On Top of the World
Jungfrau Railway, Switzerland
In early morning Interlaken, stars still linger above the church steeple as light creeps over the rim of the mountains, turning the sky pale blue. Bleary-eyed tourists, lugging knapsacks and cameras, stumble into the train station. It’s not yet 6:30am, and we’re waiting for a little red train to take us to a mountaintop in the heart of the Swiss Alps. The train lurches off with the punctuality of – well, of a Swiss train. In moments it leaves the town behind and is chugging along towards the mouth of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, whose plunging rock faces frame snowy mountains. Soon we’re pressed against seatbacks as the train climbs past darkened chalets and grazing cows. The train’s cogwheels click and grind as we’re pulled around dizzying loops. Now the sun is catching the peaks, and the scenery changes angles, giving ever-new vistas of farms, summer chalets and grand Victorianera hotels. We stop briefly in the fashionable resort of Wengen. Then it’s onwards, up to the Kleine Scheidegg, perched on a ledge that separates the two valleys of Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, where we have to change trains. Kleine Scheidegg is a huddle of barns, a hotel, a couple of restaurants catering to train passengers and hikers. Local men in traditional attire are blowing alpine horns, a medieval Swiss instrument said to soothe cattle. There’s not much time to stand and listen, since we have to scramble onto the connecting service that takes passengers even further upwards to the mighty bulk of the Jungfrau. Kleine Scheidegg is linked to the Jungfrau’s summit by just 10 kilometres of railway track, mostly in tunnels. The journey takes 40 minutes. It took 16 years to construct this line, and when it opened in 1912 was the marvel of the world. It still is. The train hauls its way past the jumbled ice blocks and rocks of the Eiger Glacier before entering a tunnel that bores through the Eiger itself. The train stops for five minutes deep in the mountain to let passengers hurry through tunnels to enormous windows cut in the rock. Unnervingly, we’re peering out of the north face of the Eiger, the notoriously dangerous challenge for mountain climbers. Then it’s on, inching up to the highest station in Europe. Here a lift rockets us upwards through the mountain to emerge in a glass-and-metal bubble atop a hump of rock. We’re now standing at 3,454 metres between the summits of the Mönch and Jungfrau. The air is crystal-clear all the way to the Vosges in France and the Black Forest in Germany. Lakes look like puddles, towns are tiny toytowns. In the other direction the Aletsch, largest glacier in the Alps, snakes between snow peaks. Back inside the mountain, an audio-visual presentation in music and lights showcases the construction of the extraordinary railway and the technological triumph of the Jungfrau complex. Half the peak is tunnelled out, one side faced with restaurant windows and souvenir shops. You can play the Lotto here, post a letter, dine on grilled New Zealand lamb with French beans as you gaze out on Alps cut through by rivers of ice. There’s ice too in the Ice Palace, a gallery that leads from the complex into the glacier, where sculptures have been carved in bluewhite beauty. Outside at the back of the mountain visitors can follow a track through the snow, picking their way across the glacier between safety ropes. A husky-dog team takes kids on an exhilarating spin across the snowfields. The brave can hike an hour with a guide to adjacent peak the Mönch, which has a hotel and restaurant at 3,650 metres above sea level. It’s several hours before most visitors exhaust the marvels of the Jungfrau and clamber back onto the little red train. The downward passing scenery looks different in the strong light of early afternoon, the colours now as bright as calendar photos. The mountains and chalets look too picturesque to be real, and the elderly man turning hay with a wooden pitchfork at the side of the tracks has surely been planted by the tourist office. The train passes charming huddles of houses fronted by tidy vegetable patches. They lean slightly, wood almost black with age and weathering. Orange splotches of lichen grow across slate roofs. In winter, the snow here is so deep the chalets are buried up to their eaves, yet the train keeps running through a magical, snowy landscape. Back down at Interlaken you can walk along the Höheweg, Interlaken’s famous promenade of parks and flowerbeds, lined by the Belle-époque turrets and gables of luxury hotels, their facades studded with ornate balconies and the flags of tourist nations. In the town centre, shops are cluttered with chocolates, soft St Bernard dogs, cow-shaped clocks and Swiss army knives. Look up and the snowy mountains are majestic in the background, and you marvel that you’ve actually been there, on the mighty roof of Europe.
The rack-railway ride to the top of the Jungfrau mountain in the Swiss Alps is one of the world’s most dramatic train journeys, as Brian Johnston discovers.