Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Friday - Sortie into France Cite du Train - at 574 km/h!
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Outside the Cite du Train
Mulhouse is a short train ride across the border into France from Basel. A short tram ride from the Mulhouse station brings us to the French National railway Museum, La Cite du Train. As soon as we arrive at Mulhouse it is evident that we have changed countries. The SBB jingle is replaced by the SNCF one
This video will give a good impression of arriving at Mulhouse and touring the museum
The trams start from the station forecourt
The station for the museum seems in the middle of nowhere, adjacent to the SNCF main line.
However, it is evident when you arrive
A turbo train which was used on the line to Caen from Paris St.Lazare
A runner tired train used before the war
The exhibits are very well restored and most are under cover
A reminder of the problems during the war
There is the obligatory sectioned steam locomotive
One of the 1-4-1R locomotives produced at the end of the war in North America
The Gloden Arrow/Fleche D'Or used to run through Colin's home town, Orpington, albeit with a BR standard 4-6-2
This captures the cheminots
Double decker trains are nothing new.
SNCF Interlocking Tower
A small interlocking machine
More recent electric locomotives are well represented.
One of the most interesting exhibits is the cab of an SNCF TGV, high speed train where you can watch the video of the making of the current rail speed record of 574 pmph.
Having had a good visit we catch a tram back to Mulhouse for the train to Basel. This is a tram-train which runs on the same line but through to the SNCF 25,000V AC network
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
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...
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