In 1889, Switzerland opened a rack railway up Mount Pilatus with gradients once thought too steep; the line still climbs more than 5,000 feet from the valley

There's a train in Switzerland that runs up a track that is much steeper than you would ever consider parking on. The Pilatus Railway is a cogwheel train that ascends the side of Mount Pilatus above Lucerne, and is supposedly the steepest rack railway in the world, and has held that title for over a hundred years. The Pilatusbahn has been operating successfully since it first climbed the mountain on June 4, 1889, with a maximum gradient of 48%, that's about one meter of rise for every two meters traveled, over a 4.6 km (2.87-mile) path, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which certified the railway as an international engineering landmark.

The problem nobody could solve

This railway's tracks are special. Unlike most other rack railways, which have a cogwheel on the bottom of the train cars and a vertical rack rail for it to climb on, those on the Pilatusbahn are horizontal. According to a 1972 Alpine Journal historical account that covers all things mountain railways, the previous normal design was just too dangerous on such steep grades, especially with wind being a factor and with a train full of people. So, Eduard Locher, a Zürich-based engineer with experience on the St. Gotthard tunnel, came up with a solution: he placed a horizontal rack between two rails, gripped from both sides by a pair of horizontal cogwheels instead of one wheel underneath.


All of this, and Switzerland didn't have to pay a thing

The Swiss government contributed no public funding to the railway. The construction of the line was fully financed by Eduard Locher himself, a private individual. This was after authorities there had actually refused to approve a normal rack railway, considering it too dangerous.

For comparison, the world's first cog railway was built on the side of Mount Washington, in New Hampshire. This was in 1869, and it was the brainchild of Sylvester Marsh. This particular railway is actually still in operation today, and holds the second place in the world for steepest rack railway, at 37.41%. The Pilatusbahn just edged it out two decades later.

Some numbers to really put things into perspective

According to Pilatus-Bahnen AG, the railway's operator, the original steam-powered trains took over an hour to climb the mountain, while the electric ones, which have been in service since 1937, take about thirty minutes to do the same. That's quite a difference. Another thing to put it into perspective is the vertical distance climbed which is about 1,635 meters or roughly 5,250 feet. As for the rails themselves: because the horizontal rack sits between two guide rails rather than underneath the cars, wear is distributed across the rack teeth over time. Operators can periodically turn or resurface these components to extend their service life, which is part of why the line's original infrastructure has remained in use, with upgrades, for over a century. The Pilatusbahn stands out because Eduard Locher solved an engineering problem that Swiss rail authorities had deemed unworkable, and financed the solution himself. More than a century later, the railway he designed is still the steepest rack railway in the world.