2026-06-20 · 5 min read
How a winter timetable is written
It takes four drafts, two avalanche bulletins, and one very patient dispatcher to move a single departure by ten minutes.
The winter timetable takes four drafts. The first draft is drawn in June, by people in short sleeves, and assumes the mountain will be reasonable. The mountain does not return the assumption.
Draft two arrives with the first avalanche bulletin of the season and moves the morning service twenty minutes later, because the plough car needs daylight on the upper rack and daylight is not negotiable. Draft three is drawn by the dispatcher, who knows where the drifts form and inserts a turnaround she will probably never use, at the one crossing that stays dry in a north wind.
Draft four is the one that gets printed, and it is always the shortest. It has to fit on one board, be legible through fog from four metres, and survive the one thing no draft can plan: a storm on changeover day, when half the valley wants to go up and half the summit wants to come down and the rack is single track between them.
The ten minutes everyone complains about in December are the ten minutes that, in February, keep the 07:12 from being cancelled outright. A timetable is not a promise that trains run on time. It is a promise that they run at all, and winter is when you pay for it.