itself was of great importance, as the departure point of the Postbus line into the Saastal. It was therefore equipped with a generously sized station building, the second largest on the line after the one in Zermatt. At the start of the 20th century, there were plans to build another railway line to Saas-Fee that would branch off here from the existing line; World War I, however, thwarted these plans. The importance of the station (which, since 1931, has had the official name Stalden-Saas) has decreased since the 1950s, as the departure point since then for the Postbus line has been Brig, not Stalden. Nevertheless, the buses still stop also at Stalden station, and form a connection there with the trains to Zermatt. Immediately adjacent to the railway tracks there is also the base station of the cable car to Staldenried. Since 1986, the two tracks at Stalden have been equipped with continuous rack rails, as there are inclines immediately before and after the station. In addition to the two platform tracks there is also a loading track for goods traffic. The rack section, which begins at Ackersand, extends for a few hundred metres past Stalden. The line continues from there over a relatively flat section, along the right side of the increasingly narrowing valley, while the Vispa flows about 150 metres lower down, through a narrow gorge. The following section displays the first still relatively short tunnels, as well as the largest bridge on the line. The 67-metre-long Mühlebachviadukt spans its eponymous waters at a height of 43 metres. Its original steel truss structure was replaced in 1959 by a reinforced concrete arch bridge. At 19.8 kilometres, the station at Kalpetran is finally reached. The actual site has only a few buildings, the main function of the station being to allow connections with the cable car linking the station to the mountain village of Embd. Behind the station, the railway line meets the Mattervispa again, and switches to the left side of the valley. The Kipfenbrücke located here has had to be rebuilt several times: the original 30 metre long steel truss structure was destroyed in 1945 by an avalanche. A subsequent temporary measure was replaced in 1947 by a steel fish belly girder bridge, which, in turn, was itself destroyed by an avalanche in 1999. A steel girder bridge erected as a replacement was replaced in autumn 2007