Rhaetian Railway

01 In brief

In July 2008, UNESCO took the unusual step of adding a working railway to the World Heritage List. The Rhaetian Railway's Albula and Bernina lines — 128 kilometres of metre-gauge track linking Thusis, St. Moritz and Tirano across the Swiss Alps — were inscribed as an outstanding technical, architectural and environmental ensemble, notable for the way civil engineering and high-mountain landscape were made to fit together. Unlike most heritage sites, this one still does its daily job: regional, freight and panoramic trains run over the same viaducts and through the same tunnels that earned the listing.

The Albula line opened in 1904 and the Bernina line in 1910, when railways were the only realistic tool for breaking the isolation of settlements deep in the Central Alps. The Albula line crosses the range beneath the pass, in a summit tunnel approached by spirals; the Bernina line takes the opposite approach and climbs over the top on gradients normally reserved for mountain trams. Both were built to metre gauge to save cost and to bend around the terrain — a decision that shaped their celebrated, tightly curved structures.

02 Why it's interesting

• 01 UNESCO listed the lines themselves — track, viaducts, tunnels and the landscapes they cross — rather than a single building, something only a handful of railways anywhere have achieved.
• 02 The Bernina line climbs to 2,253 metres at Ospizio Bernina on adhesion alone, with gradients of up to seven per cent, placing it among the steepest adhesion railways in the world.
• 03 The Albula line threads 42 tunnels and covered galleries and 144 viaducts and bridges into just 67 kilometres, without a single metre of rack rail.
• 04 A steam rotary snowplough built in 1913 is still used to clear the Bernina line in winter, and watching it work has itself become a tourist draw.

03 How it works

Building a railway across the Alps before the age of heavy earthmoving machinery was a problem of geometry and grip, and the two lines answer it in opposite ways.

The Albula line, completed through to St. Moritz in July 1904 after its first section had opened the previous summer, keeps its gradients to a gentle 3.5 per cent. To gain altitude it loops: between Bergün and Preda the line disappears into three spiral tunnels that turn almost full circles inside the mountain, emerging above the stretch it has just passed. The price of all this bending is density — 42 tunnels and covered galleries and 144 viaducts and bridges in 67 kilometres — and some famous structures, above all the Landwasser Viaduct near Filisur: 65 metres high, carried on six masonry arches around a 100-metre curve, and plunging straight into a tunnel portal cut into the cliff face.

At the watershed the line dives into the Albula Tunnel, 5,864 metres long and, when driven between 1898 and 1903, the highest railway tunnel in the Alps at around 1,800 metres above sea level. Since June 2024 the trains have run through a new, parallel 5,860-metre bore, with the original tunnel being converted into a safety tunnel. Steam locomotives worked the line at first; in 1919 it was electrified at 11 kV and 16.7 Hz AC, the system still used across most of the Rhaetian Railway network today.

The Bernina line, completed in stages between 1908 and 1910, dispenses with the detours. It climbs to Ospizio Bernina, 2,253 metres above sea level, on gradients of up to seven per cent — pure adhesion between wheel and rail, with no rack, which makes it one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world. It was electrically worked from the start, originally at 750 volts DC, raised to 1,000 volts in 1935. On the descent towards Italy the Brusio spiral viaduct turns a full circle to shed height gently, and winter operations still call on rotary snowploughs, including the 1913 steam-powered machine.

Line lengths, structure counts and inscription details from the UNESCO listing; the reservation rules from the Rhaetian Railway's own pages; summit, gradients, electrification and snowplough details from standard references on the two lines.

04 The organisation behind it

The lines belong to the Rhaetian Railway (Rhätische Bahn AG), a company founded in 1888 by the Dutch hotelier Willem Jan Holsboer and headquartered at Bahnhofstrasse 25 in Chur. The railway is majority-owned by the Canton of Graubünden, with the Swiss Confederation holding a large minority stake. A World Heritage association founded in 2007 brings the railway together with the canton, the Confederation and Italian partners to care for the listing, and the Albula Railway Museum presents the line's history over four floors with more than 800 exhibits, serving as the railway's UNESCO Visitor Centre.

05 In the real world

Both lines remain working infrastructure rather than museum pieces. Regional trains link St. Moritz and Tirano all year; freight still rolls over the network, which moves mineral oil, foodstuffs and general cargo across Graubünden; and two premium services — the Bernina Express from Chur to Tirano and the Glacier Express from Zermatt to St. Moritz, run jointly with the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn — sell the same tracks to the world. In the valleys the railway is close to a public utility: without it, the Engadin and the Val Poschiavo would still be reached the slow way.

06 Can you visit?

07 Sources & further reading

1. Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes — UNESCO World Heritage Centrewhc.unesco.org
2. Bernina Express — Rhaetian Railway (RhB)rhb.ch
3. Albula Tunnel — Rhaetian Railway (RhB)rhb.ch
4. Bernina Express or regional train? — Rhaetian Railway (RhB)rhb.ch
5. Bernina railway line — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
6. Landwasser Viaduct — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org