Bernina Express: Riding the Alps by Train – Part 2

Second part of my journey onboard the Bernina Exoress, a lovely red train, popular with tourists, that crosses the Alps and connects Switzerland with Italy. See the first part here

 

From Ospizio Bernina Station we got the next train in our direction and continued our trip: the railway negotiates a difference in height of about 1800 metres from the summit at Ospizio Bernina to Tirano. And it does it in a beautiful way, through hairpin turns, tunnels and bridges. And there are also wonderful alpine sights!…Well, someone says…

But anyway, by descending along our route on the southern side of the Alps, eventually to weather start to be better: no more snow and a slightly better visibility.

We had a long stop at the Cadera station, that’s where a double track allows trains coming from different directions to cross their ways. We were waiting for the train coming from Italy.

Eventually it came and the young female conductor was free to whistle and let our train roll again.

It was just after a big bend that through a hole in the fog we were finally granted with our first panoramic sight: lake Poschiavo and the valley under a stormy sky, with a blanket of fog covering the lake’s surface.

 

The train was slowly leaving the realm of nature and rocks, and rolling again into the inhabited world. But it’s a small small world out there and there isn’t much space for railway, roads, houses and the lake all together, so the train has to find its way through scenic spiral viaducts and often shares its way with a footpath or a driveway.

Photo courtesy of Mr. Lukas Tanner

 

There is no separation, just a shared use of the land while the train slowly crosses the Switzerland-Italy border and approaches its final destination, Tirano station, that’s again a shared station between the Swiss and the Italian railways.

It was almost dark when we finally arrived in Tirano. The sky was still completely grey but there was no snow anymore. The bad weather and lack of visibility was just behind us together with the memory of a beautiful train trip.

This is the second part of the journey.
The first part is here.

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Bernina Express: riding the Alps by train – Part 1

The Bernina Express is a lovely red train, popular with tourists, that crosses the Alps and connects Switzerland with Italy.

The railway was built between 1908 and 1910. It’s operated by a regional company (Rhaetian Railway) and belongs since 2008 to the UNESCO list of the World Heritage Site, being both an old and very scenic rail route.

I love trains and train journeys since the time of my youth, when I travelled through Europe with an Inter-Rail card for one month every year.

But those were times of short money in my pockets and I couldn’t afford to pay the extra charge the company requires for travelling along this route and getting a seat reservation on this train.

For this reason the Bernina ride remained in my wish list for decades; I must say it stands in very good company: the Ghan in Australia, Glacier Express, another fascinating Swiss train, Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia, Cusco to Machu Picchu line in Peru and so on.

But at one point of my life, thanks to my good friend Lukas Tanner who lives in Switzerland, I was finally able to enjoy this ride through the Alps, crossing 196 bridges, through 55 tunnels and across the Bernina Pass.

There are several options regarding the route you can follow: you may start your journey in the poshy Sankt Moritz, change train in Pontresina and arrive in Tirano; you may also make a sort of round trip, continuing from Tirano along the Lake Como and arriving again in Switzerland, in Lugano, from where you can continue your journey to any place in Switzerland. We chose a different route: we started our ride in Scuol-Tarasp. And this for two good reason, the first one being that in Scuol you find an awesome spa where you can spend half a day relaxing and enjoying a wonderful view from the panoramic solarium.

A map of the train’s route from Scuol (above right) to Tirano (below right).
By Sansculotte at de.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-2.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

The second good reason is that starting from Scuol-Tarasp, the route allows you to enjoy the view of the fresh Engadin valley covered with woods, before entering the realm of tundra and glaciers, high on the Alps.

This were our plans.

We didn’t take in count Mr. Winter, who showed off the morning of our departure with a strong snowfall. We didn’t know it yet, but that was going to be the biggest snowfall of the year! Well, no more green forest in Engadin, but white white white (sometimes grey….) snow. It will get better later, we both thought.

This is Zernez in Engadin, at the beginning of the trip, and before starting to climb.

We were wrong, but it was a thought (a hope!) we still had when we entered Pontresina station. This is where the real Bernina Express ride starts.

Here the train cars are adapted to the narrower gauge of the line and the train is linked with a different engine, working with the different voltage of the alpine line. Ah yes, the Bernina Epxress is an electric railway, no diesel pollution up on the mountains! The manoeuvre was made in a completely white landscape, with falling snow. It was also very cold!

 

The complete leg from Pontresina to Tirano takes about 4 hours, gets you to the Bernina Pass and shows you wonderful alpine sights. Well, I can’t swear the last sentence is true, I’ve read a similar one somewhere. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much during the journey, only snowflakes and fog! They say there’s a wonderful lake (Lago Bianco) just in front of the Ospizio Bernina station at 2,253 meters, the highest point of the line. Well, I believe it, but when we left the train in this station we couldn’t see much more than snow hills in a freezing cold.

 

Our plan was to hike for some hours and wait for the last ride to Tirano.

But the only thing we could do was looking at the train coming from Italy approaching the station and finding its way through the snow. An amazing sight anyway!

 

This is the first part of the journey.
The second part is here.

 

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