Flåm Railway

The Flåm Railway (Flåmsbana) is regularly named one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world — and for once the billing is deserved. In barely 20 kilometres and about an hour, it drops from the bleak mountain station of Myrdal, high on the Bergen Railway, down to the little village of Flåm at the head of the Aurlandsfjord.

What makes it extraordinary is the sheer drama packed into that short distance: a near-continuous descent of some 865 metres past sheer rock walls, hairpin curves cut into the mountainside, and one thundering waterfall after another — all at a gentle enough pace that you can take it in through the big windows.

It is also one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in Europe, worked by ordinary adhesion rather than a rack: the maximum gradient is 5.5 per cent, or 1 in 18, and roughly four-fifths of the route is on a sustained climb. Norwegian sources place it second in Europe, behind Germany's Hunsrückbahn — a ranking worth knowing, because you will often see the Flåm Line described as the steepest in the world, which it is not.

The line was never opened with a ceremony. Trains started running under German occupation, and the formalities were quietly skipped; it took until 1980, the fortieth anniversary, for the Flåm Railway to be officially opened at all.

Leaving Myrdal at around 864 metres, the train begins its long, twisting descent toward the fjord. It threads twenty tunnels in twenty kilometres — and only two of them, the 1,341-metre Nåli and the 880-metre Vatnahalsen, were driven by machine. The other eighteen were dug by hand, four metres of drilling and blasting at a time, between 1924 and 1935. The work cost between 116 and 180 man-hours for every metre of tunnel, left men with silicosis from the smoke, and killed two.

A kilometre down from Myrdal the line loops through a horseshoe curve and comes out onto a shelf cut into a cliff that falls away for hundreds of metres, at the mountain hotel of Vatnahalsen. The most famous stop comes next, at the Kjosfossen waterfall — a station that serves no village at all. It was opened in 1951 purely so that passengers could get out and stand in the spray, and in summer the train waits a booked seven minutes while a performance of the Huldra, the siren of Norwegian folklore, plays out on the rocks below the falls.

Halfway down is Berekvam, the line's only passing loop — Parliament cut the intermediate stations to a single one to save money, so this is the one place on the whole railway where two trains can meet. It is unstaffed and has no centralised signalling, and the crossing is still set by hand: with flags in daylight, and torches after dark, by staff who travel out from Myrdal or Flåm to do it.

Below Berekvam the line crosses the river, passes Rjoandefossen — a clean 140-metre drop down the valley wall — and follows the Flåm valley down through orchards and farmland to sea level at Flåm, where the fjord and the waiting boats come into view.

Construction began in 1924, and the railway was finished into a country under occupation. Track-laying was pushed through in the summer of 1940 at German insistence, freight began running that August and passenger trains — behind steam locomotives — from 10 February 1941. Electric working came in 1944, powered by a station built at the top of Kjosfossen for the purpose. Because of the war there was never an opening ceremony, and the line was not formally opened until its fortieth anniversary in 1980.

It nearly did not survive. Freight ended in 1992, and with fares charged by the kilometre a slow twenty-kilometre branch earned almost nothing; closure was close. In 1998 Flåm Utvikling took over the marketing and the ticketing, put the fares up sharply, and turned it into what it is now — a working railway that carries close to a million people a year, and still connects at Myrdal with the Bergen Line between Oslo and Bergen.

The Flåm Railway runs all year, as line R45, operated by Vy on behalf of Flåmsbana AS. How often it runs changes sharply with the season — ten trains a day at the height of summer, four in winter. The times below are as of July 2026.

High season — to the end of September

Ten departures each way on weekdays. The early 07:20 from Flåm does not run on Saturdays or Sundays, so weekends have nine.

Allow 55 to 58 minutes each way in summer. That includes the seven-minute booked stop at Kjosfossen — the 10:45 from Myrdal, for instance, stands at the waterfall from 10:56 to 11:03.

October — the shoulder season

Six departures each way, with a couple of extra Thursday and early-October workings.

Winter — from the start of November

Four departures each way, and the trains are quicker: 40 to 44 minutes, because the long summer photo stop at Kjosfossen shrinks to a minute.

Connections at Myrdal. Flåm trains are timed to meet the Bergen Line (line F4, Oslo–Bergen) and the regional R40 service from Bergen and Voss. On a typical summer weekday, Myrdal sees six through Oslo–Bergen expresses each way plus the regional trains, so a Flåm round trip slots into a Bergen Line journey in either direction — see our Bergen Railway page for those times.

Book ahead in summer. Seats are reserved, high-season departures sell out, and the middle of the day is the busiest — cruise passengers walk straight from the quay at Flåm to the platform.

Operator: Flåmsbana — flamsbana.no (opens in a new tab). Tickets are sold through norwaysbest.com (opens in a new tab), and combined Flåm Railway plus Bergen Line journeys through vy.no (opens in a new tab). Times shift at the December and June timetable changes and with the summer and winter seasons, so check before you travel.

You can ride the Flåm Railway one way — useful if you are continuing by fjord cruise or picking up the Bergen Line at Myrdal — or as a return from Flåm, which is the usual half-day excursion. It is also the centrepiece of Norway in a Nutshell, the package NSB first assembled in the 1950s, bundling the train with a Bergen Line leg, a fjord cruise and a mountain bus.

Fares do not follow Vy's ordinary per-kilometre pricing: this line is priced as an attraction, and deliberately so, because charging normal rates for a slow twenty-kilometre branch nearly closed it in the 1990s. Eurail and Interrail are not valid for free travel but give a 30 per cent discount. Seats are reserved, so book ahead in high season — the middle of the day goes first, when the cruise ships are in.

Flåm sits at the head of the Aurlandsfjord, an arm of the vast Sognefjord, so the scenery does not stop when the train does — and almost everything below is reached by boat or by a bus up the hairpins, not by rail.

The standard way to string it together is the Norway in a Nutshell circuit, which most people buy as a package: train down from Myrdal, boat through the Nærøyfjord to Gudvangen, bus over the mountain to Voss, and the Bergen Railway onward. You can assemble exactly the same thing yourself from ordinary tickets, usually for less, and it lets you stop where the package does not.

One practical warning. Flåm is a cruise port as well as a railway terminus, and a village this small absorbs a docked ship very visibly — the fjord cruises and the Stegastein buses fill up with it. Going early, or staying the night and going out after the ships have sailed, changes the place completely.

Most visitors ride the Flåm Railway as a day trip, but Flåm and the surrounding fjord villages make a lovely overnight stop — and staying over lets you catch the valley in the quiet early morning before the day-trippers arrive.

The historic Fretheim Hotel, right by the railway terminus in Flåm, is the classic choice, with a long history of hosting travellers to the fjord. Aurland and the smaller villages along the Aurlandsfjord offer guesthouses and cabins for a quieter base. Book well ahead in summer, as fjord-side rooms are limited.