Original subtitles

Escape with us on a breathtaking voyage across some

of the world's great mountain landscapes.

Whoa, look at this, look at the valley.

As we travel across four continents, and six mountain ranges...

..we discover how railways have forged a path through

some of our planet's most formidable terrain.

There's no way to slow thousands of tonnes.

Battled against mighty natural forces...

To do something like this is...pretty amazing.

..and come face-to-face with ancient civilisations.

Along the way we meet the people

who live and work along these special railways...

Take a look at this heavenly light, this is magical.

..to learn how they have conquered some of the most inhospitable

and beautiful terrain known to man.

The treasure of nature is up.

In the mountains you have to go up, lifts up your spirit.

This is no ordinary train journey.

This is a journey across the world's most scenic mountains.

Mountains.

There are few geographical wonders on Earth as impressive.

Or as spectacular.

With the birth of the modern industrial era

a century and half ago,

and the rapid expansion of railways across the world,

pioneers of this new age saw mountains,

not as objects of beauty, instead as barriers to progress.

Their vision was to connect

the planet's most inhospitable geographies...

..to brand-new cities and ports.

This is the story of how they tamed nature's giants...

..and conquered mountains by rail.

What better place to start than on the roof of Europe,

the continent where railway building began?

High in the Swiss Alps, the Glacier Express,

a sturdy 2,300 horse power electric locomotive

that travels from St Moritz to Zermatt,

carries passengers along one of the

most scenic mountain routes in the world.

The sites are so breathtaking and just how massive

some of the mountains are, and just...

Yeah, it's incredible.

But a century ago, none of these idyllic views could be enjoyed

from the luxury of a train window.

When the railway builders set out connect the country's remote

alpine valleys, they faced the challenge of 291 bridges

and 91 tunnels across some Europe's steepest terrain.

Those feats of engineering still continue today.

So now ae are entering the tunnel, the Albula Tunnel

and it's approximately 6km long.

Built over 100 years ago,

the Albula tunnel is nearing the end of its useful life.

But rather than close and refurbish it,

a new tunnel is being built right next to it.

Jurgen is one of the tunnel engineers in charge

of construction, which is expected to be completed in 2022.

That's the old tunnel and that's the new one.

We have a small curve.

Later on they will 30 metres apart.

But the two portals are very close.

Tunnelling is a major challenge.

It took two years to break through from both ends of the new tunnel.

Nearly a quarter million cubic metres of solid rock

were excavated before work on the interior could begin.

The amount of water inside the tunnel at this stage looks

alarming but this, apparently, is normal.

You can have projects which are completely dry,

but here water is a real problem.

Water is circulating in the rock

and we have the Grauwacke Zone

where a lot of water is circulating

and right now, we are draining this water.

Eh!

The Men who built the old Albula tunnel at the beginning

of the last century also battled with water.

We basically encounter the same quantity of water like they do.

When they built the tunnel 120 years ago

they had the problem that they couldn't stop the water income

and it only stopped after a couple of months.

Surprisingly, despite all the advances in technology

in the past 100 years, in the end, the new tunnel will

have taken about the same amount of time to complete as the old one.

You had roughly 1,200 people for the old tunnel

and now at this point of time we have 70 people.

We're not much faster, we're not much cheaper, but we are safer

and we are less people.

Tunnelling is a unique experience also in the sense,

you excavate material and it's like landing on the moon.

You excavate the material

and you're one of the first people standing on that spot.

The new tunnel only takes five minutes to travel through.

And at the far end, it gives way to an even more

spectacular feat of engineering - the Landwasser Viaduct.

Whoa! look at this, look at the valley.

That's amazing.

Back of the viaduct, right?

This must be one of the greatest railway journeys anywhere, yeah.

When the railway builders finally completed the route

during the 1930s, they opened up Switzerland's

magnificent valleys to the whole world.

Rail travel transformed towns like Brig,

that lie 181 miles along its route.

As flocks of passengers could enjoy

direct access to the heart of the Alps, as never before.

Today people still follow in their footsteps,

as they head off to hike and climb.

Mountain guide and passionate climber, HansChristian, looks after

the nearby glacier, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The treasure of nature is up.

In the mountains you have to go up.

Lifts up your mind, lifts up your spirit,

lifts even up your intellect.

HE CHUCKLES

Growing up here in the mountains means growing up with the rocks.

The rocks are sisters and brothers,

we have to adapt to the rock, he doesn't adapt himself to you.

I'm a climber and if you're once a climber, you always stay a climber.

Maybe that's my passion.

It's hard to stay on a certain level

but once a week I still wanna go climbing, I have to.

I have to otherwise my body says me there is something with you.

Down here you can see the Glacier Express

leading from St Moritz down to the valley to Brig, Visp and to Zermatt.

Thanks to the Glacier Express and the pioneers who tunnelled

their way through the Swiss Alps, millions like Hans,

have enjoyed a century of travel to some of Europe's highest mountains.

But far away, on the other side of the world,

railways have had to contend with more than just impossible terrain.

They've battled with some of the mightiest natural forces on Earth.

You know, that's a heck of a force in there.

Pretty amazing.

Our epic journey continues in the mountains of New Zealand...

..where one of the world's most glorious railways crosses miles and

miles of unspoiled wilderness, as it follows the contours of the Earth.

The Tranzalpine line crosses the South Island from coast-to-coast,

passing through the Southern Alps.

And the train is surrounded by powerful, unseen forces

that lurk not above the railway...

..but below it.

Ben, a volcanologist from Christchurch, has a unique way

of explaining these terrifying dynamics.

Try and get it nice and flat.

Nice work.

So New Zealand,

the two tectonic plates are sliding past each other.

It's that sliding passed that makes the mountains grow.

and then this, you can imagine it's just like the Alps

and you can see cracks moving across the Canterbury Plains.

I notice that the land was getting smaller

while the mountains are getting bigger.

You're right. As the mountains grow,

the land is slightly compressed as it folds and bends.

As the Alpine Fault continues to squeeze the island, the cracks

even far from the fault forcefully move, causing earthquakes.

CAR ALARM BLARES

At 4:35 on the 4th September, 2010

a massive earthquake hit South Island.

The magnitude of these shock waves

reached a terrifying 7.1 on the Richter Scale.

Directly along the Tranzalpine route.

It's just that bend there. That.

Zac was working that day when he came across the track bent as

if it was just rubber.

There's a bit of power. That's nature, there.

When I first arrived out there, I just shook my head.

The first two things, it's our heaviest rail.

It was supported by our heaviest type of sleeper

had good track formation around the side.

And, just, you know...

..to do something like this is pretty amazing.

The local engineer driver had parked the train on the west side

and his story was that as he was coming down he could feel the train

bouncing, moving, he thought it was gonna come off and

it was wiggling like that.

He was driving when it actually happened.

You know, that's a heck of a force on there.

The stress to push that out, that's just phenomenal.

Seismic tremors aren't the only hazard for mountain railways.

Powerful forces are also at work in the Canadian Rockies.

An enormous 80 tonne train,

powered by two 3,000 horse power GP40-2 engines,

called the Rocky Mountaineer, ploughs right through them.

And there are few trains seats in the world

with mountain views like this.

Millions of years of erosion by wind

and ice have shaped these famous limestone peaks.

The same erosion capable of stopping a train in its tracks.

This is the narrowest point in the Fraser River.

Just 31 metres across and its current depth is about 150ft deep.

While building the TransPacific Railway,

Canadian engineers faced a unique problem.

The ice erosion that created the mighty peaks of the Rockies,

also carved out vast, U-shaped valleys.

With them are swirling,

dangerous rapids like Hell's Gate on the Fraser River.

Because it's so deep, there's an

enormous volume of water passing through it,

the equivalent of a volume of water the size of the

Empire State Building going through Hell's Gate every minute, twice.

As it is such a turbulent rapid,

Simon Fraser eloquently puts in his journal that they had endured

so much, but for surely we have entered the gates of Hell.

Today it takes expert navigational skills,

jet engines and guts to get anywhere near.

Adventurous tour guides Renee and Jessie may be up

for the challenge but they also know the risks.

Hell's Gate is just around the

corner but a lot of debris in the water.

There's a lot of sticks and stuff in the water. If we lose the pump,

we'll all be making it down very easily.

If you guys are good, we'll turn it around here.

The water gets pretty turbulent and whirlpool-y.

You got you get sucked into the whirlpool sideways

and it can be pretty dangerous.

When you get in there,

it's essentially a giant eddie full of whirlpools, full of boils.

The water doesn't run in one direction.

It's always spinning, going opposite directions, causes the hazard.

It's not the best idea to be going into that eddie today.

When the railway builders came to the river over a century ago,

these treacherous rapids almost brought construction of the line

to a standstill.

And the 19th century railway builders had to somehow find a way

to get a rather oddly-named ship through this deadly stretch.

There was a paddle wheeler that they had come up here.

It was called the SS Skuzzy.

Navigating the SS Skuzzy through Hell's Gate was certainly

a difficult job.

They had Chinese workers, between 50 and a 100 of each side of the banks,

with big ropes and they attached

them to the paddle wheeler and basically were told,

"Heave-ho! Heave-ho!"

And they had to pull this paddle wheeler up through the rapid.

You know, a bunch of guys fall in,

they grab the next five guys, get on that rope, pull it through.

And when you go to Hell's Gate you can still see the metal bolts,

the rings in the rock where the lined those ropes through

and pulled that boat through.

The Skuzzy made it to the other side.

the challenges to the pioneers of Canada's 500-mile railway

through the Rockies didn't end here.

Long, winding descents down mountain sides,

risked derailing any train on its tracks.

The worst stretch of all was known as the Big Hill.

It had an incredibly steep slope,

dropping 1,000 feet in just ten miles.

The Big Hill was in many ways a cut corner, money was conserved

by putting the trains down what was an illegal grade, a 4.4% grade.

It would be a rather dangerous situation to have all that

momentum heading down the hill

and the first train that ever went down The Big Hill did

actually derail and the engineers on board didn't make it either.

When it opened in 1884,

The Big Hill section was one of the steepest railway lines around.

It was the scene of many disastrous derailments,

as park ranger Sarah explains.

The Canadian Pacific Railway lost steam trains,

they would also lose loads they would lose grain transportation,

sometimes loss of life, whether it was conductors or passengers.

They realised that just running straight over and straight down into

a valley with no reprieve, there's no way to slow thousands of tonnes.

They needed to come up with a solution

and that solution was the spiral tunnels.

They decided to cut two circular tunnels deep into the side

of two mountains - Cathedral Mountain and Mount Ogden.

This would allow trains to spiral round

and descend safely at a much more gentle grade.

Basically, the way they engineered, they did bring in Swiss engineers

from Europe based on the same way

they built roads to ascend as switchbacks through the Alps.

To build this, a thousand men, horses, dynamite,

remove all the rubble and then lay the track once its cleared.

On the 1st September 1909, this pair of spiral tunnels opened,

at a cost of around $1.5 million.

The extra track effectively doubled the length of the section,

reducing the steepness of the gradient by half.

At the time it was pretty cutting edge.

Um, people were still driving on dirt roads, people were still

driving horse carriages, the Ford T model engine

was basically, sort of, a new phenomenon

so something like this was a massive feat.

Right now, there's a CP rail train that's coming into the upper tunnel.

It's going into the mountain, it's going to be coming around spiralling

upon itself lower and then coming out right there in the lower part.

And as it turns back on itself, it's going to descend

so that makes it a whole lot safer, a whole lot slower.

And what better way to see this feat of engineering than by taking

a train right through them,

but this time we are going up rather than down.

Now what's going to happen is that we are going to head towards

Mount Ogden and as we get closer to it you'll see

that 50 feet above the tunnel that we go into, you'll actually

see the tracks that we'll be on, because to quote my mother,

what we'll be doing is chucking a U-ie inside of the mountain.

Can you see, by looking at the rail car in front of us you can

probably see and imagine which way the train is going to turn?

And we're just seeing quite literally

the light at the end of the tunnel but Cathedral Mountain was

on our right-hand side, Mount Steven was directly behind us as we emerge

from this tunnel you'll see that Cathedral Mountain is directly in

front of us and so rather incredibly

this train has performed a three-quarter turn.

Having crossed some of the world's greatest mountain ranges

and overcome cataclysmic events, our journey next

turns south towards the Equator, to descend into the bowels

of the Earth itself and one of the deepest canyons of the world.

Our great mountain train journey

around the world continues in Mexico.

Here the Chihuahua Pacifico railway, known affectionately as El Chepe...

TRAIN HORN BLARES

..connects the country's northwest interior to the Pacific coast.

And crosses the Tarahumara mountains.

According to El Chepe's Rosalva, building it was a formidable task.

The construction, it took over 100 years.

We have over 200km of mountains.

So it took years to construct it.

And finally, in 1940 the Mexican government took over.

We had a revolution in the middle of these 100 years

so it took ten years approximately when they stopped constructing.

The Mexican railway's builders not only had to contend with mountains,

but also with one of the biggest gorges in the world.

Copper Canyon.

At 6,200 feet from rim to river,

it's the deepest canyon system in North America.

Four times larger than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Local tour guide Gustavo first came to this region over 25 years ago.

It is something like 24,000 square miles.

It is perhaps the largest system of canyons in the world.

And right behind me, this is the Urique Canyon.

The local indigenous people believe these canyons were

created by the feet of giants.

The less poetic reality is that these spectacular mountains

were formed from layers of volcanic lava

and ash laid down around 40 million years ago.

And then years of tectonic

and volcanic phenomenon happened to build up all this

beautiful landscape of mountains and canyons.

Since then, river erosion has carved this network of valleys into

what you see today.

So how did the railway builders tackle the canyon?

In what must be one of the world's most convoluted by-passes,

they constructed an extensive network of tunnels and bridges

to carry El Chepe through and out of Copper Canyon,

all the way to the coast.

In total, 86 tunnels, some half a mile long...

..and 37 bridges.

Though not before stopping...

..right on the edge of one of its highest points.

Divisadero, whose name means lookout or viewpoint, is exactly that.

Perched at an altitude of 8,200 feet

it is known as Mexico's most panoramic station.

And with this view, one can see why.

Apart from the station, the only other things that exist

on this plateau are a small hotel...

..and a cable car.

Created to give a panoramic view of the union of two canyons,

the Tararecua and the Urique, it will take ten minutes to cross.

And if the cable car isn't exciting enough for you...

Woo! Woo!

..at over one and a half miles in length,

this is the longest zip wire in the world.

SHE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

However, after that adrenaline rush,

getting back will take a little longer.

But the spectacular views more than make up for it.

As El Chepe leaves behind the deepest canyon in North America...

..our mountain railway journey continues on the African continent.

When the railway first arrived here, 150 years ago,

the iron horse swept across a wild frontier.

The routes often crossed mountain ranges that were the sacred

homelands of local indigenous peoples.

One of the most mysterious and beautiful,

is the 600 mile long range in South Africa.

Drakensburg Mountains.

Today, the Rovos Railway, that runs from Pretoria to Durban,

passes right through them.

They were once home to an enigmatic hunting and gathering

civilisation, known as the San.

Tantalising glimpses of their sacred beliefs,

in the form of rock paintings, lie high in their peaks.

Surprisingly, few people know where the San rock art is located.

One of them is anthropology professor, Jeremy Hollmann.

Right. Well, there we are.

Up there is the rock art site.

It's a bit of a scramble the last bit, but it's worth it.

The spectacular surroundings were an inspiration to ancient artists.

OK. We're here now.

Home of the best paintings and the most wonderful eland

that you're going to see in the Drakensberg.

The eland is the largest of all antelopes.

As we walk along here and you look to the rocks, you'll

see that there are paintings dotted all over the surfaces here.

And then we come to a gem like this, the dying eland,

the image that gave us a breakthrough into understanding

bushman beliefs and their reasons for making the rock paintings.

And what's really interesting about this figure,

it's not completely human.

So what we're seeing here is a twinning of human and eland.

And this is a central idea in bushman religion.

Jeremy has been studying every detail of these paintings

and the meaning behind them for years.

Obviously, one of the things we want to know when we look

at things like this is how old are the paintings?

Some dating work has been carried out in the mountains elsewhere,

we're getting dates of between 2,000 and 3,000 years before the present,

so they're pretty old.

There's no weathering that happens here, there's no sun that comes on

the painting, there's no water and that's why they've lasted so long.

And it's all out here in this amazing landscape.

On the other side of the world, in Norway, northern Europe,

the country's impressive mountains

are also steeped in mystery and magic.

Here, railways have had contend, not just to with physical giants,

but with spiritual ones.

Norway's tens of thousands of miles of primeval forest have

inspired local folklore for centuries

and imbued it with stories of mythical beasts,

and wondrous beings.

It's not far from your thoughts of trolls

and you can start to understand the Nordic mythology,

with thunder god Thor and Odin

with one eye and the warrior kind of philosophy.

The landscape is confirming the culture, you know?

The people reflects the landscape, in a way.

Norway's main line, that travels from its capital Oslo to the

Arctic Circle, aboard an El-18 electric locomotive,

passes through much of this mystical landscape.

The railway is even nicknamed The Trail of the Trolls.

But it's only when you get off the trains that you may get

a chance to meet one for yourself.

Today, Annette is taking a hike in the troll-infested mountains

less than an hour from where our train stops at Lillehammer,

the town that hosted the 1994 winter Olympics.

I grew up in this area and I walked since I was a little girl

I walk after work, just sorting

my mind out and relaxing,

listen to the birds and the waterfalls.

Annette likes walking solo, but she's by no means alone.

She's got some childhood friends for company.

Here we have a typical Norwegian troll stone where the trolls

will live underneath.

Different kinds of trolls, a wart on the nose maybe on the side or

here or trees going out of the nose

and a lot of hair.

Some of them are good and some of them are not and

they can't be seen in the daylight because then they get stoned.

Nature is a big part of the Norwegian history,

it has always been with us.

Not far from Annette and her troll friends' hang-out,

is another reason to get off the train at Lillehammer.

It smells tar, you know?

SHE SNIFFS It's amazing.

Caroline is a big fan of old Norwegian buildings.

And it's just as well.

When she's a not tour manager for a black metal band,

she's a tour guide at the Maihaugen Open-air Museum.

This smells like a sort of smoky...

It smells a little burnt, in a way,

but in a nice way.

Yeah, you can still smell it.

It's chock-full of original medieval folk dwellings,

that have been collected from around Norway and transplanted here.

All of them crafted from wood.

You could find trees everywhere here,

so this was the biggest resource we had.

Her Favourite is this 800-year-old church.

This construction is rather amazing.

This framework consisting of the wooden columns,

and the joists on top and on the

bottom creating a frame with wooden planks.

No nails, as you can see,

and if you wonder if this is a nail, no, it's not, it's a piece of wood.

Solid as a rock.

So it's like an ancient module system in a way,

it's brilliant, I think.

A bit like today's Scandi flat-pack furniture.

Impressive, isn't it?

I think it's rather cool.

Look at the tower, look at the roof, look at the dragon heads there.

Even though we are Christian by the time they made this church,

it makes me think of the Viking ships.

You can see some resemblance, can't you?

Look at this.

This is where you could end up if you worked on Sundays,

if you got pregnant without being married, if you didn't respect

the Ten Commandments then you could end up here as a punishment.

If a soldier raped a woman, he was given a warning the first time

the second time he'd have to pay and the third time he would end up here.

Now we are going inside the church to have a peek.

When people came here in the medieval times,

the women on one side, the men on the other.

It was really, really dark and it was cold, there were no heating.

Imagine when it's like 25 cold degrees outside and you're

standing in church freezing your butt off.

I'm not really a religious person,

but take a look at this heavenly light, this is magical.

Norway's mountains are literally spellbinding.

But on our glorious voyage there is one last destination,

a peak so majestic that it's become a global icon,

that will bring our journey

full circle to where it began, on the roof of Europe.

We have finally reached the top of our epic journey

around the world's great mountains.

On the roof of the world, in Switzerland,

where our journey began.

The line has been a mecca for mountain lovers since the days

the train first connected the remote valleys of the Swiss Alps.

The last 50 miles of the route that pass through the Matter Valley,

are its most dramatic.

This part of Switzerland is home to an impressive 38 peaks

over 4,000 metres.

It's a quarter past five and after eight hours of train journey,

the Glacier Express pulls into Zermatt station.

But it's not the end of the line if you really have a head for heights.

Overlooking the picturesque town at the end of the Matter Valley

is the stunning Matterhorn.

And, enthusiastic hikers,

climbers and runners can get even closer to this iconic mountain.

But this involves one more short train journey on

the Gornergrat Railway.

Our Glacier Express attendant Manuel

is a regular passenger on the 30 minute-long ride.

This railway is very special

because it is taking people up to the mountain for 120 years.

The rack rail climbs an additional 1,400 metres with an exceptionally

steep 20% gradient.

It takes us to Gornergrat, Europe's second highest train station,

for an even better view of the Matterhorn.

For some, the peace and quiet up here and the outstanding views of

one of the most majestic mountains on Earth is a spiritual experience.

I love this place, I love this view, I love to be here

because here I have my peace,

I have all the space I need, to be like a bird, to be free.

Our global train adventure across the world's great mountain

landscapes has taken us to four continents.

To Switzerland where engineers tamed Europe's bracing peaks

and New Zealand where the railroads felt the full force of nature.

To Canada where the pioneers negotiated impossible terrain...

..and Mexico where the trains forged their way across one

of the deepest canyons on Earth.

Our voyage passed through mountains that hold the secrets

of ancient civilisations in South Africa

and mythical landscapes in Norway

before it returned to the stunning heart of Europe.

Our mountain train journey has been truly epic.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media