Читать книгу 155 - Hubertus Godeysen - Страница 9

Saturday, 8:35 am. The thermometer says -14 degrees on the glacier and 5 degrees at the valley station, 911 meters above sea level. Conditions couldn’t be better for the big snowboard opening on the Kitzsteinhorn, an event that will kick off the winter season in style. The past few days have been hectic for Kaprun’s glacier trains. The Alpincenter, the tunnel railway’s mountain station, was renovated over the summer, and preparations for the coming season ran up until yesterday. The operating license for the mountain station is still pending, but the glacier ski area is freshly prepared. Today, they’re expecting 1500 snowboarders, along with 2500 skiers. The Schmiedinger Kees is covered with 55 to 130 cm of snow. Everything is ready for the flood of tourists.

The operator in the mountain station gives the signal to start the system for the seventh trip that day. The Gletscherdrache jerks into motion and gradually speeds down the tunnel. In the valley 3.9 kilometers away and 1500 meters below, its counterpart, the Kitzsteingams, begins its journey up the mountain. Although the funicular railway travels on rails through the mountain, it works on the same principle as aerial cable cars: when the train below starts to move up, it triggers the one above to move down. The two trains meet in the middle.

The Kitzsteingams is full already, with up to 180 standing passengers packed in. Sitting in the attendant’s cab is Siegfried Schwabl, one of the glacier railway’s youngest employees. From the valley station, the train first passes over a 600-meter-long ramp, then dives into the mountain. The narrow, lightless tunnel leading to the mountain station is 3.3 km long. The trip normally takes eight minutes.

"What’s wrong?" Schwabl asks the operator on his radio. His train just stopped in the middle of the tunnel. Less than a meter away, the other train, the Gletscherdrache, has come to a parallel stop on its way down. They’re in the underground middle station, the Breitriesenalpe, where the trains can pass each other thanks to a design known as the Abt Switch. Schwabl can see the circular tunnel wall in front of him, at least a few meters wide, with the lamps of the middle station shining on it. Behind him, to his right, is the empty station platform with steps heading into the Breitriesen side tunnel, which runs 640 meters out into the open from the middle station.

A young Siegfried Schwabl

In the carriages behind him, skiers are looking out the acrylic glass windows, scratched up by sharp ski edges. After traveling through the dark tunnel, they can now make out the rock walls in detail. The middle station has neon tubes on the wall every ten meters, bathing the roughly hewn rock and the chalky deposits in a cold, ghostly light. Within the plastic contours of the carriages with their banner ads (a Humphrey Bogart lookalike next to the slogan "Here’s looking at you on skis, kid"), surrounded by skiers and snowboarders in colorful gear with the latest equipment, they’d forgotten they were in a strange environment, in the middle of the Alps, inside a mountain. Stuck in the middle station, they start to feel more like dirt-smeared miners, prospecting for ore deep in the mountain, than like amateur athletes about to take a turn on the freshly prepared snow under the glacier sun.

On one track is a fully occupied train, skiers crowded together, holding their skis in one hand and steadying themselves with the other: on the straps hanging from the ceiling, the cushioned rods criss-crossing the carriage, or their neighbors’ jumpsuits. It’s actually too packed for anyone to fall, but holding on gives them a feeling of security. Many of them look over at the empty train, where the swinging straps are the only sign that it was just in motion.

It’ll start moving any minute.

The train does stop here on occasion, usually to let in hunters or skiers who have hiked into the mountain through the Breitriesen tunnel. But so early in the morning? The locals who ride this train often are especially surprised.

"Maybe they’re loading something on?" suggests one. "We’ll get moving any minute now," says his friend.

Further up in the attendant’s cab, Siegfried Schwabl picks up the black phone receiver, establishing contact with the operator at the mountain station: "Hello, Siegfried?"

The attendant doesn’t know why the train is stopped; he only knows there’s no identifiable problem on his end. The hydraulic pressure is normal, all signals are go.

"What’s the matter?" Schwabl asks the control room.

"The buffer," he hears the operator say, "automatic stop."

"Again?"

"We’ll switch to manual. Just a second."

"OK."

It happens periodically that the buffer system in the valley station, which is supposed to stop the train in emergencies, does not extend properly, causing the train to stop automatically in the middle station. The operator switches the system to "manual mode" and starts it up again. Slowly the train begins moving and the mood among the passengers changes to relief mixed with the euphoric anticipation of strapping on their skis and pushing off. In safety mode, at 25 km per hour instead of the usual 36, the train is drawn further up. Soon, Schwabl sees the light at the end of the tunnel, the mountain station.