At first glance this looks like a garden railway! A nine-arch stone viaduct, with a 7% grade and incredibly tight curves, looping over itself:
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/10/brusio-spiral-viaduct-in-switzerland.html
It is incredibly neat, tidy and a beautiful piece of engineering.
Wayne
It reminds me of an N gauge layout.
To see more of the Swiss “it could be a layout” engineering fire up Google Earth, head to Thusis Switzerland, zoom-in on the railway line, then switch to Streetview, proceed towards Sils following the line and enjoy.
The Albula/Bernina Line combo is a UNESCO World Heritage site cited as
A masterpiece of railway engineering.
Some of the eye popping locations along the Albula line:
Solis Viaduct, Landwasser Viaduct, the three levels above Bergün, the spiral tunnels between Muot and Preda.
Along the Bernina line: The line after Morteratsch e.g stop in the loop and do the 360º view, along Lago Nero and Lago Bianco, Bernina Hospiz with the enclosed turntable in a stone structure, Alp Grüm with the famous loops starting at the station and continuing down to Cavaglia, more loops down to Poschiavo, the Brusio Viaduct.
BTW the whole region is also a hiker’s paradise.
Anyone have questions why I would model that railway … it’s a long story that goes back to 1952 and my first encounter with the Rhaetian Railway.
Add-on
On the 100th Anniversary of the RhB in 1989 they went all out and offered a 100 hours of RhB trip.
My unoffical record of that, along with what I filmed before the trip you’ll find in my RhB (Rhaetian Railway) – Swiss narrow gauge at its best album. Please don’t expect today’s quality, this was shot on VHS-C and much later digitized. However some of my fellow RhB fanatics find it a good reference how things used to be.
One note on Google Earth; it saves me a lot of traveling, do the 360º view move back and forth, zoom in and together with the GIS one can get a lot of information that one “should have recorded” while in Switzerland.
Just goes to show…there is a prototype for everything.