About this journey

Disentis/Mustér station sits high in the Rhine valley, at the convergence of the Oberalp and Lukmanier pass roads, and serves as the eastern terminus of the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn. Beside the station, the Benedictine monastery — founded around 720, with its present complex dating from 1696 to 1712 — marks this as one of the oldest Christian sites in the Alps. The surrounding municipality is predominantly Romansh-speaking, the Sursilvan dialect accounting for 75.3% of the population as of 2000, a linguistic character visible in the station names passed along the route.

The Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn runs westward from Disentis/Mustér toward Brig, a journey of around two hours and forty minutes. The same tracks carry the Glacier Express, the tourist service linking Zermatt with St. Moritz that stops at Disentis/Mustér several times a day. At the western end of the line, Brig has been a significant railway junction since 1878, when it opened as the eastern terminus of the Simplon Railway; the Simplon Tunnel extended that line to Domodossola in 1906. The Lötschberg railway, connecting Bern to Brig via a tunnel opened in 1913, joins the network here as well. Together the two routes make Brig one of Switzerland's principal gateways between the Alpine interior and the broader European rail network.