The Albula Line

Swiss railways are a bit special. Switzerland has the densest rail network in Europe. It is very well used by residents and visitors, alike, and is nearly all powered by an overhead electricity supply. Trains are generally very clean - inside and out - and punctual, and they have a good safety record. Three-quarters of the system is standard gauge, as it is in most of mainland Europe and the UK. Swiss Federal Railways is the biggest of 74 different rail operators.

Tiefencastel, our home for 5 days, is on the Rhaetian Railway’s Albula Line. RhB is the largest private operator in the country. It covers all the railways in the canton of Grisons and operates on a gauge of 1 metre. The Albula line runs from Thusis to St Moritz and we covered it entirely over two separate days, firstly visiting Chur and Arosa, followed by St Moritz later in the week.

We started off at Chur, where, very politely and in English, “All passengers are kindly requested to leave the train”. Old town Chur and the cathedral were impressive, and so, too, was the fresh food department of the Migros supermarket close to the station. We were also intrigued by the leather man of Chur. He seemed to be spending his day walking up and down the main pedestrianised drag in a top hat [presumably mole skin], wearing black leather from head to toe and carrying a black leather bag.

             

Arosa was high up and colder, not surprisingly for a ski station. Round the back of the settlement, they’d developed their squirrel walk, where there were feeding stations for the black squirrels, a melanistic variation of the red squirrel. They were present in considerable numbers to take advantage of the hand-outs of nuts, seeds and grains. Nutcrackers, handsome Alpine birds, had also cottoned on to the freebie food bonanza, and I went from never having seen one before to clocking about fifty within half an hour.

The Albula line is largely single-track with passing places and it appears to be working just about to capacity, as they also manage to find paths for freight trains, often headed by two electric locomotives together, as they negotiate the tight curves and steep gradients that characterise the route. At Bergun, there is a splendid railway museum that explains the formidable challenges that faced the railway builders in such a harsh mountain environment. The resolute nature of the people fits in with their determination to develop their infrastructure and maintain their independence from foreign interference, a characteristic which still shows through today. 

One of the engineering highlights on this section is the Landwasser Viaduct, where the train suddenly emerges from a tunnel mouth that is a vertical cliff face and is then straight onto a six-arch bridge above a 65-metre-deep gorge. No wonder it is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

St Moritz is probably the best known of the upmarket mountain resorts that would also include Davos and Klosters. It’s very pretty, with its lake sparkling in bright sunshine and sitting in an amphitheatre of surrounding mountain tops. It was so nice that a bat had decided that it was far too attractive to leave until dusk, so it had come out to get stuck into an aperitif of some daytime flies at the end of the lake. . At the lakeside there was also a procession of clearly fashionable thirty somethings dressed in very smart running gear and doing their warm up and stretching routines prior to a jog round the water’s edge. What a lovely place to take your daily exercise.

The renowned posh shops were empty of potential customers, which was no surprise – not because the stuff was ridiculously expensive, but because they are mainly figurehead stores for high-end retailers, who can then add St Moritz to London, Paris and New York to all their stationery and advertising. Having said that, the popular traditional patisserie was brilliant. The raspberry tart was delicious and just within our budget.