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The 10 Best Funicular and Cog Railways That Climb Like a Theme-Park Ride

Ten of the best mountain railways — funiculars and cog trains so steep and so scenic they feel like a fairground ride, minus the queue and the questionable safety bar.

The best mountain railways are basically rollercoasters that ended up with a respectable career. I’m scared of heights and allergic to uphill hiking, which makes me precisely the right person to evaluate funiculars and cog railways — the engineering miracle that lets you get a glorious summit view while sitting down and eating a sandwich. Some of these climb at angles that make your inner ear file a complaint. All of them are worth it. Here are the ten that gave me that little stomach-drop thrill.

The steepest cog railway in the world, with a maximum gradient of 48%. Forty-eight! That’s not a train, that’s a near-vertical confession. It hauls you from Alpnachstad up Mount Pilatus, and the carriages are tilted so you don’t slide out the back. The view over Lake Lucerne at the top genuinely made me forget I’d been gripping the seat.

The world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway, chugging up New Hampshire’s highest peak since 1869. Some sections hit around 37% grade, and the old steam-era engineering creaks in a way that’s either charming or terrifying depending on your mood. The summit has some of the worst recorded weather on Earth, so the train ride up through changing conditions is half the drama.

Officially the longest funicular in Europe, climbing the Niesen near Lake Thun. The mountain’s so neat and triangular the Swiss nicknamed it the Swiss Pyramid. Beside the track runs a service staircase with 11,674 steps — they hold a race up it once a year, which tells you everything about how steep this thing is.

A cog railway from Zermatt up to 3,089 metres, and the whole way up you’re staring at the Matterhorn doing its impossibly photogenic thing. It’s the highest open-air cog railway in Europe. The climb is slow and steady rather than gut-dropping, but the payoff — a wall of glaciers and that iconic peak — is unbeatable.

Not a mountain so much as a big hill in Prague, but this little funicular is a delight and dead cheap on a normal transit ticket. It climbs Petřín Hill to a lookout tower that’s a mini Eiffel knockoff. A gentle, charming ride that ends with one of the best views over the city’s spires. Lovely on a spring evening.

Austria’s steepest cog railway, steaming up the Schafberg from St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut lakes region. Vintage steam locos still run on it, pushing the carriages up at around 26%. At the top you get a ring of lakes spread out below like spilled mercury. It’s the train from the opening of The Sound of Music country, basically.

A funicular that’s become the symbol of Wellington, climbing from the downtown shops up to the Botanic Garden in a few bright-red minutes. There’s a quirky little cable car museum at the top, and the harbour view is the postcard the whole city runs on. Short, sweet, and genuinely beloved by locals, which counts for alot in my book.

The Cremallera de Montserrat hauls you up to the surreal serrated mountain and its clifftop monastery outside Barcelona. The cog train winds through the weird rounded rock formations that look like something melted and reset wrong. The monastery, the boys’ choir, the view over Catalonia — it’s a proper day out, and the climb is a slow theatrical reveal.

The steepest funicular in the world, opened in 2017, hitting a lunatic 110% gradient at its sharpest point. The carriages are barrel-shaped and rotate to keep you level as the slope changes, which is genuinely some sci-fi nonsense and I love it. It climbs to the car-free village of Stoos. Ride it just to feel the engineering flex.

The only public rack-and-pinion railway in Britain, climbing to the summit of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), the highest peak in Wales. The little engines have been pushing carriages up since 1896. On a clear day you can apparently see Ireland from the top, though in my experience you mostly see cloud, then more cloud, then suddenly everything. Worth the gamble.

The whole point of these things is the cheat code they offer: a summit view earned by buying a ticket instead of ruining your knees. And there’s something gloriously silly about a train deciding it will simply go up a mountain, gravity be damned.

My favourite is the Stoosbahn, no contest — when a train physically rotates its own carriages so you don’t tip over, you’re not on public transport anymore, you’re on a ride.

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