On Saturday October 29th, the Swiss Rhaetian Railway claimed the record for the world’s longest passenger train with a trip along one of the most spectacular tracks in the Swiss Alps. According to Rhaetian Railway director Renato Fasciati, the record attempt was intended to highlight some of Switzerland‘s engineering achievements and celebrate 175 years of the European nation’s railroads.

The entire trip took more than an hour and the train traveled about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) through the Alps. Rhaetian Railway director Renato Fasciati said the record attempt was intended to highlight some of Switzerland‘s engineering achievements and celebrate 175 years of the European nation’s railroads.

The 1.9-kilometer (1.2-mile) long train was 100 cars in length and traveled the Albula/Bernina route from Preda to Bergün. In 2008 UNESCO designated the rail route as a World Heritage Site. The tracks pass through 22 tunnels, some of which spiral through mountains, and 48 bridges, including the curved Landwasser Bridge.

The first Swiss train started running on August 7th, 1847 between Zurich and Baden. It became famous through a curious nickname, ‘Spanisch Brötli Bahn’, which means the Spanish pastry train. The reason, because the Spanisch Brötli is a pastry specialty from Baden, although the original recipe came from Milan, when the same area of Italy was under Spanish rule from 1535-1706. The puff pastry has a high proportion of butter and is filled with a mixture of roasted, crushed hazelnuts, and apricot jam.

The Swiss and Austrian Education Council explains the history. After the Protestant Reformation, bakers in Zurich were forbidden to produce fancy pastries, so the servants of the leading families had to travel early in the morning to Baden, a distance of 25km, to buy the pastries in the morning so that they could be served as fresh as possible for Sunday breakfast. When the railroad between northern Zurich and Baden opened in 1847, the Spanisch Brötli traveled from Baden to Zurich in just 45 minutes. This use of the railroad for pastries was so popular that the railway line was quickly dubbed the ‘Spanisch Brötli Bahn’.

August marked the 175th anniversary of the first railroad line in Switzerland, with that train’s real name being the Schweizerische Nordbahn. Switzerland was a confederation of member states where each canton exercised its sovereignty in quasi-autonomy.

In 1838, the Basel-Zürcher-Eisenbahngesellschaft railway company had already been founded, but was liquidated athree years later due to financial problems. Martin Escher-Hess, a Zurich industrialist, rescued the remaining assets from bankruptcy, which then served as the basis for the connection between Zurich and Baden.

In 1844, the first trains were running in Switzerland. However, they belonged to the Compagnie de Strasbourg in Basel. These trains from Strasbourg only ‘stepped on’ Swiss territory to cover the two kilometers between Saint-Louis and Basel. The first steam locomotive that entered Basel bore the name of Napoleon.