The world’s longest passenger train completed a spectacular, world record-setting journey in the Swiss Alps, a railway company announced.
The 1.2-mile-long train with 100 coaches ventured 15.5 miles on Saturday through mountains, tunnels and across bridges to claim the record for the world’s longest passenger train, Swiss railway company Rhaetian Railway said in a statement.
Seven train drivers and 21 technicians operated the train as it rode from the Albula Tunnel in Preda to the Landwasser Viaduct just outside Filisur along the famous Albula-Bernina route, a UNESCO World Heritage designation, ending in Bergün.
The previous record was set in Belgium by the National Belgian Railway Company in 1991, according to Euro News.
Peep the leaves by rail:Amtrak has you covered for foliage spotting this fall
Several thousand people lined up to watch the train’s 25 railcars twist and turn through the winding Alps in a journey that took over an hour. The train crossed 48 bridges and went through 22 tunnels. UNESCO said the historic railway is an “outstanding technical, architectural and environmental ensemble and embodies architectural and civil engineering achievements, in harmony with the landscapes through which they pass.”
The world record attempt marked 175 years of Swiss railways.
The world’s longest passenger train – an assembly of 100 connected coaches measuring 1.9km (1.2 miles) – wound through breathtaking scenery in the Swiss Alps on Saturday.
The Rhaetian Railway (RhB) announced that it had beat the Guinness World Record for the longest passenger train, at an event marking the 175th anniversary of Switzerland’s famous railway system.
The 1,910-metre (6,266-ft) train, composed of 25 separable multiple-unit trains, or 100 coaches, travelled through the Alps in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubunden.
While there are freight trains that are longer, with some measuring over 3km, Saturday’s event featured by far the longest passenger train ever run.
It was several hundred metres longer than a train that held the unofficial previous record, in Belgium in the 1990s, an RhB spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
With dazzling sunshine reflecting off its shiny, silver roof and with a digital destination sign on the front reading “Alpine Cruise”, the train carried 150 passengers.
It took the spectacular, spiralling Albula/Bernina route, listed as a Unesco World Heritage site, covering the nearly 25km from Preda to Alvaneu in less than 45 minutes.