Montenvers Railway

The Montenvers railway has spent a century chasing the thing it was built to show.

When the line opened, the ice could be reached some forty metres below the top station, and visitors walked out across the glacier. The station has stayed where it was and the glacier has not. By 1946 the ice had dropped so far that the commune of Chamonix dug a cave into it to give people something to reach; in 1961 a cable car was built to take them down to it, later replaced by a gondola, and in February 2024 by a new gondola further up the valley, because the stairs from the old one had grown to some six hundred steps. Today it is a gondola ride and about 170 steps from the platform to the ice.

The little red train itself has hardly changed. Since 1908 it has climbed 5.1 kilometres of metre-gauge rack from Chamonix to Montenvers, at 1,913 metres, and since 1954 it has done it electrically, in twenty minutes, with the Drus and the Grandes Jorasses ahead at the top. It runs nearly all year, closing for works in November, and the département of Haute-Savoie, which has owned it since 1897, has borrowed to replace the trains.

Trains leave from the Montenvers station in Chamonix, an alpine-style building beside the town's main-line station and joined to it by a footbridge, so the Mont-Blanc Express and the trains from Saint-Gervais arrive a few steps away. Outside it stands one of the line's old SLM steam engines on a plinth.

The climb

The train crosses the road on the level and starts to climb at once. It turns north-east up through Les Planards, swings back south through a hairpin and a tunnel to the first passing loop, then reverses direction again through the curving Grépon tunnel, about 300 metres long. Above Caillet, the second loop, stretches of the line run under avalanche galleries, and the train crosses the Bois and Montenvers viaducts before a last bend brings it out above the glacier. The whole way, except in the two stations, the track is on the gradient, and the rack never stops.

In 1909 the same trip took 50 to 55 minutes behind a steam engine; the electric railcars of 1954 cut it to twenty. A Strub rack, a single toothed rail down the middle of the metre-gauge track, carries the train up and holds it on the way down.

The trains

The line runs six trains, each a motor car and a trailer carrying 200 passengers, 160 of them seated. The motor cars are the Bhe 4/4 railcars 41 to 46, built from 1954 with bodies, bogies and brakes by SLM of Winterthur and electrics by Oerlikon, and painted what the French call rouge géranium. Following the rule on steep lines, the motor car always sits at the downhill end, pushing on the way up. Two diesel tractors work the maintenance trains. The département of Haute-Savoie has taken out €80 million of loans to replace the fleet.

At the top

Montenvers has been a viewpoint since the eighteenth century, and the buildings show it: the Temple de la Nature of 1795, the Grand Hôtel of 1880, and the stone station itself. From the terraces the view takes in the Mer de Glace, the Drus and the Grandes Jorasses. The new gondola drops from beside the station towards the ice, and from its lower station the stairs lead down to the ice cave.

The line's worst day was 25 August 1927, when a descending steam train derailed just below Montenvers and its engine and first coach fell from the end of the Montenvers viaduct. Twenty-two people died, and a device was fitted to every engine to stop the reversing gear being thrown while the train was moving.

There is no fixed timetable: trains run on a frequency from the first departure until the last, every hour, half-hour or twenty minutes depending on the crowds, and the climb takes twenty minutes. To see the ice cave, catch a train no later than the "last for the ice cave" time below; after that the train still runs, but there is not enough time to go down to the cave and back.

Autumn 2026

Winter 2026–27

Summer 2026, for reference

The 2027 summer timetable is not yet published. In 2026 the busiest weeks, 4 July to 30 August, had a first train at 08:00 when numbers called for it, the last for the ice cave at 15:30, the last train up at 17:00 and the last down at 17:30. In May, June and September the first train left at 08:00 or 08:30 (with an extra 09:00 on demand in early May and September), the last for the ice cave was 14:30 or 15:00, and the last train down was 16:30 or 17:00. The gondola and ice cave close for maintenance for a few weeks in May and from late September; the whole line closed for works from 18 to 22 May 2026.

Times as of October 2026, from the operator's opening times and prices (opens in a new tab), which it gives "for information purposes only", subject to weather and operating conditions. The live information page (opens in a new tab) shows what is running today.

Most visitors buy the Mer de Glace tour, which covers the train both ways, the gondola, the ice cave and the Glaciorium; it is sold online and at the Chamonix station. A plain train return costs less, and a one-way ticket with the gondola and visits suits walkers coming down on foot or going on along the Grand Balcon Nord. Children from 5 to 14 and people over 65 pay the reduced fare; under-fives travel free with proof of age at the ticket office.

On a family ticket of two adults with children aged 5 to 14, the third, fourth and fifth tickets are free. A disabled visitor and a companion get half price at the ticket office. Prices as of October 2026, from the operator.

Interrail passes are not valid on the Montenvers train. Interrail's table of railway companies does not list it; the pass covers only the SNCF's regional trains that bring you to Chamonix, so pass holders buy an ordinary Montenvers ticket.

The pass that does cover it is the operator's own MONT BLANC MultiPass, from €95.60 for an adult, valid for one to nine days on the Montenvers train with its gondola and ice cave, the Aiguille du Midi, the Tramway du Mont-Blanc and the valley's other summer lifts, and on the Chamonix buses. It pays only if you plan more than the Montenvers on the same days; for the train and the ice cave alone, the Mer de Glace tour ticket is the simpler buy.

Checked October 2026 against Interrail's table of railway companies (opens in a new tab) and the operator's MultiPass page (opens in a new tab).

The train has only two stations that matter, but each opens onto a lot: Chamonix at the bottom, and at the top the glacier, the old buildings of Montenvers and the high paths that start from them. A morning train leaves time for the ice cave and a walk back to the valley on foot.

Chamonix has hotels of every kind within walking distance of the station. The unusual choice is to stay at the top: the Grand Hôtel at Montenvers, beside the top station, takes overnight guests, with a restaurant and a bar facing the Mer de Glace.

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