Snowdon Summit #2
Once upon a time, there was a grand summit building atop the summit of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa.) It was built in the 1930s by the noted Welsh architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, whose Portmeirion village is famous the world over. By the 1990s had become something of a disreputable place and the…
Rails – to the Moon
Sylvester Marsh was a New England entrepreneur whose proposed mountain line received considerable ridicule when the idea was put forward in the late 1850s – for it was seen as a ‘railway to the moon!’ People thought the idea most inconceivable and it was a struggle for Marsh to get…
Snowdon summit
Wales’ highest railway station is at the summit of Snowdon (3560 feet/1085 metres) where for many years there was essentially a proper station with ticket office and waiting rooms, plus semaphore signals and point rodding, levers, etc, all the ‘mod cons’ needed to make the site every inch a true…
Rhätische Bahn sets a record!
The Rhaetian Railway established a record for the world’s longest narrow gauge passenger train and exploited the scenic abilities of one of its best lines through the Alps for that attempt. The company ran the 1.9-kilometre-long train composed of 100 coaches on its UNESCO heritage world famous Albula line between…
Swiss rack lines’ new trains
The Pilatus, Rigi and Gornergrat rack railways recently got some very smart looking and futuristic new stock. The designs are a radical departure from the classic look that has been a feature of the Swiss rack lines for years. Even when the Wengernalp and Jungfrau Bahn acquired new stock a…
Pilatus Bahn 130 #3
How did the mountain get its name? How did Pilatus get its name? There are various claims, the biggest of all is that its named after the Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. His cursed body simply refused to stay buried so the Romans brought it here around AD/CE 37-39. In…
Pilatus Bahn 130 #2
How a railway was built up Pilatus: This continues from the first part of the Pilatusbahn feature celebrating its 130th anniversary. No doubt the idea of a railway up Pilatus has a fairly substantial history. The earliest was a sort of wooden tramroad, or rolling railway, which transported logs and…
Pilatus Bahn 130
The Pilatus Bahn at 130. Switzerland’s famous rack railway and the steepest example in the world opened to the public on 4th June 1889. The line uses a unique patent of rack rail devised by Eduard Locher who realised the normal types of rack railway would not be able to…
Rossfeld Panoramic Road – (location for the Sound of Music’s final scenes)
The Rossfeld Panoramic Road (Roßfeldpanoramastraße) is a mountain pass with a fame that isn’t often mentioned – and no, its not the infamy of those who built the road in the first place…. Wikipedia says of the mountain route: ‘The toll road leads over the Hossfeld, a northern foothill of…