Original subtitles

Throughout the world, railroads have to cope with one geographical challenge

that stands above the rest.

Mountain. The terrain is difficult.

It's quite steep.

Overcoming the planet's peak pushes railroad engineers to their limits. It's

really difficult to build anything here.

Requiring ingenious solutions.

This plow can clear massive amounts of snow in minutes.

Three, two, one, go!

They make the impossible possible.

Somebody stood here saying we're going to build a railway here.

That's impressive.

From the world's wildest waters to its mightiest mountains, railroads have set

out to conquer them all.

What a feat of engineering.

Absolutely amazing.

Driven by daring engineers for whom no obstacle is too great.

I truly love this structure.

It's magnificent.

California's Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Facing up to 65 feet of snow each year.

It would seem like the last place on Earth to build a railroad.

However, in the late 19th century, The pioneers of California's Central Pacific

Railroad thought otherwise.

The railroad was built to connect San Francisco to Utah via the Sierra

By 1869, the section to Reno was almost complete.

But there was still one major hurdle to overcome, as engineer Chris Potts is

finding out. This is Donner Pass, and this summit stood as the last major

obstacle for the Central Pacific Railroad.

for joining California with the East.

Named after George Donner, the leader of a settler group, this 6 ,500 -foot

-high path has an ominous history.

During the winter of 1846, the traveling party became trapped by deep snow.

After supplies ran out to survive, they resorted to cannibalism.

24 years later, despite the evidence of impassable snowfall, the pioneering

railroad engineers pressed on.

Theodore D. Judah, the chief engineer for Central Pacific, thought that the

weather up here would be no match for his railroad.

Unfortunately, he severely underestimated the power of nature.

Shortly after the completion of their railroad in 1870, many miles were lost

under the snow, and it was deemed impassable.

Traditional snow plows relied on the momentum of the train and a wedge

nose, which works well until the snow deepens and turns to ice.

With no machinery to tackle deep drift, Judah built 40 miles of snowsheds to

protect the track.

But these smoke -filled tunnels were a temporary fix.

Finally, in 1883, Canadian inventor Orange Jull provided a solution with a

groundbreaking machine.

The Rotary Snow Plow.

A truly monumental snow battling solution.

It's an absolute monster of engineering.

It's the last word in snow clearance.

If there's a serious snow drift, this is what the railroad rolls out.

Amazing.

Today, the conditions may be fine, but riding this iconic machine is a once -in

-a -lifetime opportunity.

This machine runs off of 1 ,500 horsepower, operated by that B unit

us. This plow can clear massive amounts of snow in minutes.

What a feat of engineering.

Absolutely amazing.

Unlike those traditional wedge -node snowplows, Joel's machine relied on an

entirely different mechanism.

This fan works like a giant corkscrew.

It cuts away at the ice bit by bit, and what it does is it turns the snow into a

fine powder and then through the centrifugal force, shoots it out through

top in either direction.

With Joel's 12 -foot fan able to tackle even the worst buildup, it would

revolutionize snow clearance.

So not only could this snowplow move more snow than traditional methods, it

also much safer.

Not needing the momentum that more traditional methods needed, this was

operate for longer distances and at lower speeds, meaning there was less of

chance that this would derail.

Shortly after its introduction, the rotary snowplow proved itself.

time and time again, in the most severe weather conditions.

In the winter of 1952, Smart Ridge near Donner Pass experienced a huge blizzard.

The city of San Francisco streamliner was buried in around 16 feet of snow,

trapping over 200 passengers.

Although it took three days, no less than four rotary clouds finally reached

train. saving all but two of those on board.

Since its introduction in 1870, the rotary snow plow has fought the worst

weather and won.

It truly is the ultimate snow clearing machine.

But in the mountains, for trains, weather is far from the only

On the wild west coast of Britain lies the spectacular Snowdonia National Park.

For centuries, a mecca for climbers.

At the center of it all, the summit everyone wants to ascend.

Mount Snowdon.

But at almost 3 ,300 feet tall, these stunning views were once reserved only

the brave.

At the end of the 19th century, however, one man decided he wasn't content with

merely hiking to the top.

He wanted to conquer the tallest mountain in Wales by train.

Snowden Mountain Railway has been clawing its way through the clouds for

than 120 years.

This morning, they're preparing the historic rolling stock for another

remarkable attempt on the summit.

It's been an all -night process.

It's always a busy time prepping for the day.

So steam locomotives, they've been in steam overnight with a fireman on watch.

Some of the locomotives are over 120 years old, and they're facing a

impossible near five -mile climb.

The terrain is difficult.

The steepest gradient on the mountain is 1 in 5 .5.

For every five and a half meters, the track rises a meter.

So it's quite steep.

It's far from certain they'll make it all the way.

We are on wind warnings today.

If wind speed increases on the mountain, we may be forced to stop at Rocky

Valley, okay?

In Snowdonia National Park on the west coast of Britain lies the tallest

mountain in Wales, Mount Snowdon.

Today, fireman Elizabeth Partridge, driver Robert Henry Jones, and general

manager Alan Kendall are aboard the Snowdon Mountain Railway, getting set to

lead a train full of adventurous tourists on a journey to the top.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, car tickets, please.

But they may not make it all the way.

We are on wind warnings today.

If wind speed increases on the mountain, we may be forced to stop at Rocky

Valley, okay?

There's always been an interest in getting to the top of the mountain for

years, really.

And prior to the railway, people walked and hiked and climbed and also went up

by donkey and horse.

Daring adventure is the brainchild of one man.

Railroad tycoon Richard Moon had a vision of bringing the mountain to the

masses.

Moon's proposed rail started from the base of the mountain, passing a

rocky outcrop to traverse a half -mile -long exposed ridge before ascending the

last 650 feet to the summit.

But no traditional railway could ever provide enough traction to scale the

incline. A fact clear to current senior engineering manager Mike Robertshaw down

below in the yard.

Well, in a normal railway, all the traction and braking forces are carried

by the steel wheel on the steel rail.

In our case, because the gradients are so steep, you get no adhesion between

steel wheel and the steel rail, and the locomotive would just sit and spin or

slide backwards.

Mobile 5, Snowden 1, stop the temperance.

The consequences of slipping back down such a gradient are unthinkable.

But there was a possible solution, one that had been perfected by a Swiss

engineer just a few years earlier.

The absolute only option to go to the summit was a Rack and Pinion railway.

Unlike a traditional train where the power is transferred down an axle to the

wheel, Moon's Snowden locomotives have a cog on the axle, which connects with

the toothed rack running between the rails. So getting enough grip is no

a problem.

Well, this is a rack and pinion railway.

This part is the rack, and these... The pinions. And on the main track, there's

a pair of racks. And on the locomotive, there's two driven axles, each with a

pair of pinions.

So the pinion, there's always two teeth fully engaged in the rack.

It was a surprisingly simple solution to a once impossible problem.

But while the system can cope with the gradient, the unforgiving mountain

climate is another matter.

The weather on Snowdon is always a challenge all the year round, and

particularly in the winter.

We're in July.

You can see the cloud coming in.

You can feel the temperature drop.

Mobile 5, Snowdon 1, do we have an idea on the current wind readings?

Snowdon 1, Mobile 5, yeah, the last wind reading at 45 was 45 .1.

If the weather deteriorates today, the train will be forced to terminate some

distance below the legendary summit.

Cloud and mist have shrouded the peak, just as they did on the railroad's

opening on April 6, 1896.

After successfully reaching the summit, locomotive number one started its

descent, but having lost control, it jumped off the rack.

The crew left clear, but the runaway engine derailed and fell over the side

the mountain.

After an inquiry, additional gripper rails fixed around the track's rack

lock the trains firmly in place.

Today, it's an anxious wait for passengers, while the crew decides if

weather is too severe to continue to the peak.

It's good news.

But first, the train must navigate the steepest part of the track.

The upper mountain is a serious gradient, one in five.

We're currently traveling on an original locomotive from 1896.

You can look out of the window and you can see the gradient behind you. You can

appreciate just how hard that boiler has to work and the pressures that it has

to create.

The steep gradient means an ordinary boiler would be unable to cope.

A traditional steam engine boiler consists of a cylinder filled with

surrounding a series of pipes.

All very good for traveling on a flat line, but if you're trying to climb a

mountain as the train tilts, the changing water level exposes the pipe,

potentially disastrous consequences.

So, how can the danger be averted?

So this is one of our locomotives that we're doing some work on.

And this part here is the boiler.

And as you can see, it's inclined forward at an angle.

And that's so that when the locomotive goes on the mountain and the chassis

upwards at the front, the boiler becomes level.

It's yet another innovative solution that means Richard Moon's mountain dream

can be accomplished.

Mobile 5 -2, Snowden 1, and the summit past the 1 in 5.

As once again, this remarkable train achieves its mission.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the summit.

Be very careful, there are high wings today.

Mind the gap as you come off and enjoy your stay. Thank you very much.

So here we are at the end of July, unbelievably.

We're at the summit of Snowden.

You get a real sense of why the original engineering team wanted to build a

mountain railway to the top of the tallest mountain.

It was not only a challenge, it was something they'd go down in history for.

So hats off to the Victorian.

On a clear day from this station at the rooftop of Wales, it's possible to see

England, Scotland and Ireland.

Richard Moon's 19th century vision created the journey of a lifetime.

But scaling the planet's mountains poses many different problems.

The sharp vertical drops in vertical elevation, they're all things that

really don't like. For the engineers of Impossible Railroad.

Mountain tracks.

Railroads traversing the peaks and troughs of the world's great ranges.

Solving extreme problems in extraordinary environments.

But sometimes, for trains, the answer can appear out of reach.

Australia's Blue Mountains.

a 2 ,200 -mile -long range on the country's east coast.

In the 19th century, this natural wonder was a huge stumbling block for an

essential rail line between the coastal city of Sydney and the resource -rich

Lithgow Valley to its west.

The terrain in these mountains really poses a massive challenge to railway

engineers. Trains are beasts which like to stay on flat -level ground.

This terrain really turns that paradigm on its head.

The sharp vertical drops in vertical elevation, they're all things that

really don't like.

Tunneling was financially unviable. There was no choice but to build a

railroad like no other.

The Great Zig Zag.

Completed in 1869, this remarkable V -shaped track clinging to the

is in an engineering league of its own for rail enthusiast and driver Lee

Wiggins. The Zig Zag Railway deserves to be celebrated and known for its

structural integrity and history and the fact that it is still in existence and

still going strong and still as strong as the day that it was built.

It was engineer John Witten who believed the railroad could take on the Blue

Mountain.

His smart Z -shaped design meant he was able to reduce the gradient to a

manageable 1 in 42, meaning the trains had enough friction to ascend and

safely.

Trains have a lot of problem working on grades that are too steep.

You might not be able to start the train on a grade. You might not be able to

stop the train on a grade if it's too steep.

You're not able to carry as much freight. You're not able to carry as

The shapes solved one issue, but Witten also had a problem with getting trains

to negotiate the track's acute corners.

He achieved this by creating two reversing points.

Here we are at Top Point's reversing station.

Normally steam locomotives would have come powering up the hill here, a

locomotive at both the front and the rear of the train.

As soon as the train would park up around the corner, the locomotive at the

of the train would then take control, the points would be switched, and the

train would come steaming up towards Sydney up in the other direction.

While the railroad may have been simple in theory, Executing it in the Blue

Mountains proved to be anything but.

When they were first surveying the route for the zigzag, the surveyors

themselves were actually lowered off the cliff edge in wicker baskets down the

side of the cliff face.

After it was surveyed and the line was then designed, it was nothing but manual

labor.

Such an enormous project required a huge workforce across the vast area.

Luckily, the site offered a natural observation point.

So this seat here was cut into the rock by the engineers at the time that was

constructing the railway, and it allowed them a great vantage point over

construction. They could see right across the valley and see all different

facets to be able to allow construction to take place.

In all, 94 ,000 tons of rock would have to be removed from the mountainside.

to cut the ledges for the track. Where we're standing right now is a ledge.

ledge is where the rails run and this was carved by hand. This was done by

hammering drills into the rock and then blowing the cliff apart with gunpowder.

Here we are about 20 metres down from the top rock ledge and we can see

here of the drill hole going all the way down to the base where the charge would

have been loaded here at the bottom.

The work was so grueling that it took around 700 men three years to complete

railroad.

Today, this group of volunteers is getting a taste of just how tough it was

create the drill holes for the explosives.

As you can see, what backbreaking work this must have been.

Doing this for just 15 minutes really goes to show just how hard.

It was back in those days.

No hydraulics, just good old -fashioned hard work.

Finally opened in 1869, the new Crotch Mountain route between Sydney and the

Lithgow Valley proved an overwhelming success.

The zigzag opening in the 1860s certainly benefited Sydney greatly.

It really opened the mining industry and the agricultural industry of the

plainlands this side of the Blue Mountains.

One of the first steel blast furnaces in New South Wales, if not Australia, was

in Lithgow.

So it really opened up the industrial, let's call it, revolution for Lithgow

the Central West area, and the zigzag was critical in achieving that.

Today, a network of tunnels cut through the mountains, and the zigzag is

operated as a tourist attraction.

But it remains an outstanding milestone for mountain rail lines.

To come up with something that drops as far as this does, to be built by hand by

people hanging from baskets 700 feet above the ground, I think that needs to

recognized as a major engineering masterpiece of the 19th century.

Safely negotiating acute gradient is an incredible achievement.

But for some engineers, keeping the lines open and the people safe is a

dangerous ordeal.

There are lots of fractures. The mountains are very tall, so the railroad

be hit by rocks.

Slom, a remote Norwegian mountain community.

Situated at the southern tip of the country's longest fjord, during the

1900s, this isolated town was all but cut off from civilization.

Connecting to the Bergen Railroad over 12 miles away would change their

fortunes. But with the mainline perch nearly 3 ,000 feet above, achieving this

would be far from easy.

as geologist Trina Hellesimanez knows.

Here you can see clearly why it was so difficult to build a railway. You have

really steep and very tall mountainside with lots of fractures.

And in the bottom of this deep valley, you also have the river.

So to build a railway, it actually had to hug the mountainside and wind its way

upwards the valley.

Only an extraordinary feat of engineering would overcome nature this

The Flam Railroad.

One of Europe's steepest standard gauge train lines.

Clawing its way up to the main line.

Crucially connecting Flam to the outside world.

A journey that never fails to impress CEO Sievert -Bach.

I would like to welcome you on board the Flam Railway.

The Flam Railway starts at two meters above the level.

and it goes to a typical Norwegian valley from the Ice Age to the middle

at 867 meters above the sea level.

It's considered one of the steepest railways in the world.

In 1923, it was senior engineer Ferdinand Björk who was tasked with

Flam Railroad a reality.

The 12 -and -a -half -mile line from the Songfjord to Myrdal Station in the

mountains would pose enormous challenges.

You have these deep mountain sides.

You have rock falls, avalanches when building.

The climate in the upper parts is really arctic.

It's a really big challenge to do this thing.

Add to that waterfalls and treacherous ledges to bypass as many obstacles as

possible. Björk commissioned no fewer than 20 tunnels.

Around 200 tunnelers were brought in to cut through the mountainside in grueling

conditions.

My great -grandfather, he was building railway tunnels in the mountains.

He always liked to tell stories about how they lived.

The heaviest thing was to drill up in the roof of the tunnels.

They had to do everything like up.

Like this, with very heavy work.

I think it took like one month to drill just one meter of tunnel.

Today, with the train line complete, geologist Trina continues the family's

railroad tradition above ground, tackling a potential problem that could

the mountain rail line to a grinding halt.

When you have such deep clips... It's obvious that you will have rock falls.

There are lots of fractures.

The mountains are very tall, so rocks always fall down.

It's very easy that the railroad could be hit by rocks.

So you can see, actually, how loose these rocks are.

So these small things fall down. It can happen also to big ones.

And today, the team have spotted something that could mean danger.

What I've seen here is that there's a block with fractures on all sides. It's

quite huge and heavy.

You can see the train is just passing us down there.

If one block like this falls down, it's dangerous for the railway and for the

people, and we want them to be totally safe.

Rock fractures like this are often caused by a phenomenon known as frost

wedging. This is where cycles of freezing and thawing water trapped

rock. can cause it to break away.

So this is the block I think you should put three bolts in.

Combating this requires an ingenious solution.

This could be looser, but this is bigger.

Don't you agree?

A traditional method dating from the 1800s known as rock bolting.

Emil is now down checking how many bolts we shall have and that we agree and how

the blocks look from down there.

He's going to drill a three -meter and four -meter long bolt into the rock to

fasten them to the solid rock.

And then when you have the hole, you put in this glue.

First it has to be mixed in there with the drill and then you wait for a while

and then everything is glued.

This is basically the technique that's always been done, that you fasten the

rocks to the mountain.

With nearly two miles of open track lying below, this preventative work is

vital.

How's it going, guys?

Everything okay?

Good. Good.

This work is really important because, you know, if any rails or anything is

damaged, or even this overhead line, you cannot take the trailer.

So it's really important for the whole area.

The extreme scenery this railroad once set out to conquer is now part and

to its success.

Slom Railway has in the last 30 years transformed from a railway who took

from Slom and made us go to Oslo or Bergen with the railway.

And now it's more a tourist railway and it's increased to about a million

passengers this year.

All transported to the track's mountainous summit of Myrdal in a

once thought impossible.

Well, this morning it took us 50 minutes to get to Myrdal, and in the old days

it will have taken a day or two to get from Islam off to the mountain.

All down to generations of pioneering railroad engineers.

Can you imagine more than 100 years ago that somebody stood here looking over

the valley saying, like, we're going to build a railway here?

That's impressive.

This is one of the most remarkable railways anywhere in the world.

And I'm able to take part of that.

That's fantastic.

I'm so proud of it.

But one fleet of trains faces more problems than most when it meets nature

its most extreme, pushing engineers to their limits.

Graubünden in southeast Switzerland.

A region world -renowned for one thing.

With such a mountainous terrain, you'd think cutting a railroad through this

dramatic landscape would be virtually impossible.

But for well over a century, this center of tourism and business... has been

connected by something truly mind -blowing.

The Ration Railway.

An almost 250 -mile -long network built to overcome nature at its most

extreme.

30 % of our railway net is 1 ,500 meters over sea level.

So the climb, the weather, mountains, these are the big challenges.

It was Dutchman Willem Jan Holsboer who pioneered the railroad's first line in

1888.

The 31 -mile stretch from Landcourt to the Spa town of Davos would spell the

start of a railroad phenomenon that now boasts 10 lines.

threaded through the region.

And one of its most dramatic and demanding is the Albula line.

It's definitely not the easiest place to have a railway.

I wouldn't say we are the toughest, but we are one of the toughest railway

engineers here.

It's up to engineer Gilbert Zimmerman to keep the railroads running.

The biggest challenge is the Hyatt, 30 % of our railway net.

It's above 1 ,500 meters over sea level.

Mainline trains are only capable of dealing with up to 7 % gradient.

So keeping the track level as level as possible here means going through the

mountains.

With the original Albula tunnel over a century old, the team must build a new

one through almost 20 ,000 feet of complex rock.

We are going now into the tunnel, the Alvola Tunnel 2, the new one.

We started building this tunnel two years ago, and now we are in

the geological fault zone, the most difficult part of the whole project.

The fault zone is full of water channels, creating problems for the

With all this water and soft rock, there's a big chance.

Let it break down everything.

So please don't go any further than here, because it's dangerous.

In these unstable conditions, blasting is out of the question.

The team can only dig.

And before this can start, the rock had to be strengthened.

We put cement into the rock with high pressure to stabilize the whole thing to

make it more harder.

Once firmed up, only a bit more than three feet a day can be dug, despite

mammoth machinery.

The rocks is coming.

Now we're going to see how it opens the rocks.

Today, this painstaking process has managed to create as much as a third of

mile of tunnel.

Not all of the excavation, however, is quite so labor -intensive.

The team tackles this colossal project from three points. To the north and

center, soft rock requires digging.

But to the south, harder rock allows a more dynamic approach.

This is the granite. It's a real hard rock.

A dream of every miner.

Because it's stable, you can blast it easily.

And with today's blast, the miners have to clear another 13 feet of tunnel.

We are drilling about 120 holes to blast.

These holes we fill up with explosives about 500 kilos.

Every explosion, every blasting is exciting.

A blast this big requires a series of carefully orchestrated explosions, which

can last up to 12 seconds.

This piece of course connects the blasting master with the explosive

material, the tunnel plate.

With this, we start the explosion process.

With the tunnel clear, we have right now the commission to blast and we are

ready.

It's time for action.

Three, two, one, go!

I do it not every day, so my heart was

beating a little bit faster.

As the dust settles, Zimmerman and his team examine today's progress.

I'm really pleased right now.

A clear place.

The rocks are not too big.

It's a regular hill off of these rocks.

Once the blasting is completed, the new Albula tunnel will ensure high -speed

trains can continue to travel on the flat.

A satisfying moment right now.

Just perfect.

But the challenges facing the railroad engineers aren't just below ground.

This absolute monster of engineering runs off of 1 ,500 horsepower.

Absolutely amazing.

Producing more ingenious solution.

Cutting through the heart of the Swiss Alps, the Ration Railway is one of

Europe's greatest mountain networks.

But it's faced more problems than most.

And perhaps none more so than in the town of Brucio, an alpine stop on the

Bernina mainline.

Today, geotechnical engineer Curtin Cantieni is making an inspection.

Here we're in the Pascavo Valley, a very steep valley.

that was shaped by glaciers during the last ice age, and those cliffs are still

steeper than they actually should be geotechnically.

That's what still causes rockfall.

With these unstable conditions, rockfall directly onto the rail track is a

constant threat.

On the 14th of December 2008, about 40 ,000 cubic meters of

loose rock material came off.

You can actually see the spot up there where it broke off and covered the whole

railroad track.

This catastrophic fall closed the rail line for several months.

A solution was needed.

On the mountainside of the track...

A 26 -foot trench has been dug to catch any rock fall.

If the dam wasn't there, especially the big boulders, would be able to come down

all the way into the valley bottom, eventually hit a house.

This engineered defense proved its worth in 2013, withstanding another

significant landslide.

Today, things are looking good.

So here we can see the railway.

On the right -hand side we have the slope with the old rockfall deposits.

There are a couple of fresh stones, nothing big, so I'd consider it a normal

situation.

The rock defense system is a brilliant solution to keep the rail line safe. But

it's not the only railroad structure that it protects.

Brucio sits high above the valley floor on a steep slope.

Too steep for any train to negotiate.

To overcome that steep gradient, they could have built tunnels, but they

thought about tourism 100 years ago and they wanted people to have the sights of

the valley. So they really had to think about ways to make the railway go wide

so it doesn't have to go that steep over the cliffs here in the valley.

With space severely limited.

Getting any trains up or down from an elevated station seemed out of the

question.

Until engineers came up with an inspired innovation.

The Brucio Circular Viaduct.

The Brucio Viaduct consists of nine pillars.

The train starts there and it goes all along the loop.

Follows the viaduct and then it is 20 meters higher in the very same spot,

is unusual for a railway.

And then more or less flat into the Bruzio train station.

With its 230 -foot radius, this brilliantly engineered geometric shape

gentle gradient ensures trains have an easy ride.

The problem might have been challenging, but the solution that they found was

very easy. Only a railroad track going in a loop, and to me it looks very

beautiful. It is a very beautiful bridge, and it will probably outlast

of us.

Since the invention of the train, mountains have given railroads some of

toughest challenges.

Taking engineering to new heights.

The people who decided to build it were taking a huge leap forward and a huge

leap of faith.

Mountain railways all around the world really deserve to be celebrated.

To create impossible railroads.

Throughout history, mountain railways have been an important tool for pushing

through the boundaries for human exploration.

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