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Spectacular, and Then Some

Written by Tony Hiss
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Bernina Express southbound through the Swiss Alps, from St. Moritz to Tirano, Italy. (Photo© Rhaetian Railway)

The Bernina Express, a cheery, cherry-red Swiss train, bills itself as “the most spectacular way to cross the Alps,” but on a ride I took this summer from St. Moritz down to Tirano in Italy, I found even this oversize boast inadequate.

The Bernina Railway, a narrow-gauge, single-track railway more than a century old, has been electrified since day one, so its operations don’t pollute or add carbon to the air—that’s a whole lot of avoided emissions from coal and diesel fumes counting back to 1910. The track alignment embraces its steep mountain landscape rather than erasing or displacing it, celebrating, not severing, every contour change, and resting so lightly on the ground it seems to leave behind only a whisper of its presence instead of carving scars that don’t heal.

These are accomplishments and skills the world will need as it rethinks transportation that can stand up to climate change and fend off an enormous loss of other species. True, the Bernina line is only 37 miles long, and there are more than 800,000 miles of track and 40 million miles of roads elsewhere on the planet. But excellence is where you find it. This isn’t just an excursion line: It’s a full-service, year-round railroad with freight trains and hourly local passenger trains with an Infrastructure Division always alert to possible disruptions due to avalanches or landslides.

Yes, the Bernina Pass through the Alps is spectacular. In less than two and a half hours, the Bernina Express first ascends to the pass’s summit, climbing 2,100 feet, or higher than One World Trade Center in Manhattan, before descending about 6,000 feet, or nearly the depth of the Grand Canyon—it’s become something of a travel writing cliché to call this drop a “glaciers to palm trees” plunge.

Looking out to the Palü Glacier: one of the breath-catching views near the summit of the Bernina Pass. (Photo by Lois Metzger)

Just outside St. Moritz, the train skirts the Stazerwald, a forested park and nature sanctuary, and just beyond, a hiking and bike path parallels the train in front of dense stands of long-lived, aromatic, dark-green Swiss stone pine and tall, stately larch, whose needles turn golden and are shed in the fall. The bleak, stark, rocky sweep of the summit is itself above the tree line. The views just beyond the Bernina Pass summit—to one side, a glimpse of the long valley leading down and down and down to Italy, and on the other, an Alpine meadow that stretches up toward the ancient Palü Glacier, retreating but still formidable. The glacier, crouched on a high peak, trails a distinct, white meltwater stream that dives across the meadow in a long line of cascading waterfalls you can trace with an outstretched finger.

Electrification makes possible the Bernina line’s many hillside acrobatics. The neighboring Albula Railway, on the north side of the same peaks and completed only seven years earlier, was built for steam engines, which need to stay fairly level as they move. That line relies on tall arched viaducts and magnificent curved and even spiral tunnels tucked into the mountains themselves to keep the ascents gradual—precision tunneling was the great engineering innovation of the pre-electrification generation.

Whereas on the electrified Bernina line, it was possible to use lighter-weight equipment that can exuberantly twist around tighter turns and negotiate 7% grades, twice as steep as any on the Albula Line. A 7% grade on a ski slope is so gentle it’s set aside for instructing beginners, but on a railroad it’s about the limit of what any train not equipped with a cogwheel drive can handle before losing its grip, slipping backward on uphill runs or lurching forward out of control on a descent.

The large, pioneering hydroelectric plant down near the Italian border that shaped the Bernina line and supplies its power also almost robbed it of much of its preindustrial charm. The original idea was that the power plant would be the perfect site for a cluster of electrochemical factories. When that plan fell through, most of the generated power instead got sent out of the country to growing manufacturing districts in northern Italy. As a result, the Bernina line threads its way among what are still small unindustrialized villages, occasionally entering them and running comfortably through traffic on the main street as if masquerading as a streetcar.

All of which sets the stage to introduce the Bernina Express’s specially built, unsurpassed and truly exhilarating observation cars, or “panorama cars,” as they’re known in Europe. Swiss timetables have recently started including a small graphic for any train with observation cars: an open triangle with its top blacked in. I’m not sure of the symbolism here—maybe not as obvious as a crossed knife and fork for a restaurant car—but after a ride on the Bernina Express, I can see that this logo needs refinement. There are observation cars and then there are Bernina observation cars, which deserve at least an “!” or perhaps a halo or a thunderbolt.

My hunch is there’s a subliminal infusion of mid-20th-century American swagger in the Bernina design, specifically the influence of Harley Earl, then head of the General Motors Art Department. His 1951 dream car, the Le Sabre, brought jet fighter plane glamor to post-war American automobiles (completely ignoring railroads, by the way), and helped introduce the tailfin and the wraparound windshield, curved at either end. A popular European panorama car has tall, straight-up windows surmounted by a second, small “eyebrow” window, or transom window, set at a slant into the car’s roof.

Post-World War II glamour: The 1951 General Motors LeSabre made popular the wraparound window and the tailfin. (Public Domain Photo)

But on the Bernina line, the windows are more like two-thirds of an American wraparound windshield turned 90 degrees to point at the sky, curved at the top to reach uninterruptedly into the roof. There are five facing pairs of these windows in first-class Bernina Express panorama cars, seven in second-class. Each car is only eight and two-thirds wide. The effect is like sitting inside a small, slender Gothic chapel that has become capable of motion.

Bernina Express souvenir, with heart-shaped Lindt chocolates inside. (Photo by Jacob Hiss)

More remarkable still, from inside the cars, the railway line itself has completely disappeared: The lone overhead catenary wire is hidden by what’s left of the roof, and the single-track, narrow-gauge right-of-way is so slim and demure there’s no visible sign of any human intervention into the countryside. The landscape seems so close, so right there, it’s as though you could reach down and pick the wildflowers growing alongside, or in the villages snatch clothes right off clotheslines. At moments like these, senses come alive, awareness is sharpened, wonder creeps back in—it’s like waking up while already awake, and feels like the real point of travel, something that only emerges somewhere between travel’s traditional goalposts, Point A and Point B.

Summer 2022: The writer onboard the Glacier Express. (Photo by Lois Metzger)

The Glacier Express is another famous, narrow-gauge Swiss alpine train. It takes most of a day to cross the gorgeous high country from Zermatt to St. Moritz. It proudly calls itself “the slowest express train in the world,” and offers panorama car travelers second-class, first-class, or “excellence class” tickets. A wonderful name, but so far what this seems to mean is a larger chair to sink into and eat food in, specifically an exceptional but almost endless seven-course meal served at the wrong time of day (lunchtime). Let’s save “excellence class” as the term for trips that offer safety, comfort, and convenience – and the chance to wake up while already awake.

Tony Hiss is the author of fifteen books, including “All Aboard with E. M. Frimbo, World’s Greatest Railroad Buff” (with Rogers E. M. Whitaker) and most recently “Rescuing the Planet: Protecting Half the Land to Heal the Earth” (now in paperback).

Summer 1978: The writer and his mentor, E. M. Frimbo, onboard the Chessie Steam Special. (Photographer unknown)
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