The Gelmerbahn or Gelmer Funicular is a cable railway in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. It links a lower terminus at Handegg, in the Haslital (the valley of the upper Aar River), with an upper terminus at the Gelmersee lake, above. The Handegg terminus of the line is close to the road over the Grimsel Pass. It is accessible by car and by an infrequent PostBus service.
It is technically not a funicular, which has two cars that counterbalance each other, but is instead a cable railway propelled by a winch. With an incline of 106% (or 47°), Gelmerbahn was commonly identified as the steepest funicular in Europe, until the opening of the Stoosbahn (a true funicular which reaches 110%) in 2017. It remains the steepest open-car railway in Europe.
History The cable railway was originally built to facilitate the construction of the Gelmersee – a reservoir constructed in 1926 to exploit the hydroelectric resources of the area – and was not opened for public use until 2001. The line is owned and operated by Kraftwerke Oberhasli AG (KWO), which owns the power station.
A funicular existed on the opposite side of the valley from 1948 to 2015.
Operation The line operates from the beginning of June to mid-October, in daylight hours only. It has the following parameters:
Feature ValueNumber of cars1Number of stops3ConfigurationSingle track with no passing loopTrack lengthRiseMaximum gradient106% (46°41')Track gaugeSpeedJourney time10 minutesCapacity24 passengers per car; 60 persons in each direction per hour
See also List of funiculars in Switzerland
References
External links
The Gelmerbahn on KWO's web site