Europe is known for its mountain ranges and for its extensive web of rail networks that spans the continent. In that web are some two-thirds of the world’s mountain railways, lines that employ special technologies to climb and descend steep grades. And mainlines crisscross landscapes at lesser grades.
It’s long been that way. Many of today’s rail lines that take people to mountains are among the oldest in continuous service. My favorite three, now celebrating their centennials, are the Train Jaune in France, the Jungfrau Line in Switzerland and the Bergen Line in Norway.
The Train Jaune (“Yellow Train”) is named for the color of its rolling stock, one of the two of the flag of Catalonia through which it runs, connecting the mountain towns of the Pyrenees with the cities of the flatlands to the east. It’s a narrow-gauge line, yet technically not a mountain railway, as it works on conventional rail traction alone. But the building of it, from 1903 to 1910, required solving all the problems of mountain-line construction save grade. The tectonic claw that gave birth to the mountains left a comb of spurs and ravines that it had to cross, requiring 65 major civil engineering works, one for every six-tenths of a mile of its 39-mile length.
At the time, there were no power lines nearby, so power plants were built on the Têt River to supply it. Today, it’s a year-round tourist attraction, as well as a ski train, serving the Font-Romeu ski area complex. Motor vehicles on roads have taken over much of its original traffic, but it remains a commuter line. And when infrequent winter snows close roads, as they did in March 2010, it stays open, because it has plows, which are not commonplace road-maintenance gear in predominately sunny southern France.
The Jungfrau line is named for the peak above its end station at the Jungfraujoch. Though just 5.8 miles long from its valley-end station at Kleine Scheidegg, it probably is the most-known rail line in mountaineering, as it lies mostly in a tunnel that spirals upwards within the Eiger, the peak known for having one of the most awesome north faces of the Alps. Construction started in 1896 and finished in 1912, for the efficient Swiss, a long building period, due to the extensive tunnel works involved and due to the design and fitting of the cogwheel and rack traction that enables the trains to go up and down grades of up to 25 percent (an inclination of about 14 degrees).
The initial purpose of tourism remains, as the Jungfraujoch now has about half a million visitors per year. But it also has a scientific observatory and has become a center for mountaineering and Alpine skiing. The entire area around the Jungfrau now is a UNESCO World Heritage site, as it’s the most-glaciated part of the European Alps and has long been important in the art, literature and outdoor life of central Europe. The views are impressive in all directions, not least from the Eigerwand stop on the rail line, where you can stroll out to get a view of the Alps from the north face of the Eiger.
The Bergen Line is part of the standard-gauge mainline rail network of Norway and connects Oslo, the capital and the country’s largest city in the east, to Bergen, the largest city on the west coast. The Line was first proposed in 1870, principally to speed travel between the cities, as Bergen then was closer by sea to Great Britain than it was to Oslo, a journey of several days and nights around the south coast of the country.
When completed in 1909, the Bergen Line was regarded to be one of the world’s most-daring feats of railway engineering, as 60 miles of its total length of 309 miles lie on the central mountain plateau, above timberline and subject to the fierce winters of the North. With one branch line from Myrdal down to sea level at Flåm on the Sognefjord, it offers some of the world’s most-scenic rail travel experiences. Its midpoint at Finse is a node in the two immense hiking and cross-country skiing networks of central Norway. Here, you can bring your own or rent mountain bikes for use on the haul roads used to build the Line. And here the terrain around the Line played the Ice Planet Hoth in the opening scenes of “The Empire Strikes Back,” the sequel to “Star Wars.” Look out the windows of a train, and you can see where intergalactic cowboy Luke Skywalker once romped.
M. Michael Brady lives in a suburb of Oslo and takes his vacations in France. By education, he’s a natural scientist. His Dateline: Europe column appears monthly in the Gazette.
The Yellow Train line at www.trains-touristiques-ter.com , with pages selectable in English; click on the southernmost red line icon in the map on the opening page to bring up the Yellow Train pages.
Jungfraubahnen at www.jungfrau.ch , with pages selectable in English.
Bergen Line at www.nsb.no , with pages selectable in English.