This time on
"impossible engineering: Impossible railroads,"
the incredible challenges facing mountain railways...
And the remarkable engineering solutions...
They told me, "Bruno, you're crazy.
That's impossible."
that make the impossible possible.
Captions by Vitac... www.Vitac.com
captions paid for by discovery communications
as they make their epic journeys
across the continent,
railroads continue to push boundaries...
Inspiring engineers to find new ways
to tackle all of nature's extremes.
But there is one challenge that raises the bar
higher than any other...
The mighty peaks and sheer cliffs of mountains.
From their treacherous, winding terrain...
Semmering features grades and curves
that has never conquered before by a railroad.
To impossible inclines for trains...
The steeper you make it, the bigger the train you need in
order to overcome this incline.
And passengers to keep safe and happy.
The challenge here is, because the natural wall
is more or less vertical, so we have to find a way.
It was the challenge of one epic climb
that faced Swiss engineers in the mid 1800s.
The Swiss alps,
part of the largest mountain range in Europe
and home to some of its highest peaks.
But with their unrelentingly steep terrain,
these mighty mountains
are a railroad's most formidable opponent.
Railroad technician Steffen Reichel
is traveling on the Rigi railway
to see how adaptations to the track and the engine
made it one of the first railroads
to take on a seemingly impossible mountain climb.
Look at that sunshine.
Look at the Rigi mountain.
I love it.
And now you can hear the engine start working hard,
because it's very steep on Rigi,
and now listen to that noise.
The fireman is doing his work.
He needs to shovel 500 kilograms of coal
into the boiler up to Rigi Staffel.
Today, this train is one of the most popular
tourist trains in Switzerland, but in the early 1800s,
the only way to reach the dizzying heights
of mount Rigi was on foot or by carriage.
In 1869, engineer and locomotive builder Niklaus Riggenbach
was commissioned to connect Vitznau
on the shores of lake Lucerne
with the summit of mount Rigi 5,898 feet above sea level.
Having seen trains slipping and losing traction
on other railroads with shallower gradients,
Riggenbach knew his solution
would require radical rethinking.
The railroad would have to climb over 3,600 feet
in just over 3 miles.
Riggenbach designed a toothed rack rail
between the running rails.
A cog wheel was added to the center of the wheel axle
to mesh with this rack rail and give the train traction.
In 1871, the Rigi railway
was the first rack-and-pinion railroad in Europe
to conquer a mountain.
It's like Riggenbach built a stairway to heaven.
Taking nearly two years to complete,
Riggenbach had finally brought this mountain to the masses...
And today, as many as 500,000 people a year
make the journey to the summit.
Up here, this is one of the best views
I ever have seen in my whole life.
I have been to many mountaintops,
but none of them had that panorama as we do.
Now I know why Riggenbach conquered the mountain
with that tiny railroad,
but up here, it's only half of the problem.
Having managed to get the tourists
to the top of the mountain,
the elevated incline presented Riggenbach
with a challenge of equally tough proportions.
With a 25% gradient,
the rate of descent was creating too much stress
on the boiler and band brakes of his locomotive
as well as damaging the track.
Usually, on an incline,
most railways encountered very problem,
because the wear on the brakes was so high
that the brakes could fail,
and so you rode down without any brakes and could derail,
and many accidents happen.
For a train full of passengers,
this could've been catastrophic.
Riggenbach needed to find a way to slow the train down.
Rigi was too steep for normal braking systems,
and so he decided to use a different brake system,
a brake system which could not fall apart.
Riggenbach surmised that if the engine was
strong enough to push the locomotive
and carriages up the mountain,
then it should be strong enough to slow it down on its descent.
And now we go down by Riggenbach.
And this is what Riggenbach really invented
is the brake system.
What we hear right now is air is moving into the cylinders,
and it's pressed out by the silencer next to the stack.
Did you hear it?
The chugging noise has changed.
It is now a noise of compressed air.
When the engine is running,
the Riggenbach air valve is switched
so that exhaust will leave by the blast pipe.
To apply the brake, the throttle valve is closed
and the Riggenbach air valve
is switched in the opposite direction,
allowing the pistons to pull clean air in.
This air becomes compressed in the cylinder,
acting like a cushion and slowing the pistons down,
which, in turn, slows the train.
Personally, I think this is
the best dynamic braking system
for a steam locomotive you ever can have
because it has no additional structure or details
which need to be special.
You can build a steam locomotive of any type,
and it's an absolute reliable brake system
because it applies the brake pressure by itself.
As fast as the train goes, as harder the brake is acting.
The Rigi railway became
the highest standard-Gauge railroad in Europe.
Being here at Rigi is something very, very special
because it's the oldest operating cog rail in Europe.
It's an absolute awesome ride upwards,
and then going down, with the Riggenbach brakes,
smooth, soft.
That's the invention we are all for here.
This is what makes the genius of Riggenbach.
The Riggenbach railroad represents
just one of the many ingenious ways engineers
have overcome seemingly impossible gradients.
Given enough firepower,
most ordinary trains can climb a hill,
but cograils aren't the only way engineers have gotten creative
to solve the incline problem.
After all, extra muscle only goes so far.
Ecuador.
From the pacific ocean to the mighty Andes...
It's a country full of larger-than-life landscapes
that seemed insurmountable in the late 1800s.
The Andes mountains in Ecuador ran north-south
for about 600 kilometers with peaks over the 5,000 meters
and then actually getting down to zero level.
It was very important to connect the capital city,
Quito, and Guayaquil, the main port,
that were geographically separated.
Although only
166 miles apart as the crow flies,
these two strategically important cities
were separated by raging rivers...
Dense cloud forests, and deep ravines.
The ambition was to build a railroad across this terrain,
but as Tren Ecuador's Alex Ortiz knows,
achieving it would be no small feat.
Guayaquil, it's in the lowlands at sea level,
and Quito, it's over 2,800 meters above sea level
and then getting to the central valley.
So the engineers had this incredible task
to go from the coast through the mountains
through this steep valley.
It's very difficult to imagine a train
going through these mountains, through these vertical walls.
For centuries,
the perilous journey between the two
had only been possible by mule,
taking up to 12 days to complete.
At the end of the 19th century, the country's leadership
enlisted the help of two American brothers,
John and Archer Harman, to start work on the Transandine railway,
but there was one section that was seemingly impossible
to overcome...
The devil's nose.
With its near, precipitous drops and impenetrably hard rock face,
building a track that could circumvent
and descend this section
would pose a nearly impossible engineering challenge.
But as it turns out, the team behind this project
did not have to look far for inspiration.
When engineers needed to overcome
the impossible challenge of building a railroad
to scale the devil's nose in the Andes,
they were inspired by the trailblazers
of the region's past.
So the trails that... They are all around over here,
the ancient trails in zigzag, like a switchback,
like the ones I have on my back.
They thought this could be the great solution.
In 1908, after 10 arduous years of construction,
using a workforce of thousands,
the first major rail network of the Republic of Ecuador
was completed,
finally connecting Quito and Guayaquil by rail.
This is the devil's nose historic railway,
a feat of engineering.
I've seen it many times, and it still blows my mind.
It's incredible.
Made possible only by a feat of engineering
at this most imposing section of the line,
this is one of the highest active narrow-Gauge railroads
in the world.
Tour guide Santiago makes this famous journey
on a regular basis.
I never get bored of share these views with the world.
It's pretty amazing.
The landscapes... It's an amazing route.
The ingenious solution engineers turn to
was a switchback,
a zigzagged section of track with reversing points.
This enables the train to traverse this extreme gradient
and gain 330 feet in altitude
as it travels between two switchbacks.
What is important to mention about this maneuver
that's pretty amazing, is that the mechanism
that allows to exchange the tracks
are hand-pulled by the vaquero...
The members of the crew.
Right now, the vaquero leave the car, pull the switch,
allowing us to go through it in reverse.
Again, when we reach the end of the zigzag there,
we will stop for a few seconds, the vaquero
will leave the unit again, pull the switch,
and from there we go straight forward.
If you look closely to the window,
you get lost in the view, and you feel like
you're floating in the train through the track.
This inspired concept
solved the most troublesome section
of the railroad, and in doing so,
a journey that once took 12 days was reduced to just 14 hours.
The establishment of the track for Ecuador
was something very important.
The connection was better, transportation with goods,
cargo, passengers,
so it was a better dynamic on the communication
between the two main cities, Guayaquil and Quito.
Despite flood damage in 1998
which destroyed much of the line,
the devil's nose section never closed.
The engineering behind the devil's nose is outstanding.
To get through these mountains
was thought impossible for so long.
Despite the massive challenge of building
the devil's nose section,
today, over a century of being built,
it's one of the most stable areas of this line,
and that's the testament
how great was the switchback solution.
I think this is probably
the most incredible railway in the world.
Finding a route that can reduce the gradient
is one way to tackle a mountain,
but some inclines are so extreme their engineering
is from the realms of science fiction.
With steep-sided mountains and arctic winters,
at nearly 4,300 feet,
the alpine village of Stoos in Switzerland
it about as remote as it gets.
The existing public funicular was aging
and failing to keep up with the needs of the passengers.
Senior engineer Bruno Lifart was all too aware
of the increasing demands it had to meet.
It had to go faster, carry more people,
and be easily accessible.
Here, we stand on the old Stoosbahn.
This, in 1933, it was really
the steepest funicular in Europe,
but the track is going around the mountain
this 120 degrees,
and we had to find out a new track possibility
with a straight track.
So therefore, after 84 years in use,
we had to replace it, and we had to build it
in parallel to the old funicular.
But to find a new route
meant confronting grueling mountainous terrain.
They told me, "Bruno, you're crazy.
That's impossible."
But I was not happy with this answer,
so I challenged them, say, "hey, as long as you don't say
it's no go, we will find a solution,"
and now you can see the solution is built.
Stoosbahn, the greatest incline
ever conquered by rail,
opened to the public in December 2017.
We have done something nobody else has done before,
so it's really a new area,
and we created a new type of funicular.
Ascending a whopping 2,500 feet
from the base of the mountain
at a jaw-dropping angle of 48 degrees,
this 21st-century funicular is truly groundbreaking.
With such a precipitous incline,
keeping the passengers upright on the journey
was the first challenge.
The answer was a cutting-edge carriage.
One of the main goals of the new Stoosbahn
was we make it horizontal at both stations.
Mechanical engineer Niklaus Moser
was part of the design team.
The demand for easy access
for the passengers is increasing,
and then we have some very steep sections and flat sections,
which, really, it required a leveling system.
What the team came up with
was a carriage with a fixed chassis
and individual cylindrical cars that rotate
to keep the passengers and freight horizontal
during transit at such a steep angle,
the first of its kind in the world.
We now are below the train,
where we see best how the leveling device
is done during the ride.
And then you see these two cylinders on the left-hand side
and the right-hand side?
They are connected to the lower part of the round-shaped cabins,
and once they move this way or that way,
that means that the cabins are rotating around.
Built-in inclinometers sense the angle of the track,
signaling the hydraulic cylinder system to kick in
and compensate for the incline
by rotating the carriages accordingly,
always keeping the floor horizontal
and the passengers upright.
You don't really feel
that the train is changing the gradient
as you stay on the floor.
You just glide up to the top station, and you don't feel it.
A routine test reveals just how the mechanism works
to overcome the 110% incline.
So, now we are testing again,
and we go to a full inclination of the train on the track
would have respectively now with our cabins.
I'm holding on strong here that I don't fall over.
We're not yet there, but we're getting there.
I hope my muscles are strong enough to hold on
till we get to the very end.
Oh... oh.
That's the limit.
But for the railroad engineers
of this pioneering project,
traveling up wasn't the only challenge.
One of the biggest challenge
was to ensure the safety for the workers.
How to build up required a unique solution.
High-altitude railroads...
Testing the limits of engineering...
To conquer nature's most difficult terrain.
And one ambitious train that faced a series of problems
is the Stoosbahn funicular.
Today, project leader Bruno Lifart is heading back
to the site of Stoosbahn's most demanding engineering ordeal,
building the track.
Even now, the final stage of this journey
is not for the fainthearted.
The challenge here is because the natural wall
is more or less vertical, so we have to find a way.
And so, therefore, we created this tunnel that's 48 degrees.
Three tunnels would be cut through solid mountain,
starting with the highest,
excavated using the simple drill-and-blast method.
But with a near-vertical gradient,
the lower two tunnels would need a completely new approach.
So the steepest area was right here,
and the next 200 meters down.
This tunnel here is 250 meters long,
and 200 meters of this 250 are 110%.
The team used the raise-drill technique
with a specially designed drilling device.
A very small pilot hole is drilled
using a directional drilling tool.
Once it emerges, the drill is then replaced with
a rotating metal cutting tool,
which is drawn upwards, creating a wider circular hole
big enough for the explosives to be inserted
and the tunnels to be enlarged to their final size.
That seems to be the most efficient method,
to create tunnels in such steepness.
During the enlargement,
all the rocks which came out went down because it's so steep,
and the total amount was around 25,000 tons of material
which we had to move.
Having managed to use it to their advantage
with waste disposal,
gravity still posed a significant risk
for the construction team harnessed to the mountainside.
One of the biggest challenge was really here
to ensure the safety for the workers because it's so steep.
When you lose, for example, a tool
and somebody else stands 10 meters below,
this tool will have such an energy
that is very, very dangerous.
I can say now, really, to summarize,
we didn't have any really strong accident,
and therefore, we are very thankful.
At 5,700 feet long,
the new track includes 1,900 feet
of some of the steepest train tunnels in the world.
Suddenly, you're out in the open again,
and then the next tunnel is coming,
getting same steepness,
and it's really rather an amusement ride
than a transport from "a" to "b."
Two of these massive motors
enable both carriages to achieve maximum speed,
whatever the gradient.
Actually, we are now in the machine room.
That's why it's a bit noisy.
That's the bull wheel.
It's actually transferring the movement
from the mount to the rope,
and the rope is connected then to the car.
That's how the movement from the drive here,
from the bull wheel is transmitted to the car.
Imagine 36 kilometers an hour at 50 degrees inclination.
That's a big speed.
It's the fastest in the world on an inclination like 110%.
Accomplishing all the demands it set out to achieve,
the Stoosbahn can carry 1,500 people every hour
on the steepest railroad in the world.
Travel speed is about 2.5 times as much
as the old funicular was.
The cars are bigger.
This means that we have drastically
increased the transport capacity.
Every day, the brilliant engineers
of this futuristic funicular
keep the villagers and their visitors connected.
All the time when I see the train is passing here,
it's a great feeling.
It's, in a way, undescribable.
After 14 years hard work,
I'm so proud to see how the train goes up,
and the baby's really born, and it works.
But for other railroads around the world,
a climb doesn't have to be steep
to be an enormous engineering challenge.
Birmingham... a city in the Midlands of Britain...
And one that, in the 18th century,
was striving to be at the heart of industry.
But without a railroad connecting the city
to a major port, it was yet to become a reality.
Civil engineer Fraser Godfrey is at a site
on the outskirts of the city
that would see engineering opinions divided.
Birmingham, by the late 16th century,
was a center of manufacturing.
So growing in its industry,
it was very keen to connect to Bristol
in order to facilitate that transportation
of goods, possibly around the world.
At that time, the port town of Liverpool
had direct trade with America and was thriving.
Bristol and Birmingham dreamed of a link
that would allow them to compete with these big coastal cities
and boost their economy.
In the 18th century,
the only way to get from Birmingham
to Bristol was by canal, and that was a six-day journey.
So, really, railways became an obvious choice
to use to distribute their goods around the country.
But there was one major obstacle
for engineers to overcome.
Birmingham, as we can see quite clearly here, is on a plateau,
and it is about 70 meters higher than the surrounding area.
Along the southwestern edge of the plateau
are two parallel ranges of hills with a valley
in between, known as the Lickey hills.
Hills are a great engineering challenge.
How do you overcome a hill?
Engineers would need to develop
a groundbreaking solution
to negotiate this challenging landscape
and connect Britain’s major hubs.
Determined to conquer
the Lickey hill region of Britain,
designers called up some of the world's best engineers,
including Isambard kingdom Brunel,
to power through the region's dramatic inclines.
His approach was to take a different route
to enable a much shallower gradient, about 1 in 300.
But Brunel's proposed route
would take the railroad three miles further east,
making it longer and more costly to build.
Instead, beating him to the contract,
captain William Moorsom came up with a much bolder solution.
He decided on this route straight up the side
of the Lickey hills, which formed the Lickey incline.
A 2-mile stretch with a gradient of 10 degrees,
around 10 times steeper
than heavy trains of the time could negotiate...
And the only way to overcome the gradient
would be to use an additional engine
designed to push each train up the incline
by giving an extra boost of power,
an ingenious system known as banking...
And one that they still use today.
Engine driver Richard Higgins
shows us how to bank a freight train.
There are two methods of banking...
Buffering, which is simply pushing the train,
or coupling, attaching the banking engine
to the train it is assisting.
Today's more powerful locomotives
are able to cope with the incline,
but the principle of banking is still needed for trains
heavier than 1,300 tons,
or those with a low coupling strength.
It's the maximum horsepower of 3,300
that these mighty banking engines provide
that make it possible to push 1,100-ton trains up the incline.
And this is still the main rail link
between Birmingham and Bristol,
made possible by this steepest sustained mainline railroad
incline in Great Britain.
So, as a piece of civil engineering,
the Lickey incline is really quite basic.
It's a railway up the side of a hill.
But as a piece of mechanical engineering,
this challenge forced engineers to develop more
and more powerful locomotives,
which helps with the development of locomotives,
ultimately, across the world.
But not all terrains
can be conquered with sheer horsepower.
The alps, Europe's highest and widest mountain range.
Stretching over 745 miles of forbidding peaks and valleys,
this impenetrable landscape should put the brakes
on any plan to build a railroad.
But in the heart of Austria's alpine country...
operation manager Klaus Benesch
is taking to the tracks
to see how a seemingly impossible line
through the mountains became a reality.
Today, trains like this one carry tourists,
but in the golden age of steam, they played a vital role
in trade across the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire.
The steep peaks of Austria's Semmering pass, though,
made plotting a route for the trains
to travel here an engineer's worst nightmare.
Austria's Semmering pass,
a forbidding stretch of the Austrian alps
that long stood in the way of a vital railroad
connecting major trade hubs.
The dramatic terrain presented a daunting challenge.
640 feet above sea level,
the steep gradients and tight curves the line would need
to navigate left many convinced it simply couldn't be done.
But one man thought otherwise.
In 1848, engineer Carl Ritter Von Ghega
decided he could defy the odds.
His solution to overcoming the perilous pass
was the game-changing Semmering railway...
The first mountain railroad ever built.
Its 25 miles of looping tracks
carve a path through the landscape
with 15 tunnels and 15 viaducts.
The Semmering railway is the first railway line
in the world to become UNESCO world heritage,
and so is very famous all over the world.
Heritage rail expert Kerstin Ogris
has come to Kalte Rinne,
where the monumental scale of the task
which faced Ghega is still clear to see today.
We see here the Kalte Rinne viaduct,
one of the most important viaducts
of the Semmering railway.
Standing 150 feet high
and curving 620 feet across the valley,
its rows of towering arches are a testament
to the treacherous terrain the line needed to cross.
A big challenge was these viaducts have narrow curves,
and this in combination with the gradients,
it's very difficult to build it.
And they used such ordinary, simple tools.
They'd take the stone chisel and an ordinary hammer
and also this iron to split the stones.
It was very amazing when you think about
that these big viaducts only made by hand.
But deep ravines weren't the only obstacle
Ghega had to overcome.
The route he chose meant trains had to climb
a precipitous 1,500-foot height difference,
an impossible feat for existing locomotives of the time.
Negotiating both gradient and tight curves
called for a brand-new, custom-made train,
but Ghega knew that it would take
more than one engineering visionary
to conquer this impossible stretch of mountain range.
The Semmering railway was the first mountain railroad
to ever cut across the Austrian alps.
Engineer Carl Ritter Von Ghega needed to devise a train
capable of powering through the track's steep inclines
and tight turns.
Instead, it was one of the contest judges,
engineer Wilhelm Freiherr Von Engerth,
who solved the conundrum.
Although built around 60 years
after Engerth's engine,
this MH-class locomotive shares the innovations
which made it so groundbreaking.
Unlike traditional trains
where the tender is a separate wagon,
Engerth's idea was to build an engine
and a tender on an articulated frame.
The extra weight of part of the engine
on the driving wheels of the tender
helped increase the traction on the rails.
Engerth's innovation also addressed the challenge of long,
straight cars navigating tightly curved tracks.
In 1853, Engerth's locomotive
successfully traversed the entire 25-mile length
of the Semmering line,
finally connecting Vienna with the sea
and completing Carl Ritter Von Ghega's
railroad through the alps.
Ghega was very intelligent
and a great visionary,
and, of course, he had the courage to do this,
to realize this project.
So he was perhaps crazy.
Since the invention of the railroad,
mountains have been their major adversary...
Inspiring remarkable creations...
It was the highest mountain they pass by railway,
so it was a big challenge for an engineer
and also for a human.
Elevating engineering to new heights...
This absolute genius, these marvelous machines,
and engineering of the whole mountain-rail system.
To create impossible railroads.
It's really a great experience to see it running.
I think it's an amazing engineering achievement.
Pretty special, yeah.