Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Thursday - Classic Gotthard North Ramp - Part One - Ersfeld to Wassen
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A steamer on Lake Luzern
Today is going to be a very long day. So long, in fact that we will break the blog into two parts. Our schedule is:
- Zurich to Luzeern - SBB train
- Luzern to Brunnen - lake steamer
Walk through Brunnen to station and watch trains running to and from the Gotthard tunnel
- Brunnen to Ersfeld - local train
- Ersfeld to Wassen - Post bus
- Wassen - hike to train watching spots then hike back to Wassen
- Wassen to Goschenen - Post bus
Vierwaldstattersee
Steamer crossing the Vierwaldstattersee from Luzern
An SBB Vectron heads through Brunnen for the Gotthard, hoping to be able to keep ahead of the passenger train
A class 610 in Trenitalia livery makes its way towards the tunnel on its journey from Zurich to Milano
Our local train to Ersfeld turns up right on time
At Ersfeld, while waiting for the bus, there is time to watch the action. Here an Re 10/10 passes through light engine
We can also see the beginning of the ramp, which has now been largely replaced by the new low level tunnel.
This is a plan showing the convoluted railway route from Ersfeld (right) to Goschenen (left) with Wassen to the center lefte curves and spirals are used to gain height yet retain a reasonable gradient
The bus from Ersfeld to Wassen was crowded with hikers, most of whom got out at Wassen where there are trails leading in all directions
Out of town a little there is a good view of the Wassen church which the train passes three times on its climb
The moring sun is excellent on a train from Milano heading for Zurich
An ICN coming down
An ICN going up
An Re 4/4 hauled passenger train running down
Light engine moves have to be fitted in
Even work equipment runs at track speed so as not to hold up movements
An Re 10/10 hauled freight slogs up the hill. We will see it several minutes later going in the opposite direction high above us.
In spite of all this railway action it is very calm and quiet - we can hear the bells of a herd some way above us.
After enjoying the action and eating our sandwiches we go back to Wassen village to search for a Magnum ice cream and the Post Bus on to Goschenen. The bus has a fair complement of hikers on the short ride to the entrance to the Classic Tunnel.
At Goschenen we can sit down with a beer at a table on the platform and watch trains. We can contemplate the rest of the journey which will include three narrow gauge trains and a Post Bus ride with good views of a glacier.
Before that there are two excellent videos worth watching.
This is absolutely amazing. Three steam locomotives, two double heading and one banker climb up to Goschenen and go right through in October 2017. As far as Goschenen a second train with a green 4/4 runs parallel and the two trains keep overtaking wach other. Both trains are formed of historic rolling stock.
This is a cab ride down from Goschenen to Ersfeld in an Ae 6/6 historic locomotive. Blogger gave me problems loading. If there are problems you can watch it separately.
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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