When railway icon Gary Warner presented the top 10 railway lines in the world in Chicago Tribune, the Bergen Line was on top of the list. This unique line is the highest one in Northern Europe crossing the Hardangervidda plateau at 1237 meters above sea level.
The first part of the line was started in 1875 with completion reached in 1909. The construction of the line was extremely challenging as it had to be laid high above sea level, in a region without roads and with a climate that saw many feet of snow in the winter and temperatures far below freezing. Tunnels and cuttings had to be excavated through solid gneiss, with one tunnel alone - that at Gravhals - taking six years to build, mostly by hand.
The line is today a popular tourist attraction, as well as a busy intercity route. It provides an essential link to the Hardangervidda and is especially popular with hikers and cyclists. The Bergensbanen runs for a total length of 493 km with 182 tunnels, totalling approximately 73 km. The longest single tunnel on the line is that at Finse, just over 13 km long. The line crosses 300 bridges spanning numerous rivers and streams. The highest station on the line (and the highest mainline station in Europe) is at Finse, 1222.2 meters above sea level.
The old railway workers' road, the Rallarvegen (navvy road), runs alongside the line and can be cycled in a day; the Norwegian State Railway provides rental bicycles from depots at Finse and other points along the line. At Myrdal, a spectacular 20 km-long branch line, Flåmsbana, leads down to Flåm.
Watch the 7 1/2 hours train ride between Bergen and Oslo! On Friday November 27th 2011, over 1,2 million Norwegians watched parts of "Bergensbanen" on Norwegian National TV. The longest documentary ever? At least the longest we have made, almost 7 1/2 hours, showing every minute of the scenic train ride between Bergen on the Norwegian west coast, crossing the mountains to the capital of Oslo. You can also download the movie as a torrentfile and it has been published with a creative common licence. Read more here.
