World Railway Facts
Some interesting facts about railways around the world, reproduced from newspapers. All known sources of the information and of the photos are credited below.
Railway Tunnels
The following paragraph was published as a Metro Factfile article, in the Metro, a free British daily newspaper on Tuesday 12th June 2007.
The Seikan rail tunnel is the world’s longest rail tunnel at 54 km or 33½ miles. Opened in 1988, it connects the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido in the Sea of Japan. But cheaper and faster air travel has left it under used and its record will be smashed in 2015. The Gotthard Base railway Tunnel being built in Switzerland will be 57 km or 35 miles long.
Railway Viaducts
The following paragraphs were published in the Answers to Correspondents page of the Daily Mail, a national British daily newspaper on Friday 19th October 2007.
Question: Advertisements for the Classic Glacier Express include a picture of a train on a viaduct passing into a mountain. Where is this? When and how was this viaduct constructed.
Photo: Coming round the mountain: The Glacier Express’s Landwasser Viaduct. Reproduced from the Daily Mail newspaper, Friday 19th October 2007.
Answer: The Landwasser Viaduct, near Filisur, in the Canton of Graubunden, in south-east Switzerland, crosses the narrow Landwasser river which runs down from Davos.
It took just 14 months to build and was opened in 1904. It is 130 feet high and 426 feet long and comprises of six arches of dark limestone.The single track runs in a line shaped like a quarter circle with a 324 feet radius before plunging into an opening in a huge rock face and entering the 700 feet long Landwasser tunnel.
The viaduct was constructed without conventional large scaffolding, because a metal tower was built within each of the three taller piers, each equipped with a bridge crane.
The towers rose as construction proceeded upwards, until the arches could be built by putting wooden scaffolding on them. The first and last arches are anchored by strong abutments to the rock face on either side of the gorge.
The above answer was suppiled by Peter E. Dace of Hertfordshire.
Railway World Heritage Sites
The following paragraphs were published in the Answers to Correspondents page of the Daily Mail, a national British daily newspaper on Tuesday 12th June 2007.
Question: I learned from a recent TV programme that the railway to Darjeeling in India is the second one to become a World Heritage site. Which was the first? Are there any others?
Photo: Darjeeling will be totally your cup of tea, if you like vintage British steam locomotives in a spectacular landscape.
Reproduced from the Daily Mail newspaper, Tuesday 12th June 2007.
Answer: The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) featured by Victoria Wood in the BBC TV series entitled “Victoria’s Empire”, is indeed only the second of three railways to be accorded the World Heritage status, in 1999, by UNESCO. The line is 55 miles long, built to a narrow gauge of only 2 foot and climbs over 7,000 feet using an ingenious combination of spirals and zig zags (or reversing stations) to gain height.
It made a tremendous impact on the development of the Darjeeling region, including tea production, and even today its 100-plus-year-old, British-built steam locomotives are still in daily service.
When the going gets too difficult, men riding on the front buffer beam, trickle sand on to the rails to keep the train moving. The DHR Society with more than 800 members worldwide provides support, publicity and tours to this wonderful little railway. You can see a lot more about it by visiting the DHR Society website at www.dhrs.org
The first railway to gain World Heritage status, in 1998, was the 25 mile standard gauge Semmering Railway in Austria on the main railway route between Vienna and Trieste, Italy.
Built between 1848 and 1854, it was the first railway to cross a mountain range, and the high standard of its tunnels, viaducts and other structures made it one of the greatest feats of civil engineering in the pioneering days of railway building.
The third and latest railway to gain World Heritage status, is the 28 mile metre gauge Nilgiri Mountain Railway in southern India. Opened in 1908, it climbs over 4,000 feet from Mettupalyam to the former hill station of Ootacamund (which was known affectionately as ‘Snooty Ooty’ in the days of the Raj).
The line has more than 250 bridges, 16 tunnels and uses a rack and pinnion (cog) method of adhesion on part of the very steeply graded journey. The line’s locomotives date from 1914 and were manufactured in Switzerland.
Film director, David Lean, so admired the railway that in 1984 he used it for the train scenes in the film, A Passage To India.
The above answer was supplied by Paul Whittle of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society.
This page was last updated on 19th October 2007.
© Daniel McIntyre 2007.