Beyond the clouds

The views from Zaha
Hadid's new railway are magnificent - but her trains and stations alone
are worth the trip. Jonathan Glancey rides an unexpected marvel in the
Alps.

From the centre of Innsbruck to the top of an Alp in 25 minutes? It
doesn't seem possible. Yet, thanks to a wonderful new funicular train
that seems to have dropped right out of the pages of some sci-fi
magazine, you can now ascend from the centre of bustling Innsbruck,
Austria, to the top of a mountain in next to no time, exchanging
candy-coloured cafes for stunning views of gargantuan peaks and a blast
of icy air.

Not that the service is fast: its top speed is just 13mph. But, after
easing over the river Inn, across a bridge curved like a taut bow, the
train climbs at an angle so steep you'd think you were ascending
vertically. Fortunately, each compartment can pivot up to an
astonishing 55 degrees, keeping you perfectly level. You need never
spill your glühwein again.

The
views are haunting: jagged, snow-topped massifs beneath gaping
primordial skies. But it's the trains and stations of the new £36m,
1.8km-long Nordpark Cable Railway, or Hungerbergbahn, that are truly
sensational, well worth the trip alone. The two cable-hauled trains,
one canary-yellow, the other sky-blue, were designed and built by
Leitner, an Italian firm that has been making cable cars and funiculars
for more than a century (though the Nordpark trains are delightfully
futuristic, like caged rocket-sleds).

The four stations designed
by Zaha Hadid and her colleague Patrik Schumacher might be snowfalls
transformed into gleaming caverns of glass by a snow queen's magic
wand. Each is crowned with a smoothly flowing, translucent canopy that
seems sculpted from ice, with bold, black lines emphasising the form.
They are as beautiful as they are unexpected. All too often, the
architecture of ski resorts is brutally functional, as if fighting the
landscape it rises from. Hadid's funicular goes with the flow and the
snow - and the effect is ravishing. And yet, for all their visual
lyricism, their air of something fluid frozen in mid-fall, the Nordpark
stations are essentially simple structures, consisting of little more
than a concrete frame supporting a glass roof.

The journey to the
summit begins underground at Congress station, the most ordinary, if
that word can be used, of Hadid's four stops. The train, divided into
five neat little compartments, heads through a tunnel to emerge at
Loewenhaus station, a carapace of glass built on an irresistible curve.
It's a delightful taste of what's to come, the river Inn rippling up
ahead, the big ascent still to come. Next comes a glide across the Inn,
over that bowed bridge, also by Hadid. You can almost feel the tension
in its angling trajectory, in the steel cables holding it up from
slanting concrete pylons. Then comes the sharp climb to Alpenzoo, a
station perched on the mountainside. Here you'll find the world's
highest zoo, inhabited all year round by mountain wildlife. Pulling up
from Alpenzoo, the yellow train clambers through the first wreaths of
cloud, before winding round a steel bridge into a tunnel, where its
blue sibling thrums past us on the way back down.