Furka Steam Railway

Listen first. Somewhere ahead, there is a slow, heavy panting, like a large animal climbing a hill. Then a sharp whistle bounces off the rock. The air smells of coal smoke, hot oil, and cold mountain grass. You are standing in Obergoms, at the head of the Rhône valley in the Swiss canton of Valais, and a steam train is getting ready to climb.

This is the Furka Steam Railway, known in German as the Dampfbahn Furka-Bergstrecke. It runs on the old mountain route over the Furka Pass, linking Oberwald here in Valais with Realp on the far side, in the canton of Uri. The track is metre gauge, narrower than a standard railway. On the steepest sections, a toothed rack sits between the rails. A cogwheel under the locomotive grips that rack and pulls the train upward, step by step.

The story begins in the early twentieth century. Engineers wanted a railway across the high Alps, from the Rhône valley in the west to the upper Rhine valley in the east. It was hard, slow work. Building seasons were short at this altitude, and snow could close the route for most of the year. The full line through to Disentis opened in 1926, as part of what became the Furka-Oberalp railway.

For decades, this mountain section was a summer route. Every autumn, crews prepared the line for winter, and every spring they cleared it again. Trains crossed the pass through a summit tunnel at more than two thousand metres. Then, in 1982, everything changed. A new base tunnel opened deep under the mountain. It let trains run all year round. The old line over the top was suddenly no longer needed.

Many people expected the mountain route to disappear. The rails would be lifted, the bridges removed, and the stations left empty. Instead, a group of enthusiasts decided to save it. They formed an association, collected money, and started to rebuild the line with their own hands. Much of the work, from laying track to repairing bridges, was done by volunteers who travelled here from all over Switzerland and beyond.

The rebuilding happened in stages. Steam trains returned first on the Uri side, between Realp and Tiefenbach, in 1993. The line reached Gletsch, in the Rhône valley, in 2000. Finally, in 2010, the last section down to Oberwald was finished. After almost thirty years of work, steam trains could again run the whole route from valley to valley.

Now for a surprise that most visitors do not expect. Some of the locomotives you may see here spent decades in Vietnam. After the Second World War, several of the original Furka steam engines were sold to Vietnam, where they worked on a rack railway in the mountains. In 1990, the railway's supporters brought some of them back to Switzerland. They were restored, piece by piece, and returned to the same mountains they were built for.

A second surprise waits on the climb toward Realp. At the Steffenbach Bridge, the railway faces heavy avalanches every winter. A fixed bridge would not survive them. So the bridge folds. Each autumn, crews take it apart and fold it away, and each spring they put it back together before the trains return. It is one reason the line runs only in the summer season, when the snow has gone.

If you ride the train, notice how slowly it moves. This is not a fast journey, and it is not meant to be. The locomotive works hard on the gradients. You hear the beat of the exhaust change as the rack section begins. Smoke and steam drift past the windows. Small flakes of soot can land on your sleeve if you lean out — so keep light clothing for another day.

The station at Gletsch sits in a wide, open basin of rock and grass. The name means glacier in the local German dialect, and the place grew up around visitors who came to see the Rhône Glacier. Over the last century and a half, the ice has pulled back a long way up the mountain. Today you look up the valley at bare, polished rock where the glacier once reached much lower. It is one of the clearest pictures of glacial retreat in the Alps.

Higher up, the train passes through a landscape of granite, scree and thin alpine meadow. In summer, the slopes carry small flowers, and you may hear the sharp whistle of marmots near their burrows. Streams run fast and grey with meltwater. Above the treeline, the light is hard and clear, and the shadows of clouds move quickly across the slopes.

At the top of the route, the summit tunnel takes the train through the mountain ridge. Inside, the noise of the engine fills the darkness, and the air turns cool and damp. When the train comes out on the other side, you are in a different canton and a different valley. The rivers on this side flow toward the Reuss and the Rhine, not the Rhône.

The railway still depends on people. Volunteers work as stokers, guards, track workers, and station staff. In the workshops, they repair boilers, wheels and wooden carriages. When you see someone in blue overalls with coal dust on their hands, that person is often giving up holiday time to keep the line running. Without them, this route would be a hiking trail with old stone foundations.

Before you leave, take one more look at the track. Follow the rails with your eyes as they bend toward the slope and disappear among the rocks. Listen for the whistle, the hiss of steam, the clank of the couplings. Then notice the quiet that returns after the train has gone — only wind, water, and the slow tick of hot metal cooling in the mountain air.