Switzerland Glacier Express Train St. Mortiz to Zermatt Review: Is it Worth the Money?

• Report rights infringement
• published: 02 Jan 2015
• views: 10617

My Review of the Glacier Express Train in Switzerland, which goes from St. Moritz to Zermatt. We were on the train in December of 2014. The Glacier Express is a train which connects the two major mountain resorts of St. Moritz and Zermatt in the Swiss Alps. It is not an "express" in the sense of being a high-speed train but rather in the sense that it provides a one-seat ride for a long duration travel. In fact it has the reputation of being the slowest express train in the world. It takes 7,5 hours to journey across 291 bridges, through 91 tunnels and across the Oberalp Pass on the highest point at 2,033 m (6,670 ft) in altitude. The entire line is metre gauge (narrow gauge railway). The Glacier Express is run jointly by two private Swiss railways, the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB) and the Rhätische Bahn (RhB), who also operate the regular local trains and freight trains over the same route. The panorama cars were introduced in 2006. I decided to take this trip after I have seen a scene of the Glacier Express in the IMAX documentary film "The Alps" The Glacier Express is an express train connecting railway stations of the two major mountain resorts of St. Moritz and Zermatt in the Swiss Alps. The train is operated jointly by the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn (MGB) and Rhaetian Railway (RhB). For much of its journey, it also passes along and through the World Heritage Site known as the Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes. The train is not an "express" in the sense of being a high-speed train, but rather, in the sense that it provides a one-seat ride for a long duration travel. In fact it has the reputation of being the slowest express train in the world.[1] As St. Moritz and Zermatt are home to two well-known mountains, the Glacier Express is also said to travel from Piz Bernina to Matterhorn. The Glacier Express first ran in 1930. Initially, it was operated by three railway companies: the Brig–Visp–Zermatt Bahn (BVZ), the Furka Oberalp Bahn, and the RhB. Since 2003, the train has been operated by RhB and a newly established company, the MGB, which arose from a merger between the BVZ and the FO. The trip on the Glacier Express is a 7½ hour railway journey across 291 bridges, through 91 tunnels and across the Oberalp Pass on the highest point at 2,033 m (6,670 ft) in altitude. The entire line is metre gauge (narrow gauge railway), and large portions of it use a rack-and-pinion system both for ascending steep grades and to control the descent of the train on the back side of those grades. Hey everybody so today I am doing a review of the Swiss Glacier express train that goes from St. Moritz all the way to Zermatt. It's an eight hour journey that crosses 291 bridges as well as 91 tunnels and we paid we were in first class. We paid about 250.00 dollars roughly Canadian a person so it's a little pricey but it's all relative in Switzerland. Ear buds are provide to you throughout the journey and basically there is this narrator that basically tells you all these stories along the whole journey with different interesting facts with how they built the trains as well as the landscape. And you're probably watching this wondering well is it worth the money to go on the train. Well in short answer yes and no. My wife and I are both from Canada so seeing mountains and snow is pretty common. We weren't blown away by anything we saw. And all the footage you see is everything I shot myself. The first thing I am going to say is that the weirdest thing is that it shouldn't nbe called the Glacier Express. That title is super misleading. When in fact on this whole 8 hour journey you only see one glacier and that's at the tale end in the small town Randa. You only see that one glacier for a minute or so and the rest of the train trip you're basically just seeing mountains as well as snow as well as streams as well as small towns and villages The other thing is that the service is not very good on the actual train ride. They do serve different meals that you can buy but they're quite expensive and you'll be waiting for your food for quite a while. You're probably better off bringing your own food and water. The other thing too is that eight hours is such a long journey that we thought we'd see so many different things along the way that after a while things got really repetitive like you're seeing the same mountains over and over again and seeing snow everywhere. It didn't have the same impact as it did maybe in the first hour of the journey when you're in hour 8. So I felt like the train ride could have maybe been condensed to maybe 3 hours and