And I do it all again (Italy 2025 part 7)

After the amazing day I had, I was extremely happy that I had decided to book two days on the Rhaetian Railway network, not just the one day I had originally planned. Sure, each day cost quite a bit of money, but it was totally worth it -- especially since I wasn't paying Swiss hotel prices. I was even more excited when I got to the station and realized my train would be pulled by the retro-livery EMU I had seen the day before! Yes, I'm a hopeless train geek, but I'm also a hopeless retail geek, and I think the general public would find that even stranger...

Before I forget, here's the song I was referencing in the title.

I had thought that these trains were exclusive to the Bernina line, but apparently they're multi-voltage and able to run on the entire network (though they seem to be pretty much exclusive to the Bernina and Arosa lines these days). That makes the reference to the Chur-Arosa line on the first-class car make more sense! I was quite excited to see this as Arosa was my destination for the day. 

Of course, I went straight for the older cars with opening windows. I ended up in the half-bike car again since it was the emptiest again. And this time I was able to get a picture of the border crossing station between Italy and Switzerland. 

I'll try to make this quick since we've already seen it a few posts ago. 

The RhB sometimes hauls freight cars with their passenger trains (in regular service), something you don't see very often elsewhere. I was hoping I would get one of those trains on this trip sometime, but sadly that didn't happen. We did pass one of them at Brusio on day 2. 

Poschiavo Lake looked incredible on this foggy morning. 

At Poschiavo Station, a couple guys showed up and loaded a bunch of food and drinks into the bike half of my car. I suppose the bike section was probably originally intended as a freight section, but this was still a real surprise! I guess I got to ride on a hybrid passenger/freight train after all, just not in the way I expected. 

Unfortunately, we then ended up just sitting at the station for quite some time. At this point, the sign was displaying +4 minutes (Trenitalia's departure boards report delays in 5 minute increments and don't even mention delays of less than 5 minutes... that just goes to show how seriously the Swiss take timeliness), and we ended up leaving with a nearly 10-minute delay. Considering I had three transfers to make, all of which were under 10 minutes (with a 4-minute connection in Chur at the end), I was a bit nervous about this! 

Climbing out of Poschiavo meant climbing into the fog. Not much in the way of views this morning... 

... though there's still plenty of cool stuff to see up close! 

You can't really see it in the picture, but there were some insane ice formations on the rocks across the valley. 

At Alp Grum, a small army of workers descended on the train to unload the food and drinks. I guess this is the only way for them to get supplies, at least in the winter! I was a bit worried about this considering the delay, but they got the whole thing unloaded in a minute or two, tops. 

There was even less visible out the window crossing the Bernina Pass than the day before, with only a featureless white expanse at times. It was like being in an unfinished simulation, with nothing beyond the train rendered properly. Not the greatest for views, but it led to some pretty interesting pictures at least! 

Eventually, some breaks in the clouds revealed mountain tops floating above the white void. 

The descent towards Pontresina may have been even more stunning than the day before.

Thankfully, the train had picked up several minutes towards its scheduled time, and I was able to make the Pontresina-Samedan shuffle without much trouble. 

Unfortunately, the train to Chur was running several minutes late too. Switzerland was not living up to its reputation! That did give me the chance to see the southbound Bernina Express running by -- the reflective windows (which must be an absolute pain to photograph out of) made it difficult to get pictures, but the train looked quite full (I'd guess around 50-75% full) of people who were paying an absolute fortune to presumably have a lot less fun than I was. I see a few people figured out that the window at the end of each car opens partway, but that's nowhere near as amazing as the windows on the regular train cars. 

Eventually, my train turned up, and I went straight for the (empty!) panoramic car. 

The clouds were very much back when we got to the Bever Valley. 

Apparently I had picked up a neighbor in the panorama car by this point! 

The Albula Valley was stunning as always, despite the clouds. 

Just imagine driving on that road along the cliff, especially in the winter. I'm much happier on the train! 

Just past Filisur (where I switched trains the day before) is the famous Landwasser Viaduct, coming straight out of the cliff face. For all the hype (there are even prerecorded announcements telling passengers that it's coming up), I didn't think it was that much more interesting than all of the other amazing sights on the RhB network. 

I was starting to become overloaded at this point, in that I had seen so much beautiful scenery over the past day that it was hardly registering any more. The beautiful green of the Albula River certainly stood out, but not much else. 

I'm always drawn to the built environment at least as much as the natural one, and this bridge over a narrow, deep canyon (don't drop the phone!) is quite impressive. The road must have been here first, since it took the narrowest part of the canyon, leaving the railroad to build a much larger bridge. (It's too bad the track doesn't wind around enough here for me to get a good picture of the railroad bridge.)

 

 

The Albula line (or at least the UNESCO designation) officially ends here, at the modern bridge leading into Thusis. At this point, we were running about 3 minutes late, leaving me quite nervous about my 4-minute connection coming up, though it's still a ways from here to Chur.

The stretch along the Hinterrhein River is more of a normal railway again, not a special mountain railway, but it's still quite scenic. 

I just took this picture because I thought the mixing of the two rivers was beautiful, not realizing this is the official start of the Rhine! This is the confluence of the Hinterrhein (foreground) and the Vorderrhein. I was too nervous about my connection to think about that, since we had just stopped and waited several minutes for a train coming from Disentis (the one RhB line I completely skipped) and it was looking like my 4-minute connection was becoming a 0-minute connection. 

Speaking of late, it's getting really late here, so you're going to have to wait until tomorrow to see how the rest of my journey to Arosa went!