Mountain route
Pilatus Railway
Alpnachstad → Pilatus Kulm · Switzerland
Pilatus Railway in pictures




Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 5 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 30 min
- Average speed
- 10 km/h
- Top speed
- 12 km/h
- Operator
- Pilatus-Bahnen
- Train
- Stadler rack railcars
- Countries
- Switzerland
- In service since
- 1889
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
The steepest rack railway on Earth: 48 % grades since 1889, with Locher’s horizontal cog wheels gripping a ladder no ordinary train could climb.
How this line was checked
- The 4 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 20678135 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 90.7% of this line lies within 250 m of real track, a median 5 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.4 km from the shape of Zahnrad (Zug-Nr. 5)
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
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