If you study the railway map of the Alps, it won't be long before you realise that there are only a limited number of north-south railway routes - two in Switzerland (Gotthard and Lötschberg/Simplon) and three in Austria (Brenner, Tauern and Semmering). A comparison with a topographical map will suggest other possible routes; one of these is over the Reschenpass, between Landeck on the east-west Arlberg line and the Vinschgau line in the South Tyrol, running from Bozen/Bolzano to Mals/Malles Venosta. Over time, a number of schemes have been proposed for a railway over the Reschenpass, whilst other schemes were proposed to link Landeck with the Swiss narrow-gauge Rhaetian Bahn at Scuol-Tarasp.

This book, written and published by Landeck historian Manfred Jenewein, looks at all the proposed schemes, and includes those where ground was actually cut on the project. The line through the Vinschgau as far as Mals was opened in 1905; the next step in that project would have been the line over the Reschenpass; but raising the necessary funds for the project was always going to be an uphill task (as it were). Matters were complicated by differing views as to what form the railway ought to actually take; the initial plan to link the Reschenpass line with the Vinschgau foresaw a trans-Alpine main line (single or double track); but others visualised a series of local railways serving the settlements in the area, whilst still other voices saw more value in linking the Austrian and Swiss railway systems via the Rhaetian route through the Engadin. Still more saw a way to square all these various circles by extending the Vinschgau line eastwards to Zernez in the Engadin, and then building the link from Scuol-Tarasp to Landeck, which would meet a number of different requirements but at the cost of a roundabout route and some disagreement over the track gauge to use. With all these forces pulling in different directions, it is little wonder that nothing was done about building the Reschenpass line until 1918, when the Imperial Army started work on the line at the Landeck end, using military railway engineers and prisoners of war. The line was even included in the Treaty of St.Germain - Austria's peace settlement, equivalent to the Treaty of Versailles - but the perilous financial state of the new, reformed Austria and the world financial position generally meant that work was reduced to a care and maintenance basis of the completed works in 1923-24 and then stopped completely.

Work was restarted in 1944, as the precarious position of trans-Alpine rail links open to Germany became clear. The Swiss had long threatened Germany with the destruction of the trans-Alpine routes in the event of German invasion. Some of the new works may have been intended to supply Hitler's fictional "Alpine redoubt", or to give the impression that the said redoubt existed and its communication routes were being improved. Or it may simply have been an effort by some in the Wehrmacht to position themselves as far out of harm's way as possible in view of the impending fall of the Third Reich. Little was done on the project, though there is evidence that some permanent way had been laid and remained in place as late as 1949. The dedicated urban explorer can still find the portals of the tunnel that passes under Landeck's castle.

The scheme continues to attract attention and speculative projects to actually complete the line, and the book describes these. Finally, the author describes even more grandiose plans to connect the Adriatic coast with southern Germany by a direct line not only using the Reschenpass route but also traversing the Fernpass, coincidentally bypassing the Mittenwaldbahn completely and giving access to the Außerfernbahn without leaving Austrian territory. One such scheme in 2000 anticipated Elon Musk's Hyperloop by proposing a hybrid monorail/evacuated tunnel bore system. The most recent scheme using the route was proposed as recently as 2015.

An afterword recounts the story of Alois Maas, a local clergyman who predicted apocalyptic events should a railway be built over the Reschenpass. Given that he died in 1848, long before any railways appeared anywhere in the Tirol, this is a curiosity worth recording.

Jenewein has produced a number of books on the history of Landeck. If the rest are produced to the standard of this book, then he has made a highly professional job of them all. It is produced on good paper, with a high quality of design. Some of the photographs that have been scanned from originals are not to the highest resolution, but their rarity compensates for this. The text is in fairly simple Austrian German; I had no problem following much of it. The book only lacks a general map of the area; it relies instead on the reader's own knowledge and the contemporary maps of the proposed schemes.

The book appears to only be available via retail outlets in the Tirol, or direct from the author (manfred.jenewein@aon.at). It has not been made available through the book trade and does not have an ISBN. I obtained my copy from the model railway shop Rainer's in Innsbruck, and details may be found through their website.(https://www.modellbahn.at/). They charged Eur.19.00 for the book, but their postage charges were as much again! Given that this is a highly specialist title unlikely to be replicated by other publications, I consider this a very worthwhile expenditure. ( )