The Landwasser red train
A red train comes out of the cliff, crosses the Landwasser Viaduct and goes back into the mountain.
Between Schmitten and Filisur, in Graubünden, the Albula line crosses the Landwasser gorge on a curving stone bridge, then plunges straight into the cliff. The Rhaetian Railway (RhB), which runs it, has made the bridge its emblem. The railway’s pages make the bridge 65 m high and 142 m long; Wikipedia counts 136. Five piers carry six semicircular arches, each 20 m wide, and the track bends on a 100 m radius while climbing at 20 per thousand.
Piers without scaffolding
The three tallest piers grew with no scaffolding around them. Electric cranes hoisted the materials, hanging from beams strung between iron towers: one per pier, walled into the stone, rising along with it. The RhB puts the choice down to the money it saved, Wikipedia adds the river’s floods, and the method was rare at the time. The plans are by Alexander Acatos (1873–1950), a Greek-Swiss engineer; the bridge, built by Müller & Zeerleder according to Wikipedia, went up between March 1901 and October 1902, the month the first trains rolled over it. The dolomitic limestone of the piers was mostly quarried in the valley itself. Only the mortar came from afar, from a works at Unterterzen, in the canton of St. Gallen. The bill: 280,000 francs, says Wikipedia. Not until 2009 did it get its first real repair: its joints were strengthened without stopping the trains.
A line on the World Heritage List
The Landwasser Tunnel, 216 m long according to Wikipedia, opens in the very rock face the bridge leans on, at its south-eastern end: trains pass from the deck into the rock without a break, and come out near Filisur station, where the line from Davos meets theirs. The viaduct belongs to the Albula line, which runs from Thusis to St. Moritz; work began in 1898, and the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland dates its opening to 1903 and 1904. UNESCO’s entry counts 144 bridges and viaducts on it, along with 42 tunnels or galleries. Since 2008, it and its neighbour, the Bernina line, have been a World Heritage property named “Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes”, which Switzerland shares with Italy. Set up in 1889, the company has a narrow-gauge network of about 400 km, according to the same dictionary, and gathers the essentials about the viaduct on a page of facts (in German).
On the map
The map has only one train, red and nameless: a locomotive and three carriages, with no logo, no number and no lettering. Its viaduct is far longer and taller than the real one, to span the gorge as the map’s relief draws it, but it keeps its six arches. The real bridge leads into a single tunnel, at its south-eastern end; the map digs two, one at each end. The train comes out of the mountain, crosses, disappears into the rock opposite, then comes back the other way. The rest of the line, from Thusis to St. Moritz, isn’t there. The vehicles on the map are there for play: they keep to no timetable and don’t show where the real ones are. To travel, check the official timetables; and if you’d like the map to do more, write to us, our links are at the top of the page.
Sources: Rhaetian Railway, pages “10 Fakten zum Landwasserviadukt” and “Weltbekannt: Der Landwasserviadukt”; UNESCO, entry “Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes”; Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, article “Rhätische Bahn (RhB)” (German); Wikipedia, articles “Viaduc de Landwasser” (French), “Landwasserviadukt” and “Albulabahn” (German).