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Steam trains run again in Swiss Alps
Source: Agencies |
September 11, 2010, Saturday
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AFTER a gap of 60 years, steam trains are again chugging over the historic Furka Pass in the Swiss Alps thanks to an army of rail enthusiasts and a rescue mission into the jungles of Vietnam.
And with the reopening of the old line between Oberwald and the village of Realp on the other side of the 2,490-meter-high crossing, the region is looking for a return of the tourists for whom it was a big draw since the middle of the 19th century.
"We have waited nearly 30 years for this," said railway buff Thomas Meier as a sparkling black engine with crammed-full olive-green carriages behind emitted a high-pitched whistle as it pulled out of the station of this Rhone valley town.
The last time a train, by then electricity-powered, left Oberwald to head up the steep climb into pine forests and the snow-capped peaks, scene of ski-and-spying escapades in the James Bond film "Goldfinger," was in 1982.
That year the famed Glacier Express, which links the mountain resort of Zermatt to St Moritz some 170 kilometers across the heart of Switzerland, was diverted through a newly built tunnel.
The Furka line, which started running under steam power through some of Switzerland's most stunning Alpine scenery in 1914, was abandoned to the elements -- or would have been had European rail buffs not stepped in.
A team of enthusiasts, many of them retirees from the Swiss state-run train transport system, quickly set up The Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway Club and started gathering funds to refurbish the track and rolling stock.
Financial support, says Meier came pouring in, especially from nostalgic Swiss emigres in the United States.
But a major challenge was the disappearance of most of the locomotives that had once plied the route up through the town of Gletsch with its imposing Hotel Glacier du Rhone, but had been dispersed when electricity replaced steam on the Swiss railway network some 70 years ago.
Perusing the archives, the Furka Club found several of the old Swiss-built engines had been sold to then French-ruled Vietnam in the late 1940s, operating throughout decades of fighting there and finally being put out to rust in the mid-1970s.
A mission was sent to scour the country for them, and in 1990 it returned with four survivors, secured and loaded onto a ship for Switzerland.
And with the reopening of the old line between Oberwald and the village of Realp on the other side of the 2,490-meter-high crossing, the region is looking for a return of the tourists for whom it was a big draw since the middle of the 19th century.
"We have waited nearly 30 years for this," said railway buff Thomas Meier as a sparkling black engine with crammed-full olive-green carriages behind emitted a high-pitched whistle as it pulled out of the station of this Rhone valley town.
The last time a train, by then electricity-powered, left Oberwald to head up the steep climb into pine forests and the snow-capped peaks, scene of ski-and-spying escapades in the James Bond film "Goldfinger," was in 1982.
That year the famed Glacier Express, which links the mountain resort of Zermatt to St Moritz some 170 kilometers across the heart of Switzerland, was diverted through a newly built tunnel.
The Furka line, which started running under steam power through some of Switzerland's most stunning Alpine scenery in 1914, was abandoned to the elements -- or would have been had European rail buffs not stepped in.
A team of enthusiasts, many of them retirees from the Swiss state-run train transport system, quickly set up The Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway Club and started gathering funds to refurbish the track and rolling stock.
Financial support, says Meier came pouring in, especially from nostalgic Swiss emigres in the United States.
But a major challenge was the disappearance of most of the locomotives that had once plied the route up through the town of Gletsch with its imposing Hotel Glacier du Rhone, but had been dispersed when electricity replaced steam on the Swiss railway network some 70 years ago.
Perusing the archives, the Furka Club found several of the old Swiss-built engines had been sold to then French-ruled Vietnam in the late 1940s, operating throughout decades of fighting there and finally being put out to rust in the mid-1970s.
A mission was sent to scour the country for them, and in 1990 it returned with four survivors, secured and loaded onto a ship for Switzerland.
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