke — used a rack system that Riggenbach had developed: a toothed rail between the running rails, into which a cogwheel on the locomotive meshes, allowing trains to climb gradients far beyond the reach of ordinary railways. The line from Vitznau reached the summit station of Rigi Kulm in June 1873, and its success helped launch the age of the rack railway in the Alps.

The Rigi was the natural place to start. By the 19th century it was already famous as the "Queen of the Mountains", a massif rising between the lakes of Lucerne, Zug and Lauerz, with a summit hotel at Rigi Kulm since 1816. Goethe had climbed it in 1775, Turner painted it in the blue light of dawn, and Mark Twain described the ritual of the Rigi sunrise in A Tramp Abroad. The railway turned what had been an expedition on foot or horseback into an excursion, and grand hotels multiplied across the mountain.

The line is about 7 km long and climbs from 435 m at Vitznau to 1,752 m at Rigi Kulm, on gradients of up to 25 percent, taking around half an hour. Leaving the lakeshore, the train climbs through meadows and woods, past Freibergen and the resort of Rigi Kaltbad, while the lake falls away below and the Alps rise across it. The line was electrified in 1937, but the railway still runs its historic steam locomotives on special trips, including the historic locomotive No. 7, so that the sound of 1871 can still be heard on the mountain. Since 1992 the line has been operated together with the Arth–Rigi railway on the mountain's other side.

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.

Getting there

The valley station is at Vitznau on the shore of Lake Lucerne, served by the boats of the Lake Lucerne Navigation Company from Lucerne and by bus and road. The nearest larger town is Zug, about 18 km away; Zurich Airport (ZRH) lies about 50 km to the north.

From the encyclopaedia

The Vitznau–Rigi railway line is a Swiss standard gauge rack railway that runs from Vitznau on the shore of Lake Lucerne to Rigi. It was built in 1871 by the Rigibahn, and is now owned by Rigi Railways, along with the Arth–Rigi railway line, which runs on the other side of the mountain, and the Weggis–Rigi Kaltbad cable car.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Vitznau–Rigi railway

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia