switchback

The Zig Zag Railway near Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia, c. 1900, now operated as a heritage railway. It was built as a switchback (noun sense 1.1) with three lines—called the Top Road, Middle Road, and Bottom Road—to climb the western flank of the Blue Mountains.

A switchback (noun sense 2.3) on the Terrace Trail, a forest trail in Newcastle, Washington, U.S.A.

Switchbacks (noun sense 2.3) on the Route du Col de Braus, a mountain pass in the Alps in the department of Alpes-Maritimes, France.

The noun is derived from switch (“to turn (a train) from one railway track to another using a switch”, verb) +‎ back (“so as to reverse direction and return”, adverb).^[1][2]

The verb is derived from the noun.^[1]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈswɪt͡ʃbæk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈswɪt͡ʃˌbæk/
• Hyphenation: switch‧back

switchback (plural switchbacks) (often attributively or figuratively)

1. (rail transport)
   1. A railway track on a steep slope in a zigzag formation, in which a train travels in a reverse direction at each switch.
      • 1873, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Charles Dudley Warner, chapter XLIX, in The Gilded Age: A Tale of To-day, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, published 1874, →OCLC, page 445:

        "Of course," said Harry, "there will have to be a branch track built, and a ‘switch-back’ up the hill."

      • 1934, Graham Greene, chapter 4, in It’s a Battlefield, library edition, London: William Heinemann, published 1959, →OCLC, page 171:

        Marriage was the switchback, the giant racer, the lobster teas, the guarantee that one would never be alone.

   2. A railway track on which there are steep ascents and descents, a train moving partially or fully by the force of gravity using the momentum generated when descending to travel up an ascending part of the track; especially (British, dated), such a track built for fun rides at an amusement park; a type of rollercoaster.
      • 1964 March, “News and comment: Which way to the west?”, in Modern Railways, Shepperton, Surrey: Ian Allan Publishing, page 147:

        The WR faction claims that the Westbury route is better adapted to high speed, to which advocates of the SR route are apt to retort that the effect of modern diesel traction on schedules over the Salisbury–Exeter switchback has yet to be measured (the speed potential between Waterloo and Salisbury is scarcely disputable) […]

2. (by extension)
   1. (aviation) A flight path consisting of a series of steep ascents and descents, generally flown as a stunt.
   2. (chiefly British) A path or road having a series of steep ascents and descents.
      • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 151:

        The switchback road to Diabaig - pronounced 'Jer-vague' - passes through some of the most exhilarating scenery in Scotland. […] With a final swoop, the road plummets down into Diabaig, where cottages are dotted across the slopes of a rocky semi-circle.

   3. (chiefly Canada, US, road transport) A sharp bend in a path or road which causes a traveller to almost reverse their direction of travel, especially one of a series of such bends on an incline; a hairpin bend; also a path or road having such a series of bends.

      Coordinate term: horseshoe curve

      • 2019 April 25, Samanth Subramanian, “Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-12-21:

        Already, we enter some airport bathrooms through a brief switchback of walls, so that we don’t ever grasp a door handle.

• switchbacky

• dogleg

switchback (third-person singular simple present switchbacks, present participle switchbacking, simple past and past participle switchbacked)

1. (intransitive) To take a zigzag course or path.

   Synonym: zigzag

   • 2015 June 25, John Henderson, “A secret range of stunning mountains? Hikers, meet Slovakia’s High Tatras”, in Los Angeles Times‎, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2021-08-06:

     I climbed 6,683-foot Velka Svistovka, not the highest mountain in the Tatras but arguably the one with the best view. I started from Zelene pleso chata (pleso means "lake" and chata means "hut" in Slovak), and right after turning the first corner I started switchbacking.

• switchbacked (adjective)
• switchbacking (adjective, noun)

• hairpin turn on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• zig zag (railway) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• switchback (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia