About this journey

St. Moritz station sits at 1,775 m above sea level — the highest urban railway station in Switzerland — and opened in 1904 as the southern terminus of the Albula Railway from Chur. Because the Albula and Bernina lines use different power-supply systems, the station also serves as a Systemwechselbahnhof, a power-supply switch point, before trains continue north.

The line traced in this recording is the Albula Railway, completed in 1903, a metre-gauge route that descends through the canton of Graubünden toward the Rhine valley. The Rhaetian Railway had already reached this region earlier: its narrow-gauge line between Landquart and Thusis opened in 1896, with the first 13.68 km of that route running parallel to the established standard-gauge connection between Landquart and Chur.

Chur station, opened on 30 June 1858, is the most important railway junction in Graubünden. It serves as the terminus of the SBB standard-gauge line from Zürich while simultaneously anchoring the RhB metre-gauge network — an arrangement that came about because the Swiss Federal Council required the Rhaetian Railway to share the existing station rather than build its own. The journey moves from one of Switzerland's loftiest stations to one of its most complex junctions, covering the full descent of the Albula Railway in a single run.