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[Pilatus Railway], 1939. Wraps, 43 pp. plus 22 unnumbered pages of plates; 22 cm; illustrated with black-and-white photographs, line drawings, reproductions of 17th- and 18th-century engravings, a profile of the line, technical drawings of the 1937 electric coaches, and 2 pages of color plates of alpine flowers. Published on the occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Pilatus Railway.
In Very Good condition. Cream wraps with black lettering and wood-engraved view of Mount Pilatus and Lucerne on front cover; light bumping to edges and corners, mild shelf wear, some soiling to rear cover. Front cover scored along the spine edge. Binding tight. Inscribed in ink on title page by a U.S. Army chaplain, dated Lucerne, Switzerland, October 1945. Single pencil line in the margin of p. 4, otherwise unmarked. With four pieces of 1945 U.S. Army leave ephemera from Lucerne laid in: "Welcome to Lucerne / Some Places of Interest / Special Edition for USA-Army-Visitors to Lucerne" (single-fold, 4 pp., Schill & Cie., Lucerne), with "In Lucerne you will stay at the Hotel" stamped Hotel de la Paix, room number 18 added in ink, "With compliments The Local Committee Lucerne"; "Mount Pilatus Excursion for U.S.A.-Army Visitors staying at Lucerne" card with Time-Table 1945, directing soldiers to exchange their Swiss Tour C1 ticket for a free round trip, with a bird's-eye route map of the Lucerne-Alpnachstad-Pilatus line on the reverse; an unused gummed blue and white Hotel de la Paix Lucerne luggage label (Typ. Henry Grau); and a trilingual (German, French, English) eight-panel folder for the Lion Monument and Glacier Garden, "Prospekt Gratis." Anniversary history of the Pilatus Railway, opened June 4, 1889, and still the steepest cog railway in the world at a 48% gradient. Covers construction of the line on the Locher rack system, its 1937 electrification, the legends and early scientific exploration of the mountain, notable visitors (Wagner, Queen Victoria, the polar explorers Lincoln Ellsworth and Sir Hubert Wilkins), entries from the summit hotels' visitors' books, and the mountain's geology, flora and fauna, with a technical appendix on the new rolling stock. The ephemera record a chaplain's stay under the U.S. Army's Swiss leave program of 1945-46, when the American command sent enlisted men and officers on government-paid seven-day tours of Switzerland in the months after the war; this copy was acquired on the Pilatus excursion offered to them. Contents: Foreword; Half a Century on the Pilatus Railway; 50 Years' Traffic Development on the Pilatus Railway; Mount Pilatus: the Name, Legend and Scientific Research; Pilatus Visitors; The Pilatus Hotels and their Visitors' Books; Mount Pilatus in Natural Science: Geology, Flora, Fauna; The Electrification of the Pilatus Railway