About this journey

St. Moritz station sits at 1,774 m above sea level in the Engadin valley, and from here the journey descends northward over the Albula railway line — one of the most celebrated mountain railways in the Alps and a route that demanded extraordinary engineering from its builders.

Construction of the Albula line began in September 1898, and the line opened progressively: first to Filisur and beyond on 1 July 1903, then extended to St. Moritz on 10 July 1904. The 61.67 km single-track metre-gauge route drops more than 1,077 m before reaching Thusis on the Hinterrhein at 697 m, threading through 42 tunnels and covered galleries and across 144 viaducts and bridges along its UNESCO-designated length. The electrification runs at 11 kV AC 16⅔ Hz throughout. The most demanding section lies between Preda and Bergün, where builders used three spiral tunnels, two curved tunnels, and four viaducts to unwind the severe gradient in a helical corkscrew alignment. Beyond Bergün, the line crosses the Solis Viaduct — an eleven-arched limestone structure 164 m long and 86 m high, completed in 1902 — before passing the Landwasser Viaduct near Filisur, a six-arched curved structure 136 m long and 65 m high, one ramp of which leads directly into the Landwasser Tunnel. The Albula Tunnel itself, 5,865 m long at around 1,820 m above sea level, was driven between 1898 and 1903. The Rhaetian Railway in the Albula/Bernina Landscapes was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008. The route concludes at Chur, where the alpine character of the upper valley gives way to the broader Rhine plain.