Flåm railroad

Norway, Land of Giants, continued.

The day before the fjord cruise, we took an amazing railroad journey on the Flåmsbana train from Myrdal, where you get off the main train from Oslo to Bergen, down to Flåm (pronounced "floam"), on the Aurlands Fjord. You can see the train in the first photo, as it sits at its station in Flåm.

The next photo here is a waterfall that you see not far out from Myrdal. There were dozens of waterfalls on the 20 kilometer trip, including two here, but the one on the right is the biggest.

The next photo shows several more, as well as giving an idea of how steep the mountainsides are for most of the train ride, almost until the bottom.

The train ride is both spectacular and steep. The gradient is 1 in 18 over 80 percent of the ride, which takes an hour to cover 20 km. but also stops periodically to let people take photos.

Quite a bit of the ride goes through tunnels, which literally snake back and forth through the same mountainsides several times in some places as they negotiate some of the steepest places.

After it gets out of the steepest part in the beginning, the train follows a river valley that you can see in the next photo. That flows on down and feeds into the fjord eventually.

There are several interesting things about this railroad. The Norwegian Parliament, in consultation with local interests, decided in 1908 to build a side train down to the fjord.

They began to realize just how scenic the valley and fjord were, as English lords started showing up to fish in the late 1800s, back when tourism was really for the truly rich -- not the global middle class. Almost all of the transportation in this fjord area, which is huge, is by boat. However, the people who built it really guessed right. The railroad is now Norway's fifth most popular tourist attraction. In 2005, 408, 900 people rode it. (Statistical and fact-checking support for this post was by Norwegian speaking Sandy, who is also the master of Web searching.)

Another interesting thing is a very complex ownership and operation. The train is privately owned by tourist corporations and local governments, but the national railway system still handles the technical aspects.

Working out the details -- regular train versus cog railway, etc. took a while. Finally, the grade, railroad bed, and tunnels were dug out and built up by local labor 1923-1947, with a break for World War II, when Nazi Germany attacked and occupied Norway. Most of it was done by 1940, but invasions are tough on both construction and tourism.