INTERLAKEN, THE JUNGFRAU, THE EIGER AND GRINDELWALD

The weather had been good every day and for our second full day we went into the mountains.  There are two separate railways systems in the region of Lucerne, the main Swiss Railways system, the SBB-CFF-FFS and the Zentralbahn.  The former is on standard gauge but the latter is on a narrower gauge, one metre.  The Zentralbarn is centered on Lucerne and its principal line runs to Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland.  Although on a narrow gauge the carriages are not noticeably smaller.

The line runs through the Breunig Pass to Meiringen where it reverses and then travels alongside Lake Brienz.  Interlaken sits between Lake Brienz and Lake Thun.  There are a number of steep sections on the line, the Bruenig Pass being the most formidable, and as a result the electric locomotive runs on a rack for the steeper sections.  It does this seemlessly and you aren't aware of the transition unless you are looking down at the track.  It was a lovely ride.

At Interlaken we switched onto the Bernese Oberland Bahn. With typical Swiss efficiency the train from Lucerne connects directly to this one metre line which took us to Lauterbrunnen. We got off there and connected immediately with the Wengenalpenbahn.  This is a two feet seven and a half inch rack railway that took us to our final destination, Kleine Scheidegg.  Although the trains runs to a timetable it looked as if on our visit they sent a train up when it was full.  It was really busy.  This line was quite amazing as it was very steep for much of the trip.  We passed several other trains on our way up and were even overtaken by one in a passing loop.

The station at Lauterbrunnen with a train on the Wengenalpenbahn

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 As we left Lauterbrunnen

                                

   Typical mountain scenery 

The rack 

 

Mountains in every direction 

 

Looking back towards Lauterbrunnen

Back towards Wengen

In the region there are railways and cable cars.  The map shows the system centered on Kleine Scheidegg

Lauterbrunnen is at the bottom right.  The train ran to Wengen, Allmend and Wengenalp on its way to Kleine Scheidegg in the centre of the photo.  Two lines run from Kleine Scheidegg.  One, the Jungfraubahn, goes to the Jungfrau.  Much of the journey is inside the mountain, emerging at an underground station building near the summit. 

The Jungfraubahn loading with passengers for the run to the summit station

The other line is a continuation of the Wengenalpenbahn and runs down to Grindelwald, on the left hand side of the map photo.

The train on the left has just come up from Lauterbrunnen.  The one on the right has arrived from Grindelwald and is about the return there 

The summit of the Jungfrau (13,462 ft)  is the peak just to the right of centre.  The peak to the left is the Monch (14,474 ft).

The summit station, the Top of Europe (11,332 ft) is just to the left of the summit of the Jungfrau

It was lunchtime when we arrived at Kleine Scheidegg station, so we found a little cafe with a view of the mountains and had goulash soup (again).  The plan was the walk down in  the direction of Grindelwald following the line of the railway knowing that we could always stop at one of the stations to finish the journey.  We weren't the only walkers and we met a number coming up the hill.

The start of the walk down

Kleine Scheidegg is situated at the foot of 10 km wall of mountains that include the Jungfrau, the Monch and the famous Eiger.

The Eiger to the left and the Monch to the right

 

The north face of the Eiger

On the way down

Looking back to the Jungfrau

There a were a few signs on the track.  Grindelwald is in the valley ahead

There were some lovely flowers

A water trough for the animals, our path stretched ahead

A mountain stream

A fine mountain view

The train from Grindelwald on the way up the hill

And one coming down

We passed by the station of Alpiglen and continued onto Brandegg.  By this time we felt he had done enough walking and we knew that the last leg into Grindelwald was a little more difficult so we waited for the next train down, they run every thirty minutes, and got to Grindelwald.  There we connected almost immediately with the Bernese Oberland Bahn to get back to Interlaken.  The Lucerne train runs every two hours so we had a short time at the station, time for an ice-cream.

Another very successful day out.