The lines

Fourteen real rack railways, rebuilt from survey data and drawn to one scale.

Every line on this page has been rebuilt in our Rack Railways models from OpenStreetMap and national survey heights (swisstopo, Welsh Government LiDAR, Austrian, Czech and US elevation models), fitted to the rules each railway was built to. Here they are side by side, at the same scale. Tap a line to read about it, then drive it in 3D.

Every line on one profile

Pilatus climbs 1600 m in barely 4 km: watch how its line rises almost twice as steeply as any other. Pikes Peak goes highest, from 2000 m to over 4290 m, but takes 14 km to do it. Tanvald–Kořenov, a main line with rack only on its steepest part, hardly leaves the ground at this scale.

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Steepness fingerprints

Grade along each line

Each strip is a line from its bottom station (left) to its top, coloured by gradient and drawn to the same length scale. Most mountain lines sit at their limit for long stretches, easing only at stations and passing loops: a railway is cheapest when it climbs as steeply as its rules allow.

The shapes of the lines

All at one scale

Plans drawn to a common scale, north up, coloured by gradient, with a dot at the bottom station. Snowdon follows one long ridge to the summit; Pikes Peak winds back and forth across a whole mountainside.

Drive them

Each line opens in its own page with its trains, its points, a map, the seasons and a cab ride. The Wengernalp, Schynige Platte, Brienz Rothorn, Rigi, Monte Generoso and Snowdon are shown as they were built in the 1890s; Rochers-de-Naye, Gornergrat, the Schafbergbahn and Tanvald–Kořenov as they are today. The workshop has working-model kits of the Snowdon engine, the Tanvald T 426.0 and the Pilatus railcar to print yourself.

Choose a line to drive →

Profiles from the Rack Railways route models: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); heights © swisstopo, Welsh Government LiDAR (OGL), BEV (CC BY 4.0), ČÚZK, USGS 3DEP. Heights are the fitted track, so stations may differ by a few metres from published figures.