Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Thursday - Modern Freight Locomotives and take a cab ride

Both SBB and the Bern Lotschberg Simplon Railway (BLS) are investing heavily in modern electric freight locomotives to replace their ageing fleets of Re 4/4 and Re 6/6 locomotives. Both SBB and BLS use a variety of different liveries

The Siemens built Vectrons date from 2016 but already over 1000 have been ordered throughout Europe.  They have a modular design which allows locomotives to be built for a variety of currents, both AC and DC with options to add "last mile" diesel and possibly battery operation. These have a 6400 KW rating (8582 hp)
Two SBB Vectrons head south through Liestal.

Two BLS (leased?) Vectrons at Spiez

BLS Vectrons at Spiez

A Railcare Vectron waiting at Cossonay.

SBB cargo has a number of Class 189 which is an earlier version of the Vectron. The black livery is quite unappealing

The Bombardier built Traxx locomotives were introduced a little earlier than the Vectrons. They are rated at 5600KW (7510 hp). The BLS bought these sooner than the SBB which allowed Bombardier to develop and improve the design
Two BLS Traxx locomotives head a Hupac train south through Liestal.  This is a train of trucks with a sleeping car for the drivers who take their rest while the train is moved between Germany or Austria and Italy.  This keeps heavy vehicles away from the Swiss roads and allows truck drivers to work through.

The Deutsche Bahn (DB) use Traxx locomotives, classified 185, to move trains through Switzerland to Italy. A DB traxx is seen here moving south at Brunnen on the approach to the new Gotthard Tunnel

In earlier days a lash up of four Traxxs waits at Goschenen for a margin through the old Gotthard tunnel.  This power was necessary to haul the train up the grades to the old tunnel.  A scene not seen any more with the opening of the low level Gotthard tunnel

The BLS 465 is similar to the SBB 460 and is used on freight and passenger work. Seen here at Liestal on a southbound freight and leading an Re 4/4

We have now covered the main types of trains in Switzerland and it is time to take a cab ride. These videos are well done but they are lengthy, as might be expected


Comments

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