Natural feature
Pilatus - Kulm
Summit reached by the world's steepest cogwheel railway, climbing a forty-eight percent grade to sweeping Alpine views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Pilatus Kulm above Lucerne follows engineer Eduard Locher and the sideways railway he devised after the Swiss government rejected an earlier, gentler plan as too costly. You will hear why every cogwheel train before his kept slipping off steep track, and how he reworked the whole mechanism to beat the mountain instead. It is also the story of six hundred laborers, mostly Italian, who spent three summers cutting the line by hand, financed without a single government franc.
This audio guide was created using AI.