Driver’s Eye View - Furka Steam Railway (Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke) - Part 1

There was a real sense of excitement as we left our Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn train at Realp to make our way to the legendary Furka Steam Railway (Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke), a largely volunteer run heritage railway operating via the Furka Pass, between Realp in Uri and Oberwald in Valais. The metre gauge (3 ft 33⁄8 in) line is approximately 18 km (11 miles) long reaching an altitude of 2,160 m (7,090 ft) at the (1,858 metres - 6,096 ft long) Furka Summit Tunnel. The railway is rack and pinion-operated over its steepest sections and adhesion worked elsewhere. The summit tunnel first opened to traffic on 3rd July 1926, the railway was always difficult to operate, requiring the line to be closed during the winter months due to the avalanche risk posed by the heavy winter snowfall. The original Steffenbach viaduct located on the Uri side of the summit tunnel fell victim to an avalanche in its first year of operation, it was replaced by a folding bridge that had to be dismantled every winter to avoid it suffering the same fate as the viaduct it replaced. In 1982, the original summit route was abandoned with the routing of all trains via the new Furka Base Tunnel.
Fortunately that was not the end of the story, on 11th July 1992 a group of dedicated volunteers began progressively reopening the line to give us the wonderful railway we see today.
The locomotives running on the day of our visit were HD 3/4 2-6-0 T No’s 9 & 4 built by SLM for the Furka Oberalp Bahn before being exported to Vietnam after electrification, they were aquired by the Furka Steam Railway along with two members of the HG 4/4 class built for the Song Pha to Đà Lạt Railway in French Indochina (Vietnam).

Country - Switzerland.

Track - metre gauge (3 ft 33⁄8 in)

To learn more about the locomotives of the Furka Steam Railway, please click on this link - https://www.dfb.ch/en/stories/informa...

To learn more about the railway, please click on these links –
https://echo-trails.com/furka-cogwhee...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furka_S...

For information about the Steffenbachbrücke – Folding Bridge, please click on these links    • Aufbau der Steffenbachbrücke im Zeitr...   https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steffen...

This visit was part of the Railway Touring Company’s 2022 “Alpine Steam Express” Tour. To find out more about future European tours, please click on this link - https://www.railwaytouring.net/europe