About this journey

La Chaux-de-Fonds station sits at 992 metres in the Jura Mountains, where three standard-gauge SBB lines and two metre-gauge lines converge in a single interchange. The metre-gauge Chemins de fer du Jura (CJ) line to Glovelier departs from here, its 1,000 mm gauge a deliberate contrast to the SBB tracks alongside. Leaving the city, the cab camera crosses the distinctive grid street plan that was laid out after a fire in 1794 destroyed much of La Chaux-de-Fonds — the same orderly cityscape that, together with Le Locle, earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2009 for outstanding watchmaking urban planning. It was the watch industry itself that prompted the building of the very first railway here: La Chaux-de-Fonds station opened on 2 July 1857 as part of a line constructed by the Compagnie du Jura industriel to connect the watchmaking valley with the cantonal capital of Neuchâtel.

The CJ line runs an hourly Regio service along this corridor, descending from the high Jura plateau toward the canton of Jura. Glovelier station marks the eastern terminus of the metre-gauge line and simultaneously serves as an intermediate stop on the standard-gauge SBB Delémont–Delle line, making it a practical gauge-interchange point where two distinct railway worlds meet — a fitting endpoint for a journey that began among the watchmakers of the Jura.