GoldenPass Line

Lake Geneva’s riviera to Lucerne over the Brünig Pass — two trains: the gauge-changing GPX to Interlaken Ost, then zb’s Luzern–Interlaken Express.

Zweisimmen has always been the awkward part of this journey: metre gauge arriving from Montreux, standard gauge leaving for the Bernese Oberland, and for a century everybody changed trains there. The MOB reached the village in 1905, four years after opening its first climb to Les Avants, crossing the Saanenmöser at 1,279 m through a summit tunnel just 90 m long. In June 1931 it tried to make the change worth enduring: with the Wagons-Lits company it ran the Golden Mountain Pullman Express, a genuine Pullman train on metre-gauge track, four new salon cars built specially for the line. The Depression was at its peak, the British and American visitors it was built for never came, and the service was withdrawn that September after a single summer — the carriages went to the Rhaetian Railway in 1939. The gauge break outlived it by ninety years, until the GoldenPass Express began changing gauge under way at Zweisimmen without the passengers getting out.

Stations

1. 0 kmMontreux MOB
2. 20 kmMontbovon
3. 30 kmChâteau-d'Oex
4. 43 kmGstaad
5. 48 kmSchönried
6. 50 kmSaanenmöser
7. Show 19 more stations

   1. 59 kmZweisimmen
   2. 62 kmGrubenwald
   3. 65 kmWeissenbach
   4. 68 kmBoltingen
   5. 72 kmEnge im Simmental
   6. 73 kmOberwil
   7. 76 kmWeissenburg
   8. 78 kmDärstetten
   9. 80 kmRingoldingen
   10. 83 kmErlenbach
   11. 85 kmOey-Diemtigen
   12. 87 kmBurgholz
   13. 89 kmWimmis
   14. 90 kmEifeld
   15. 91 kmLattigen
   16. 94 kmSpiez
   17. 112 kmInterlaken Ost
   18. 128 kmBrienz
   19. 140 kmMeiringen
8. 145 kmBrünig-Hasliberg
9. 155 kmGiswil
10. 161 kmSachseln
11. 164 kmSarnen
12. 184 kmLuzern

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for this service, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them.

Along the way

• Lake Geneva terraces above Montreux
• Chamby spiral tunnel
• Jaman tunnel (2,424 m)
• Château-d’Oex and Gstaad in the Saane valley
• Saanenmöser summit (1,279 m)
• Gauge change at Zweisimmen
• Brünig Pass descent to Lucerne

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from 3 OpenStreetMap relations, their own nodes end to end: relation 19925707 (60 km), relation 1846736 (34 km), relation 2344785 (72 km) — 167 km of the route between them
• Checked against OpenStreetMap: 94.9% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 11 m); the longest stretch away from it is 9.5 km
• The operator publishes this line's timetable: BLS — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
• Wikipedia has an article for this line
• See for yourself: open this line on the map with OpenStreetMap's own railway drawn underneath it

Questions and answers

How long is the GoldenPass Line?

The GoldenPass Line runs 191 km from Montreux to Lucerne.

How long does the GoldenPass Line take?

Over the 191 km, the fastest scheduled journey is ≈ 5 h 15 min, 2 trains. That is an average of 36 km/h end to end. The line's top service speed is 100 km/h.

Who runs the GoldenPass Line?

MOB, BLS and zb, with GPX panorama + Luzern–Interlaken Express.

How old is the GoldenPass Line?

The line has been in service since 1901. That is the year the atlas dates it from: for a modern brand running over an older railway, it is the railway's date, not the brand's.

How high does the GoldenPass Line climb?

1,279 m above sea level at its highest point.

View on the world railway map →

Read more on Wikipedia ↗