About this journey

Bière station sits at the western end of the Bière–Apples–Morges line, a metre-gauge railway of 19.1 kilometres threading through the canton of Vaud toward Lake Geneva. The line connects the foothills of the Jura mountains to the lakeside town of Morges, and its deliberately circuitous alignment was chosen to keep gradients manageable — the steepest pitch is 1 in 28, or 3.57%.

Community discussions about building the line began on 26 September 1875, driven partly by the expanding army barracks at Bière and partly by forestry and agricultural demand. After five route options were debated, a compromise was reached in 1890, though construction did not start for another four years; the line finally opened on 1 July 1895. Steam traction continued for decades, and electrification at 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC came only in 1943, the main line converting from 10 May that year.

At Apples, roughly midway, a 10.6-kilometre branch diverges toward L'Isle. The journey ends at Morges station, where MBC metre-gauge trains occupy platform track No. 5 within the SBB station — a discreet integration of a rural narrow-gauge railway into a main-line interchange. The route spans two contrasting worlds: a plateau once shaped by soldiers and timber at one end, and a Lake Geneva lakeside town at the other.