Scenic route
Glacier Express
Zermatt → St. Moritz · Switzerland
Glacier Express in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 291 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 8 h
- Average speed
- 36 km/h
- Top speed
- 90 km/h
- Operator
- RhB · MGB
- Train
- Panorama cars · metre gauge
- Countries
- Switzerland
- In service since
- 1930
- Runs
- daily, up to 3× in summer; no service late Oct–mid-Dec
- Highest point
- 2,033 m
- Riders per year
- ≈ 250k
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
“The world’s slowest express”: 291 bridges, 91 tunnels and the 2,033 m Oberalp Pass at an average of 36 km/h.
It takes the best part of a day to cross Switzerland sideways, and that is precisely the point, slow travel codified into a timetable. From Zermatt the metre-gauge line drops down the Matter Valley, burrows beneath the Furka, then racks up to the treeless saddle of the Oberalp before tracing the Vorderrhein’s limestone canyon. White-tablecloth lunches are plated on board while the two railways that jointly run the train swap locomotives and dialects along the way.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 14616806 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within 60 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 98% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 19 m); the longest stretch away from it is 5.5 km
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.1 km from the shape of PE GEX
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Matterhorn farewell at Zermatt
- Furka Base Tunnel
- Oberalp Pass at 2,033 m
- Rhine Gorge — the Swiss Grand Canyon
- Landwasser Viaduct
- St. Moritz lake finale
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More train routes in Switzerland.