Introduction
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Welcome aboard the Glacier Express, the most famous train journey in Switzerland and one of the great railway experiences of the world. Over the next eight hours, you will travel 291 kilometres from the foot of the Matterhorn to the glamour of St. Moritz, crossing 291 bridges, passing through 91 tunnels, and climbing to 2,033 metres at the Oberalp Pass before descending through the Rhine Gorge and ascending again through the UNESCO World Heritage Albula line to the Engadin.
This train has been called the slowest express in the world, and with good reason: its average speed is barely thirty-six kilometres per hour. But speed is precisely the point that the Glacier Express does not make. This is a journey designed for contemplation, not haste. The panoramic windows of the carriages frame a continuous film of Alpine scenery that encompasses glaciers, gorges, high passes, verdant valleys, medieval villages, and feats of railway engineering that rank among the most audacious ever attempted.
The route connects two of Switzerland's most legendary resorts. Zermatt, beneath the iconic pyramid of the Matterhorn, is the quintessential Alpine village. St. Moritz, in the high Engadin valley, is the birthplace of winter tourism and a byword for Alpine elegance. Between them lies the entire spectrum of Swiss mountain geography, from the deep, vine-clad valleys of the Valais to the wild high country of the Oberalp to the dramatic gorges and viaducts of Graubuenden.
Settle into your seat, adjust your panoramic window, and prepare for a journey through the heart of the Swiss Alps.
Chapter 1: Zermatt and the Matter Valley
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GPS Waypoint: Zermatt Station -- 46.0207, 7.7491
The train pulls out of Zermatt station, and if the day is clear, the Matterhorn fills the rear window with its unmistakable silhouette. At 4,478 metres, the Matterhorn is not the highest peak in the Alps, but it is certainly the most recognisable, its four steep faces rising to a sharp summit that seems to defy the laws of geology.
As the train descends the Matter Valley, the Mattervispa river rushes alongside the track, its milky glacial waters churning through a narrow gorge. The valley is steep and dramatic, with the railway clinging to its north side and occasional avalanche galleries protecting the track from the snowslides that threaten in winter and spring.
The first villages appear: Taesch, where cars must be left by those driving to car-free Zermatt, and Randa, which was struck by a massive rockfall in 1991 that temporarily dammed the river and destroyed part of the village. The scars of that event are still visible on the mountainside, a reminder of the raw geological forces that continue to shape the Alps.
Look for the glaciers hanging in the side valleys. The Matter Valley is flanked by some of the highest peaks in the Alps, and their glaciers, though retreating rapidly in the warming climate, remain spectacular sights. The Weisshorn, the Dom, and the Breithorn all exceed four thousand metres and carry extensive ice fields.
Chapter 2: Visp and the Rhone Valley
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GPS Waypoint: Visp Station -- 46.2937, 7.8822
At Visp, the train emerges from the Matter Valley into the broad floor of the Rhone Valley, the main east-west corridor of the Valais. This is one of the driest and warmest valleys in Switzerland, sheltered by high mountains on both sides, and its floor is a patchwork of vineyards, orchards, and small towns.
Visp is an important railway junction where the Glacier Express joins the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn mainline. As the train turns eastward up the Rhone Valley, notice the terraced vineyards climbing the south-facing slopes. Valais wines, made from Fendant, Pinot Noir, and the local Petite Arvine grape, are among Switzerland's finest, and the vineyards here have been cultivated since Roman times.
The valley floor is remarkably flat, carved by the Rhone glacier during the Ice Ages and subsequently filled with alluvial deposits. The Rhone itself, channelled between stone embankments, flows westward toward Lake Geneva and eventually to the Mediterranean. You are travelling against its current, climbing gradually toward the river's source in the mountains above.
Chapter 3: Brig and the Turn Eastward
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GPS Waypoint: Brig Station -- 46.3167, 7.9872
Brig is one of the most important stops on the Glacier Express route. This small town at the foot of the Simplon Pass has been a crossroads of Alpine travel for centuries. The Simplon route, connecting Switzerland with Italy, has carried traders, armies, and travellers since antiquity, and Napoleon built the first modern road over the pass in the early nineteenth century. The Simplon railway tunnel, completed in 1906 and for many years the longest in the world, passes beneath the mountains just south of here.
As the train leaves Brig and begins its climb eastward, the landscape changes dramatically. The broad Rhone Valley gives way to the narrow Goms valley, and the railway begins its serious ascent toward the Oberalp Pass. The gradient steepens, and the train, now equipped with a rack-and-pinion system that engages with a toothed rail between the running rails, climbs with a distinctive clicking rhythm.
The Goms is one of the most traditional valleys in the Valais. The villages here, with their dark-timbered houses and Baroque churches, have a character distinct from the more cosmopolitan towns lower in the valley. This is German-speaking Valais, and the dialect spoken here is among the most archaic in Switzerland.
Chapter 4: The Furka Region and Realp
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GPS Waypoint: Realp -- 46.5969, 8.5046
The train continues to climb through the upper Goms, passing through small villages and increasingly dramatic mountain scenery. The valley narrows, the peaks close in, and the atmosphere becomes distinctly high-Alpine.
At Realp, you are at the foot of three great passes: the Furka to the west, the Gotthard to the south, and the Oberalp to the east. This junction of routes has made the area strategically and commercially important for centuries. The Swiss military maintained significant installations here during the Cold War, and fortifications are scattered through the surrounding mountains.
The Furka Pass, visible to the west, leads to the Rhone Glacier, the source of the Rhone River. Before the construction of the Furka Base Tunnel in 1982, the Glacier Express crossed the Furka Pass at the surface, a spectacular but weather-dependent route that was closed for months each winter. The old surface route is now operated as a heritage railway in summer, and its most famous location, the hotel Belvédère overlooking the Rhone Glacier, has become an icon of Alpine photography.
The train now enters the Furka Base Tunnel, a fifteen-kilometre bore through the mountains that replaced the surface route over the pass. The tunnel is straight and dark, a functional piece of engineering that lacks the scenic drama of the surface route but makes year-round operation possible.
Chapter 5: The Oberalp Pass -- Summit of the Journey
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GPS Waypoint: Oberalp Pass -- 46.6594, 8.6714
Emerging from the tunnel on the eastern side, the train climbs the final stretch to the Oberalp Pass, at 2,033 metres the highest point on the Glacier Express route. The landscape here is austere and magnificent: bare rock, thin grass, scattered snow patches even in summer, and the wind-ruffled surface of the Oberalpsee reflecting the surrounding peaks.
The Oberalp marks the watershed between the Rhone, which flows west to the Mediterranean, and the Rhine, which flows north to the North Sea. It is also the boundary between the cantons of Valais and Graubuenden, and the linguistic boundary between the German-speaking Valais and the Romansh-speaking Surselva.
In winter, the pass is buried under metres of snow, and the railway operates through galleries and snow sheds that protect the track. The effort required to keep this line open year-round is extraordinary, involving snowploughs, rotary snow blowers, and teams of railway workers who battle the elements to maintain the service.
The descent from the Oberalp begins immediately, and the railway drops steeply toward the town of Andermatt and then into the Surselva valley. The views open up as the train descends, revealing a long, green valley dotted with villages and dominated by the distant bulk of the Toedi massif.
Chapter 6: The Surselva and Romansh Country
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GPS Waypoint: Disentis/Muster -- 46.7069, 8.8539
The train reaches Disentis/Muster, one of the cultural centres of the Romansh-speaking Surselva. Romansh, Switzerland's fourth national language, is spoken by approximately sixty thousand people, primarily in the valleys of Graubuenden. It is a Romance language, descended from the Latin spoken by the Roman colonists of Raetia, and it has survived two millennia of pressure from German to maintain its distinct identity.
Disentis is dominated by its Benedictine monastery, a massive white structure perched on a terrace above the town. The monastery was founded in the eighth century and has been a centre of Romansh culture and education for over twelve hundred years. It played a crucial role in preserving the Romansh language through the production of religious texts, dictionaries, and grammars.
As the train continues down the Surselva, notice the distinctive architecture of the Romansh villages: stone houses with thick walls and small windows, designed to withstand the harsh mountain climate. The churches, often topped with onion-shaped domes rather than the pointed steeples typical of German-speaking Switzerland, reflect the influence of Baroque architecture that reached these valleys through Catholic networks from Austria and Italy.
Chapter 7: The Rhine Gorge -- Swiss Grand Canyon
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GPS Waypoint: Rhine Gorge -- 46.8120, 9.2650
As the valley broadens and the railway approaches the Rhine Gorge, prepare for one of the highlights of the journey. The Rhine Gorge, known as the Ruinaulta or the Swiss Grand Canyon, is a thirteen-kilometre stretch where the Rhine has carved a deep, narrow canyon through the remnants of a massive prehistoric landslide.
The gorge was created approximately ten thousand years ago when the Flims Rockslide, the largest known landslide in the Alps, sent an estimated twelve cubic kilometres of rock crashing into the Rhine valley. The Rhine subsequently carved its way through this debris, creating the dramatic canyon you see today: steep cliffs of pale limestone and conglomerate, rising up to four hundred metres above the river, with dense forests of pine and beech clinging to the slopes.
The railway follows the gorge closely, and the views from the panoramic windows are magnificent. The turquoise-green waters of the Rhine twist through the canyon far below, bordered by white gravel beaches and overhanging cliffs. In some places, the gorge narrows to barely a hundred metres, and the sense of enclosed, primordial wildness is powerful.
The Rhine Gorge is protected as a landscape of national importance, and its combination of geological drama, ecological richness, and visual beauty makes it one of the most impressive natural features along the entire Glacier Express route.
Chapter 8: Chur and the Transition to the Albula Line
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GPS Waypoint: Chur Station -- 46.8531, 9.5298
The train reaches Chur, the oldest city in Switzerland and the capital of Canton Graubuenden. At Chur, the Glacier Express transitions from the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn to the Rhaetian Railway, the narrow-gauge network that operates the celebrated Albula and Bernina lines.
Chur is a natural gateway to the Alps, sitting at the point where the Rhine valley opens onto the Swiss Mittelland and the routes to the great Alpine passes converge. The city has been inhabited for over five thousand years, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in Europe.
After a brief stop, the train heads south from Chur into the increasingly dramatic landscape of the Albula valley. The engineering of the Albula line, completed in 1903, is one of the supreme achievements of railway building. The line climbs from Chur at 585 metres to the Albula Tunnel at 1,820 metres, gaining over twelve hundred metres of altitude in a distance of just sixty kilometres. To achieve this within the limits of adhesion traction, without rack-and-pinion assistance, the engineers employed a series of spiral tunnels, hairpin curves, and viaducts that are both technically brilliant and visually spectacular.
In 2008, the Albula line, together with the Bernina line, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, recognising it as an outstanding example of technological achievement in harmony with a spectacular mountain landscape.
Chapter 9: The Landwasser Viaduct and Albula Spiral Tunnels
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GPS Waypoint: Landwasser Viaduct -- 46.6810, 9.6741
The most famous single structure on the entire Glacier Express route now appears: the Landwasser Viaduct. This 65-metre-high, 136-metre-long curved stone viaduct carries the railway across the Landwasser gorge and directly into a tunnel carved into the sheer rock face of the opposite wall.
The viaduct, built between 1901 and 1902, has become the symbol of Swiss railway engineering and one of the most photographed structures in the country. Its six arches, built of local limestone, curve gracefully across the void, and the train crosses at a stately pace that allows passengers to appreciate both the engineering and the dizzying depth of the gorge below.
After the Landwasser Viaduct, the train enters the series of spiral tunnels and loops that carry it up to the Albula summit. At Berguen, the valley narrows and the climbing begins in earnest. The railway loops back upon itself inside the mountains, emerging at a higher level to loop again, gaining altitude in a series of ascending spirals that are invisible from inside the train but clearly legible on a map.
Look down from the windows as the train climbs and you may spot sections of track far below that you crossed just minutes earlier. This three-dimensional puzzle of loops and tunnels, all achieved without rack assistance, represents the pinnacle of Alpine railway engineering.
The Albula Tunnel, 5,864 metres long, carries the train beneath the pass and deposits it in the upper Engadin valley.
Chapter 10: The Engadin and Arrival at St. Moritz
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GPS Waypoint: St. Moritz Station -- 46.4986, 9.8373
Emerging from the Albula Tunnel, the landscape changes completely. You are now in the Engadin, one of the highest inhabited valleys in the Alps. The light is different here: brighter, sharper, more intense, a consequence of the altitude (over 1,700 metres) and the dry inner-Alpine climate. The Engadin enjoys over three hundred days of sunshine per year, and the quality of its light has attracted artists for generations.
The train descends through the upper Engadin, passing the lakes of Silvaplana and Champfer, which gleam a deep, improbable blue in the mountain light. Windsurfers and kitesurfers skim across the water on breezy days, an incongruous sight at this altitude.
As the train approaches St. Moritz, the valley broadens and the town appears: a cluster of grand hotels, church spires, and residential buildings arranged around the shore of the St. Moritz lake. St. Moritz has been a resort since 1864, when the local hotelier Johannes Badrutt made a legendary wager with some English summer guests that they would enjoy a winter holiday in the Alps. They came, they loved it, and the winter tourism industry was born.
The train pulls into St. Moritz station and the eight-hour journey concludes. You have crossed the heart of the Swiss Alps, from the western Valais to the eastern Engadin, from the foot of the Matterhorn to the shores of the Engadin lakes. You have climbed to over two thousand metres and descended again. You have crossed 291 bridges, passed through 91 tunnels, and traversed a UNESCO World Heritage railway line.
Practical Tips
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A few practical notes for the Glacier Express journey.
Seat reservations are compulsory and should be booked in advance, particularly during the peak summer months from June to September. First-class passengers receive wider seats and a more spacious carriage, but the panoramic windows are the same in both classes.
Seating on the right side of the train, facing forward from Zermatt, generally offers the best views of the Rhine Gorge and the Landwasser Viaduct. However, the scenery alternates between sides throughout the journey, and both sides offer excellent views at different points.
A three-course lunch is served at your seat, a pleasant tradition that adds to the occasion. The meal is accompanied by Swiss wines and is timed to coincide with a relatively less scenic stretch of the journey so that you can eat without feeling that you are missing critical views.
The train operates year-round, though winter services may be reduced. Winter journeys offer a completely different visual experience: snow-covered landscapes, frozen waterfalls, and the particular crystalline beauty of the Alps under winter light.
Swiss Travel Pass holders travel free on the Glacier Express but must still purchase a seat reservation.
Conclusion
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The Glacier Express is not merely a train journey; it is a traversal of Switzerland's Alpine heartland, a slow, meditative passage through landscapes that represent millions of years of geological history and centuries of human endeavour. The bridges, tunnels, and viaducts you have crossed are monuments to the ingenuity and determination of the engineers who built them. The villages, churches, and farmsteads visible from the windows are evidence of the communities that have made these mountains their home.
In an age of speed and efficiency, the Glacier Express offers something countercultural: the luxury of slowness, the pleasure of watching the world pass by at a pace that allows genuine observation and reflection. The mountains do not hurry, and neither, on this journey, do you.
Thank you for travelling with us on the Glacier Express. We hope the slow passage through the heart of the Alps has left you with memories that will endure as long as the mountains themselves.