Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Thursday - Schinznacher Baumschulbahn
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The Schinznacher Baumschulbahn is a garden center which has a railway running through it. It is open at weekends but is used for horticultural purposes during the week. The best way to get there is to take the hourly Post Bus from Brugg railway station.
There is an impressive workshop, crammed full of two foot gauge locomotives.
A tram locomotive
The steam locomotive of the day is on the ready track
The afternoon crowds can be heavy so several diesels are also available to haul trains.
Nice Edmondson card tickets are used
The garden center takes up a lot of room and the layout is very complex
Let's go for a ride behind this Henschel steam locomotive
Trains start and finish at this station
An interesting part of the ride is through the greeenhouses
Just imagine having lunch in a greenhouse and watching steam trains pass.
With lunch finished you can come to the lake and watch trains meet and pass each other
We have saved the best until last. An earlier picture in the shop showed a glimpse of a South African two foot gauge Garratt. It was difficult to photograph.
South African narrow gauge Beyer Garratt locomotive tucked away out of use
Although #60 has been used here it was found to be too big for the severe curves and too powerful for the small trains used. A couple of years ago it was sold to the Vale of Rheidol Railway at Aberystwyth, Wales where it has been refurbished and it was planned to have it in service on the Devils Bridge line this summer.
Happily this video was made of #60 in 2000
For additional videos of this garden center railway search Schinznacher Baumschulbahn on youtube
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...
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
Today we left Yverdon-les-Bains and traveled back to Zurich in preparation for return to Canada tomorrow. In the morning we took an ICN through Neuchatel to Oensingen. We left four minutes late but with a tight throttle and the banking on these trains we left Neuchatel on time - it was an exciting ride. At Oensingen there was quite a lot to see. As well as the main line freight a single manned diesel switcher went across the main line a couple of times to pick up empty cars. The two narrow gauge trams from Solothurn and Langenthal came in and reversed. Main line freight The standard gauge line to Balstall was using an SBB train with TPN markings. In addition there was a magpie poking around on the ground, and a couple of kites flying around. We went on to Olten for lunch at the M igros restaurant. After lunch we took a short trip to Daniken on the main line. Just after we got there we saw three freight trains with Re 420s on them and a further SBB Vectron o...
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