Die Bahn kommt

With it comes an incomparable but temporary upswing in the battered village, as with the opening of the Gotthard Tunnel ten years earlier, the centuries-old source of income from the transit of goods and people had dried up from one day to the next.

Now, anyone who wanted to travel to the Engadin had to change trains in Thusis – and on the advice of the doctors had to spend several days acclimatizing because of the large differences in altitude. A welcome shop for the hotels and inns of Thusis. Among other things, two large hotels – the Hotel "Viamala" and the Hotel "Post" – served the needs of the wealthy clientele.

And the village dressed up for the noble guests. From then on it was forbidden to empty manure onto the street. In 1903, the tide turned: The Rhaetian Railway built the Albula Line into the Engadine (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), and the travelers noticed that they tolerated the altitude better than expected.