About this journey

Chur station, opened on 30 June 1858, serves as the principal railway junction of Graubünden, where standard-gauge SBB tracks and the metre-gauge network of the Rhaetian Railway share the same complex. From here the RhB's Albula line heads south into the Alps, a route whose origins date to the 1888 ground-breaking that launched the Landquart–Davos railway. The Albula line itself reached Celerina in 1903 and St. Moritz in 1904, threading through increasingly demanding terrain as it went.

The most striking piece of engineering lies between Bergün/Bravuogn and Preda, where the line climbs approximately 400 m in 5 km using spiral tunnels rather than rack-and-pinion. Beyond Preda the line passes through the Albula Tunnel — a bore whose lining was found in a 2006 examination to require over 60% replacement, leading to a new parallel tunnel that opened in 2022, the same year this cab ride was filmed. Emerging on the far side, the line descends into the Val Bever and meets the high plain of the Engadin, calling at Bever at 1,708 m and then Samedan before the final approach to St. Moritz.

St. Moritz station, which first opened in 1904, stands at 1,775 m above sea level — the highest urban railway station in Switzerland. In 2008, the section of the RhB network that includes this route, from Thusis to Tirano, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognising an alignment that rises from a valley junction to an Alpine terminus in just over two hours.