Through-routed (Europe 2025 part 7)

 We weren't going far this afternoon, knowing that we would want to spend time up on the mountain... but as soon as we got back my parents insisted on rushing right onto a train, even though it was three trains before the one we wanted to catch. I didn't even have enough time to set up our Eurail passes before getting on (and despite Eurail's app claiming to work without internet access, it refused to work on the train, which like many modern trains has windows that accidentally block cell connectivity). 

After a very short train ride and a very crowded cable car, it's back to the valley, looking at the waterfalls coming down the cliff walls. 

Over on the Wengernalpbahn side of the platform, several vintage railcars were out on view, seemingly being used to move cargo around. I guess this isn't entirely a tourist railroad, though I imagine pretty much everyone who lives here is part of the tourism industry. 

The current trains heading up the mountain are these rather boring modern-ish trains with an ugly green and yellow color scheme... the classic green and cream trains look so much nicer.

 

Soon enough, our BOB train showed up. I like how this picture shows the steepness of the last little bit up to the station! 

Back in Interlaken, our next train was already waiting for us -- but since it wasn't going to leave for a while, we still had to wait outside. The doors were actually unlocked, but someone got yelled at for getting on the train too early! 

This train's a bit funny -- it may look like an EMU in the previous picture, but it's an unpowered trainset that's always pulled by a locomotive. For the first section of the line, there was also an extra car stuck onto the front of the train (without anything obvious to tell passengers it wasn't going to make the full trip with us -- it even has the Goldenpass Express branding for some reason). 

Up at the front is a somewhat silly looking regular-gauge locomotive. 

 

These trains have an interesting trick up their sleeve, but it's not one that I can really show you. Halfway along the line, they switch from the regular gauge tracks at Interlaken to narrow-gauge tracks down to Montreux, which the MOB (yes, that's the actual name of the company that runs this train!) has called the first in the world. That's kind of true... variable gauge systems like this have been around since the 60s, but only between broad gauge and regular gauge, not involving narrow gauge. That's a lot less impressive than the marketing, but it does look pretty cool -- from underneath the train, not a view passengers are going to get. It would have been cool to at least watch from the platform, but if you do that you're going to have to wait a couple hours for the next train. On board it's hardly even noticeable -- slow but quite smooth (and since it's in the station it doesn't feel all that slow). 

 And down in Montreux, we get off the train in its narrow-gauge form, in the pouring rain. Unfortunately this wasn't the most pleasant train ride -- the first part had a family with multiple loud kids sitting across from us, then as soon as they left they were replaced with something almost as bad -- a huge group of American tourists coming off what seemed to be one of those river cruise things. Yay. 

I don't normally show hotels here, but Montreux is famous as being the home of Freddie Mercury, and one of the only reasonably-priced hotels in town is the Freddie Mercury Hotel. Turns out it's affordable because it's run by a college as a training school, but it was still a perfectly fine place. 

 

And in the morning, when the weather had cleared up quite a bit, we went for a walk on the lakefront and checked out the famous Freddie Mercury statue.