What working in the service industry taught me about design

This article is part of a series based on a talk I gave at Adobe Max and WebVisions last year. To read the other articles in the series, check out Bringing the Humanity Back to Digital. Before…

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The Bernina Railway

By Jacopo Ibello

The Bernina Railway is an international line connecting St. Moritz, in the Swiss canton of Grisons, with the Lombard town of Tirano, Italy. Completely opened in 1910, it’s one of the most famous railways in the world due to the spectacular landscapes along its route and for its advanced level of engineering, especially in the time when it was built. Together with the Albula Railway, it’s part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Rhaetian Railway in the Albula/Bernina Landscapes” since 2008.

The most distinguishing feature of the Bernina Railway is that it follows the landscape adapting to it, rather than modifying it with great and complex works. This has several reasons, technical and historical. The first one is that the designers had to renounce to a rack railway because the line should be suited to passenger and freight service, and the rack system can’t stand too heavy trains. The second one is that the Bernina railway should serve valleys (Engadin and Valtelline through the Valposchiavo) that keep strong cultural and commercial relations since a long time, but had become of secondary importance in the late XIX century after the opening of railways through other Alpine passes like the Gotthard or Brenner. So speed and efficiency weren’t a primary need and the line was designed also for tourism purpose.

The line is almost a “local product”, with bridges, tunnels and other works made with local materials, and the trains are powered by electricity produced exploiting the vast water resources of the area. The construction of the Bernina Railway saved the territory from a perpetual depression, stopping emigration and fostering the local development through tourism and trade (and with the building and maintenance of the railway and electric infrastructure, of course).

The gallery follows the line from Tirano to St. Moritz on board and, for the first section until Brusio, from the path Via Albula/Bernina, created exactly to explore the railway… by feet. Every picture has a caption with facts and figures about the depicted situation and the railway.

We start in Tirano. On Piazza Stazione the station of the Italian railway Trenitalia (left) faces the counterpart of the Rhaetian Railway, RhB (right).

The RhB (here the Romansh name) incorporated the Bernina Railway in 1944.

Several rolling stock of the RhB is visible at the station.

Just after the departure we have the most famous image of the Bernina Railway: the Bernina train crosses like a tram the square in front of the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Tirano. The beautiful Sanctuary was built in 1513 after a local apparition of Mary. It’s “guarded” by the church of St. Perpetua on the top of a vineyard, built in the XI century.

Before the Swiss border the train faces the abandoned hotel “Castello di Piattamala”.

If you take the pathway Via Albula/Bernina, the first thing of Switzerland you meet exiting the forest is the penstock supplying the power plant of Campocologno, one of the several providing electricity to the Bernina Railway. The water comes from the Lake of Poschiavo.

The station of Campocologno and its own café, typically decorated.

We now approach the most famous work of the Bernina Railway.

The spiral viaduct of Brusio allows the railway passing from 7 mt to 17 mt height over the soil. The viaduct’s construction was necessary to limit the railway’s grade to the required maximum of 7%, otherwise the train would slip on the way up, or be uncontrollable on the way down.

Yeah, riding it with the train it’s like model railroading on natural scale!

After the viaduct a group of “crotti” rests under the tracks. Crotti are a natural cave typical of the Italian Alps. They were used to store ice, cheese and other food.

The lake was created by a landslide which made a natural dam in the stream of the Poschiavino, a river that flows down in the valley and reaches the Adda in Tirano.

Poschiavo is the control and maintenance center of the RhB for the southern part of the Bernina Railway.

Poschiavo is one of the most beautiful Swiss villages. Worth of visits are the “Palazzi”, the elegant villas built by the bakers emigrated across the world in the XIX century.

We now start to climb meters quite rapidly. The section between Poschiavo and the Lago Bianco is the most complicated and was the last to be completed. It’s a dizzying zigzag! The station of Cavaglia lies at 1.692 mt. After it two 180° curves together with several bridges and tunnels bring us over 2.000 mt.