For those of us who grew up with math puzzles such as “if a train one mile long and traveling at 60 miles per hour entered a mile-long tunnel…” the Swiss narrow-gauge Rhaetian Railway has something like an answer.
To celebrate its 175th anniversary as Switzerland’s first railway, Rhaetian collaborated with train builder Stadler to put together a train of 100 cars, almost 1.2 miles in length, and operate it on a 15.5 mile route from Preda to Alvaneu that took just about an hour to complete.
But unlike the classic math puzzle, there 22 tunnels, not one, and 48 bridges and viaducts. The Rhaetian Railway is Switzerland’s largest private rail operator and its narrow-gauge routes are almost all in steep Alpine territory; on its route, the altitude changed by 789.4 metres, while traveling at an average speed of just over 30 km/h.
The task of operating the train was not an easy one. In the picture above, all the bright red cars are part of the single train, made up of 25 four-car units, each with power. Seven train operators were involved. A first attempt had to be scrubbed until engineers worked out a software fix to operate all the emergency brakes, and while an analog field phone system was installed because with parts of the train in deep tunnels at any given moment, radio and cellphone signals were lost.
Guinness World Records confirmed the world-beating record attempt; the previous best was 1732.9m from 1991. The line itself is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the first rail line ever to be designated.
