The new Sierre - Montana - Crans
Valais

Text and photos by Michel Azéma

SMC - Sierre - Montana - Crans

Presentation

Big event in the Funiculars world, since December 16 th 1997 the funicular Sierre-Montana-Crans is completely renovated and the two sections have been reunified into one section!

The funicular was first built in 1911 to link the city of Sierre, in the Rhône valley, and the Crans-Montana-Vermala resort.

The distance between Sierre and Vermala is around 4 kilometers, a very long distance for a funicular, a too long distance because of the weight of a 4 km length cable. To solve this problem it was decided to build two concatenated funiculars to form two sections. A special station was built at Saint-Maurice-de-Laques for the transfer of the passengers between the two funiculars.

This configuration was used between 1911 and 1997. Between the 1st April 1997 and the 16th December 1997, the funiculars were stopped and completly renovated.

The main reason is that, with the 2 funiculars and the transfer, the time of a course was about 30 minutes. Now with the new SMC it takes only 12 minutes for the same course without any transfer!

By the way, the reunification of the 2 funiculars in one section make the new SMC the longest funicular in the world (4192 m)!

Certainly, the new SMC owns the most confortable cabins and the biggest panoramic view of all the funiculars in the world!