Swiss rail firm claims Guinness record for world’s longest passenger train
- The Rhaetian Railway company ran the 1.9km-long (1.2-mile-long) train composed of 100 coaches along the Albula/Bernina route from Preda to Berguen
- Rail enthusiasts lined the valley to watch the train’s 25 sections wind their way about 25km through the Alps
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.
“For me, this is just Swiss perfection,” RhB chief Renato Fasciati told the Blick daily newspaper’s live feed of the event, as the long red train snaked slowly through the mountainous landscape.
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.