In 1889, Switzerland opened a rack railway up Mount Pilatus with gradients once thought too steep; the line still climbs more than 5,000 feet from the valley

There's a train in Switzerland that runs up a track that is much steeper than you would ever consider parking on. The Pilatus Railway is a cogwheel train that ascends the side of Mount Pilatus above Lucerne, and is supposedly the steepest rack railway in the world, and has held that title for over a hundred years. The Pilatusbahn has been operating successfully since it first climbed the mountain on June 4, 1889, with a maximum gradient of 48%, that's about one meter of rise for every two meters traveled, over a 4.6 km (2.87-mile) path, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which certified the railway as an international engineering landmark.