Gornergrat-Bahn 3071 leads an uphill train as the Matterhorn rises above the line as the two car Cog Railway trainset heads to Bergstation at Gornergrat from Zermatt, Switzerland. Gornergrat Station is the end of the line for the Gornergrat trains and is 3,089 meters above sea level. The base station of the Gornergrat Railway is located very close to Zermatt’s train station

For a while I was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Air Force’s Electronic Imaging Center stationed at Aviano, Italy, where Combat Camera was tasked to document the Provide Hope operation in 1992.

I was there for six months, and on most weekends, we had time off and on one of them I took a couple days of vacation and took trains from Italy to Switzerland to ride and photograph this train line. It was probably one of my most memorable trips from my railfanning past!

According to Wikipedia: Operation Provide Hope was a humanitarian operation conducted by the U.S. Air Force to provide medical equipment to former Soviet republics during their transition to capitalism. The operation was announced by Secretary of State James A. Baker, III on January 22–23, 1992 and the initial shipment of supplies was sent on February 10, 1992. Twelve US Air Force C-5 and C-141 was carrying an estimated 500 tons of bulk-food rations and medicines into Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Minsk, and Chisinau from Germany and Yerevan, Almaty, Dushanbe, Ashkhabad, Baku, Tashkent, and Bishkek from Turkey.

In total, for nearly two weeks sixty-five missions flew 2,363 short tons (2,144 t) of food and medical supplies to 24 locations in the Commonwealth of Independent States during the initial phase of operation. Much of these supplies was left over from the buildup to the Persian Gulf War.