Climb the steepest cogwheel railway in the world

A gradient of forty-eight per cent, which is the steepest rack railway anywhere. It opened in 1889 and the carriages are built at an angle so the floor stays roughly level.

The engineering problem was that a conventional rack cannot hold at this pitch. Eduard Locher solved it with horizontally mounted cogs that grip the rail from both sides rather than from beneath, so the train cannot climb out of its own track. The system is unique to this line.

The classic route is the Golden Round Trip: a boat across Lake Lucerne to Alpnachstad, the cogwheel up, then the aerial cableway and gondola down the other side to Kriens. It gives you the lake, the ascent and the descent without repeating anything.

From the summit, on a clear day, the view runs over Lake Lucerne, the central Swiss plateau and a long arc of the Alps. Local legend held that the ghost of Pontius Pilate haunted a lake near the top, and for centuries climbing the mountain was forbidden.