Myrdal station sits between tunnels at 867 metres above sea level. There is no road here – you arrive by train or on foot. The station opened in 1908, a year before the Bergen Railway was completed. Building the Gravhalstunnel from the west had taken ten years, mostly by hand – workers drilling through solid rock with dynamite. When finished in 1905, it was Northern Europe's longest tunnel at 5.3 kilometres.
What made Myrdal important came later. In 1940, the Flåmsbana opened – a 20-kilometre branch line dropping 864 metres to Flåm on the Aurlandsfjord. The gradient averages 5.5 percent, making it one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in the world. Most of the 950,000 annual passengers are tourists on the "Norway in a Nutshell" round trip.
Myrdal is not a village. There is no shop, no accommodation at the station itself. Café Rallaren serves food and has bike repair on the platform, open April to October. The waiting room and toilets are open 24 hours. Vatnahalsen Hotel lies a kilometre away on foot.
Platform 1 handles Bergen and Oslo trains. Platform 11 – numbered oddly because it serves a different line – is where Flåm trains depart. Connections typically wait just 10-15 minutes. Miss it and you might wait hours for the next one.