KLEINE SCHEIDECK STATION (SWITZERLAND)
Train station on the top of Europe
| Pastures surround Klein Scheideck Station in Switzerland, which, at an altitude of 2,061 meters, is beyond the forest limit. A red mountain train is seen ascending into the ice and snow. |
| Passengers look out the train windows at a nearby glacier. |
| Kleine Scheideck Station is crowded with tourists, many of them Japanese, changing trains to Jungfraujoch. |
| The high street in Grindelwald is filled with people coming and going until late at night. |
Photos by Yomiuri Shimbun Photographer Eishi Miyasaka
By Katsuo Kokaji
Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
The wooden seats of the mountain train between Grindelwald and Kleine Scheideck stations in Switzerland were fixed at a considerable angle, and I understood why as soon as the train started — there is a risk that passengers will fall off the seats as the train zigzags up a slope that has a maximum of 25 percent gradient in places.
It was a 40-minute train journey from Grindelwald, a small Alpine village with a population of 4,400, to Kleine Scheideck, 1,000 meters further up the mountains.
A series of picture-perfect scenes appeared through the windows. The train passed through a cluster of mountain huts with pots of red geraniums on windows sills and ran over a river whitened by the presence of lime. Beyond a dreamlike grassland filled with highland flowers loomed the north face of Mt. Eiger.
The mountain had an oppressive air that reminded me of something Jiro Nitta (1912-1980), author of many novels about mountains, said of the peak. In "Arupusu no Tani, Arupusu no Mura" (Alpine Valleys, Alpine Villages), he wrote, "It was as if part of the earth's bones, polished by the sun, wind and snow, were hurling curses at the sky."
At Kleine Scheideck Station, I changed trains to Jungfraujoch, the highest station in Europe. To get there, the train traveled through a tunnel bored through the belly of Mt. Eiger.
I felt dizzy when I got out of the train at Jungfraujoch Station. At 3,454 meters, it must have been a minor symptom of altitude sickness. The temperature outside the station was minus 20 C. The whole area was covered in snow and ice.
The train started operating in 1912. It came as a surprise to me to discover that sightseers traveled here by train nearly 100 years ago.
Back in Grindelwald, I passed numerous Japanese tourists. The village was filled with signboards in Japanese, and there was even a Japanese information center in front of the train station.
Most of the passengers on board the mountain train were Japanese.
"Last year, the number (of Japanese tourists) declined due to the Iraq war. Still, 270,000 of the 530,000 people who used our train to travel to Jungfraujoch were Japanese," said Henriette Hausammann, 28, a publicity officer for Jungfrau Railways.
JAPANESE
The Daily Yomiuri, The Yomiuri Shimbun
