Bernina Express
Chur to Tirano

Chur is the capital of Graubünden and, at over 5,000 years of continuous settlement, the oldest city in Switzerland. The old town - a compact knot of medieval lanes behind the cathedral - is 10 minutes on foot from the Rhätische Bahn station. Most passengers travelling on the Bernina Express from Chur see little of it: the train departs south into the Rhine gorge almost immediately, following the Posterior Rhine valley through its limestone narrows.

The Albula line leaves the Rhine valley at Thusis and begins the climb into the mountains in earnest. The engineering becomes apparent almost immediately: the railway uses a series of spiral tunnels - curved bores drilled into the mountain so that the line can gain altitude within a short horizontal distance - and helical viaducts that loop back over themselves. Between Filisur and Bergün, the line gains 416 metres in just 12 kilometres of track using four spiral tunnels and several open viaducts.

The Landwasser Viaduct: six arches, 65 metres above the gorge, curving directly into the mountain. Built 1901–1902, still in daily use.

The Landwasser Viaduct - visible just beyond Filisur - is the most photographed structure on the Swiss railway network. The viaduct curves in a single arc of six limestone arches, 65 metres above the Landwasser gorge, and enters a tunnel portal directly at the end of the last arch. There is no straight section: the curve begins with the first arch and continues into the mountainside without pause. It was built between 1901 and 1902 and has been in continuous use since.

Between Pontresina and the Bernina summit, the railway does something that has no parallel in Europe: it climbs to 2,253 metres above sea level on a standard-gauge adhesion railway - no rack-and-pinion, no cog mechanism, simply steel wheels on steel rails at a maximum gradient of 70‰ (7%). This is the highest point reached by any non-rack, standard-gauge railway in Europe.

Morteratsch station, a few kilometres below the pass, sits opposite the snout of the Morteratsch Glacier - one of the longest valley glaciers in the Alps. The glacier has retreated approximately 3 km since 1900 and around 300 metres since 2000; marker posts along the glacier trail show historical extents. On a clear day the ice tongue is visible directly from the carriage window between Morteratsch and Bernina Suot stations.

Ospizio Bernina: the watershed between the Rhine and the Inn, 2,253 metres up, no tunnel, no rack - just open mountain and Lago Bianco frozen white.

Ospizio Bernina station (2,253 m) sits beside Lago Bianco - a reservoir lake that straddles the watershed between the Rhine drainage (north, to the North Sea) and the Inn drainage (south, to the Adriatic via the Danube). The colour of the lake changes dramatically with season: milky turquoise in summer from glacial meltwater, a flat sheet of ice in winter. The station building operates as a mountain refuge (Ospizio means hospice or refuge in Italian - the pass was a historic transit point for travellers crossing between the Engadine and Valtellina).

South of the summit, the descent begins. At Alp Grüm (2,091 m) there is a brief scheduled stop: the station platform commands a panoramic view south across the Poschiavo valley all the way to the Italian border, with the railway visible far below as a series of switchbacks descending the valley wall. The drop from Alp Grüm to Poschiavo (1,014 m) is 1,077 metres in roughly 15 kilometres of track.

Between Brusio and Tirano the line crosses its most distinctive piece of engineering: the Brusio circular viaduct, a 360° spiral loop built in 1908 entirely to manage the steep descent into the valley floor without requiring a rack-and-pinion system. The train circles around itself, the rear carriages visible below the front ones as the loop completes. It is one of only two circular railway viaducts in the world built at ground level (the other is the Kehrviadukt at Wassen on the Gotthard line).

Tirano station (441 m) is the Italian terminus of the Bernina line. It is a standard-gauge Swiss station on Italian soil - the Rhätische Bahn operates into Italy here under a special concession that has existed since the line opened in 1910. The crossing from Switzerland into Italy takes place without any border formality (Schengen area), and the transition is marked mainly by the change in architecture: the valley opens, the buildings become more southern, and the vegetation shifts from alpine to sub-alpine.

The town of Tirano is best known for the Basilica of the Madonna di Tirano (1505), a Renaissance pilgrimage church at the northern edge of the town centre, and for being the start of the Valtellina wine road south. The Bernina Express bus service connects Tirano onward to Lugano in about 3 hours, crossing the Maloja Pass - a useful extension for those continuing through Switzerland rather than returning the same way.