Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Thursday - Tilting trains

Swiss railways do not have any really high speed lines because of the mountainous and curvy terrain.  However, the disadvantages are minimized to a large extent by the use of trains that tilt to allow them to round curves at higher than normal speeds.
Class 510 is Swiss built. Seen here on the classic Gottard route at Goschenen.

A Geneva-bound train at Yverdon-les-Bains

Italian built class 470 at Zurich. These were found to be unreliable and are not now operating in Switzerland.  They went to Greece.
Class 610 is an Italian train which suffered initially from reliability problems. Seen here on a train from Milan heading to Geneva from Lausanne.

A 610 passing a German Traxx locomotive at Goschenen

An Italian liveried 610 at Zurich. An Austrian train is on the left.

The Italian 610s were developed from the UK tilting experimental train that Brit Rail was unable to make work.  The Italians bought the design and produced their own tilting trains sometimes known as Pendolinos.  They then sold a large number of Pendolino trains to the UK, both diesel and electrically powered) where they are operating successfully on the line out of London, Euston, 
Pendolinos at London, Euston.

Comments

  1. MarkMay 17, 2020 at 11:32 AM

    "Italian built class 470 at Zurich. These were found to be unreliable..."

    Was it the tilting feature that was unreliable? Or the general operational availability?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
Zurich Hauptbahnhof  Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof.  This will be in several parts.  The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza.  The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a sing...
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
This video, by Noel Wyler,  shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal  Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip  
Read more

Travel Basel to Den Haag - Wednesday 11 September

Image
  A Dutch speciality - pancake with cheese, mushrooms and bacon. This was the only picture I took today - after we had finally arrived at Den Haag. We went early to the station at Basel  to check on our train to Dusseldorf only to find out it had been cancelled. A visit to the SBB ticket office revealed that the train hadn't actually been cancelled but was starting today from Karlsruhe. They found a connecting train leaving a little earlier which we took. This became progressively later and later so that it arrived at Karlsruhe just as the connection was about to pull out. A frantic dash across the platform and we were able to claim our seats. The journey to Dusseldorf was peculiar, There were periods when the train went fast (up to almost 200 kmph) and other periods when it dawdled. It progressively lost time except that it arrived at its final destination, Dusseldorf, eleven minutes early. (An injudicious use of recovery time in the schedule?) Dusseldorf gave us an opportuni...
Read more