The Alps

This mountain looks very familiar, but I can't place it. Does anybody know which one it is?

No trees in this shot, but the road is still there, and look at that grade!! Also, the curve is so sharp it would easily put a car in the ditch if the driver was going too fast. As it's rail curves that generally have to be wide, as trains are quite big, it gives an impression of how sharp, relatively speaking, this curve is, even given that it's narrow gauge. Notice also on the right that that's a frozen lake!!

I took a picture of this mountain solely because I loved it. I didn't think too much about which mountain it was, and didn't have a topo map on me. If anybody knows which one it is, please leave a comment!! :-)

Here's another great shot, in my opinion anyway. :-) Snow, clouds, mountains, rock. An amazing Alpine scene! :-) Check out the frozen lake in the foreground!

In this shot of the frozen lake, it's less abstract, and more obvious what it is.

Here's an alternate, wider shot of the frozen lake in Picture 16.

Frozen lake! :-)

This is Ospizio Bernina Bahnhof, on the final downhill stretch into Italy.

This restaurant is next to Ospizio Bahnhof, but what interests me more are the flatcars on the other track. That's not a freight train, but a passenger train that carries cars, or what in English speaking countries would be called an autotrain. Many people are so intimidated by the mountain conditions (probably not bad judgement) that they let the railway do the driving!!

Unfortunately, I'm afraid these next few are hopelessly out of order, as they're supposed to go before, Cavaglia, which is supposed to go before Ospizio Bernina. I'll try to straighten it out in an iPernity album in the next day or two. :-) This shot is, I think, of the frozen lake pictured earlier, with blowing snow. Does anybody know which one it is?

Although this is a brutal, rocky, craggy shot, I actually saw some much rawer stuff when I was up there.

Cavaglia Bahnhof is interesting in that it has an altitude marker on it, giving an idea of how high up this line is.

There's the altitude marker...1693 meters, or 5555 feet!! The Rhatische Bahn is by no means the highest railway in the world, but it's certainly at a higher altitude than average!!

I'm fairly certain that I took this on the way down into Italy.

Here the downgrade is really noticeable, as we're approaching the Italian border.

The route from Pontresina to Tirano is steeply graded, but less so than it could have been. Because it is a rail line, frequented by mostly conventional trains using bare steel wheels on bare steel rails, there are still limits as to what the trains can take. Therefore, there are a number of rail spirals, like this one, and switchbacks as well. That building we're heading into is a snowshed.

Here's a shot taken from the snowshed.

The Rhatische Bahn also has a number of concrete snowsheds, in addition to the traditional wooden ones. Here's one of them.