Flåm Railway to Myrdal and back

The Flåm Railway is the non-driver's fjord and the driver's half-day, and the question on the Norwegian fjords journey is only which half. The line leaves from the quay in Flåm, where the journey sleeps, climbs 20 km to Myrdal on the Bergen–Oslo main line, and comes back; an hour each way, eight stops, a five-minute halt at the Kjosfossen waterfall. It suits every party and every season; it does not suit anyone who arrives on the same day as a cruise ship without a booked seat.

The figures, read today on the train operator's page: the line is 20 km long and runs from Myrdal, "the high mountain station" at 867 m above sea level, down to Flåm; the journey lasts one hour and stops at eight stations; the trains run every day, all year. An adult single ticket is "from NOK 399"; children aged six to seventeen pay 50 per cent; a bicycle is NOK 280 and must be reserved when you buy the ticket. The marketing operator, Norway's Best, publishes the seasonal timetable and a round-trip fare on its own site; that site returned HTTP 429, too many requests, to every call today, so its figures are not stated. The Flåm stop on this site records the same failure a few hours earlier; the operator's page is evidently rate-limited.

The arithmetic for the ledger: 60 minutes up, 60 down and a turnaround at Myrdal that in the winter pattern is about half an hour, so 150 minutes on site at the long end. There is no detour, because the station is in the sleep village; add the 30-minute booking buffer and the railway costs a Flåm night 160 minutes if the turnaround is short, 180 if it is not. That is a morning. The journey's day two drives Bergen to Flåm with the Stegastein detour and sleeps here; the railway is the morning of day three before the long road to Geiranger, which is why that day is tight.

The ride itself climbs the Flåmsdalen on a gradient that the operator does not state on the page read today, through tunnels and across the valley, with the Kjosfossen halt on a platform in the spray. The Myrdal end is a bare station in snow for more than half the year; in summer it is the top of the walk-and-bike descent the marketing operator sells.

#What goes wrong

The cruise ships, first. Flåm is a port, and on a ship day the train, the car park and the fjord boat are full by mid-morning. Book the seat and take the first departure. The winter timetable, second: fewer trains, and a day built on a remembered summer departure fails. The connection, third: anyone continuing on the Bergen line from Myrdal needs a through ticket and a timetable check, because the branch and the main line are timed for each other only at some departures. Weather rarely stops the train; a rock fall or a flood does, a few times a decade.

#Alternatives on the same road

The Stegastein platform above Aurland is the free view of the same fjord from the road, 20 minutes up from the village and kept open all year. The fjord boat to Gudvangen along Aurlandsfjord and Nærøyfjord is the other half of the marketing operator's package and is seasonal; it was not read today. For a train-only traveller, staying on the Bergen line from Myrdal to Finse is the cheaper high-mountain hour.

Practical line: paid parking at the station; fuel and a small shop in the village, better shopping in Aurland; the E16 west to Bergen and east through the Lærdal tunnel is open all year.

#Sources

Vy's Flåm Railway page, read 1 November 2026, for length, altitude, journey time, stops, fares and the all-year note; Norway's Best's timetable-and-fares page, which could not be read today.