Читать книгу 155 - Hubertus Godeysen - Страница 11

First a faint glimmer, then two small points of light can be made out and the Kitzsteingams shoots out of the rock, 600 linear meters above the valley station.

In the attendant’s cab, Siegfried Schwabl sits and looks down on the Wüstelau, as they call the head of the valley here. It’s been the base station for Kitzsteinhorn development since the 1960s. From this vantage point, the valley station looks like a toy landscape, with hundreds of parked cars and dozens more that are just finishing their trips or slowly driving around in search of parking space. On the periphery, there are construction machines and a few worn-out snow cannons.

There’s a lot going on this early in the morning. Masses of people in colorful ski gear throng the ticket counter and the entrance to the funicular railway, while little groups lumber through in their clunky ski shoes. On a stage erected in front of the railway for the season opening, Schwabl can barely recognize the moderator, who’s there to set a lively mood for the skiers. Schwabl hears his voice like a faraway echo. He can’t understand a word from inside his cab.

A hundred meters to go, not a cloud in the sky. Here in the narrow head of the valley, everything is still in shadow. Schwabl looks ahead to the ramp and the tracks leading downwards. It’s his job to watch out for any obstacles that might be on the tracks. Particularly in the tunnel, fallen rocks or water intrusion are always a danger. He has no influence on the train’s progress; that’s controlled by the operator in the mountain station.

Fifty meters to go. Now he can make out the faces of the skiers crowded onto a 30-meter stairway, waiting for the train. Most are looking up expectantly at him and his Kitzsteingams. The operator in the Alpincenter lowers the speed. Nothing unusual here. Schwabl drives past the skiers at walking speed. He looks straight ahead into the distance because many of the waiting passengers try to look into the attendant’s cab and the eye contact can be embarrassing. He fixes his eyes on the extended buffer, awaiting the train at the end of the 3.9-km-long track. Just a few meters to go now.

I’d like to go skiing today, too, he thinks.

Contact. The train comes to a stop and the passenger doors open, swallowing the many skiers and snowboarders who are eager to get up to the glacier. As soon as the train pulls into the valley station, it runs over a conductor rail that recharges the batteries in its middle section.

While the skiers find their places in the carriage, their shoes and skis scraping and clattering on the metal grid floor, Schwabl checks the instruments again: hydraulic pressure is normal, 190 bars, according to the manometers on the left side of the console. Directly below them, the fan heater has come on.

Schwabl looks around again. Through a small window of acrylic glass, he can see a steady stream of skiers filling the passenger area above him. A father has set his little daughter onto one of the horizontal bars that passengers hold onto. They’re both laughing, the girl enjoying her unexpectedly good view. Behind them, a small group stands close together. Schwabl notices that they seem to be blind. Right in front of the viewing window, a group of skiers gets on board, having an animated conversation. Although he can only hear snatches of it, Schwabl can tell immediately from their dialect that they’re Bavarians.

He takes out the operating key, opens the doors, and looks up the side of the train. He hurries up the steps to the upper attendant’s cab, a 30-meter walkway along the train. Almost everyone has boarded. In the carriages, he can see the skiers and snowboarders standing packed together. The mood is exuberant, which is no surprise considering the weather. Perfect conditions at the very beginning of the season—that doesn’t happen every year.

The fan heater is running in the lower, unoccupied cab. For six years, since the railway was renovated, it’s done nothing each day except turn on every eight minutes, probably about 90,000 times since 1994. This may be the ten-thousandth time this year. It runs for three minutes at the stations on the highest setting: heating-level two, 35 degrees Celsius, once in the valley at 900 meters above sea level, and again on the glacier at 2450 meters. There’s no electricity during the trip through the cold, damp tunnel because the train loses contact with the conductor rail when it leaves a station.

The attendant presses a button to close the doors. He enters 9:00 on the dot into his log. He reads the time from a centrally controlled wall clock, which happens to be two-and-a-half minutes slow, like the rest of the glacier railway’s time system. Schwabl looks back into his train once more through a parabolic mirror. Everything’s ready now. He gives the operator the OK for departure.

Thirty meters below at the back of the train, the first flame has appeared out of nowhere. By the time the train jolts into motion, it’s already burning.