RAILWAY TO CLIMB MOUNTAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

RAILWAY TO CLIMB MOUNTAIN.

A railway is to help the tourist to scale the dark peak of the Matterhorn, which 72 years ago was an unconquered giant of the Pennine Alps. It was ascended by the courage and tenacity of tlio same race of mountaineering men now banded to climb Everest. It is only half as high as the Himalayan Titan, though only 1000 feet lower than its brother Mont Blanc; but in its Victorian day it seemed equally defiant of man's effort to scale it. The railway will make no bid for the summit, but will pause at the base of the pyramid rising from the Theodule Pass, where the alpinist's real task begins. But it will enable a walker whose climbing has taken him no higher than Marsland Hill to survey the Matterhorn's grandeur close at hand and wonder how the old climbers like Charleo Whymper and his guides got up the rest of the way with ice pick, axe and rope. The way up leads by road from Chatillon to Valtournache, and two years ago was extended so that motor ears could travel along it eus far as Breuii, renamed Cervinia by the Italians. But the first stretch of a steel rope railway has been opened from Cervinia to the Maison plain, a rise of 1700 feet in a mile and a half. Isext summer a second section will go as far as the Theodule Pass, at the base of the dark, naked mass of the Matterhorn, though two summits, for climbers rather than walkers, intervene. This section will end near the refuge of the Principe de Piemont, nearly 11,000 feet high, and 3400 feet below the Matterhorn's crest. The six miles of railway will be the highest and longest in the world. The completing third stretch will take the railway from the Theodule Pass'to Zermatt. Thi« engineering feat cannot he described as a railway up the Matterhorn, though it reaches three-quarters of the way. The last quarter is the hardest, and strength, nerve and courage will still be required to ascend it. But there is a pride of the engineer' also which is no mean thing, when his task is considered in all its bearings.