Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Monday - Private excursions with historic equipment

Weekends can be difficult for the railfan because many items are crammed into these two days, many of which are not advertised or difficult to uncover.  Some smaller railways have historic railcars which are brought out for the odd private excursion.  Here are a few that we have been able to uncover.

The Red Arrow was built in 1939 for the Swiss National Exhibition in that year. It is also known as the "Churchill Car" as it was used by Sir Winston Churchill when he visited Switzerland at the end of World War II.  The two-car SBB train is now fitted out for dining and is used on advertised excursions. These pictures were all taken in Zurich in September 2019.




A single car version was built in 1938.  It is now owned by the Oensingenbalsthalbahn as #202 (formerly SBB 1007).  Seen here on a private excursion at Lausanne it was tracked down through an intense study of the SBB departure boards while changing trains.


We have stumbled across a number of other historic railcars by chance.


This is the Sihltahnbahn #84 built in 1924 operating on a Saturday morning on the Zurich S4 suburban line towards Sihlbrugge..  This was completely unexpected and we only became aware of it when the crossing started to operate although a regular service train was not expected.


The WM #2, built in 1966 is based at Koblenz near Schaffhausen.
Seen above on a private charter at Zurich


Forchbahn #10, built 1948, at the Egg Fair on the narrow gauge line from Zurich to Essinglen. The line is now operated as part of the Zurich tramway network

These two cars are owned by the Transports Publics du Chablais centred on Aigle, They were built for the Le Sepey -Diablerets line in 1913. They are stored under the road bridge with easy access from the adjacent public road.  They can presumably be operated on the 1500V DC system and are moved from time to time.

These are the trains we have been able to photograph but there were a number of others, standard and narrow gauge which we saw but were unable to record.  We have to keep our eyes open on weekends.

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