Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Tuesday - La Traction at Pre-Petitjean
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La Traction is a small preservation group that has a narrow gauge depot at Pre-Petitjean on the CF du Jura between Noirmont and Glovelier. The URL is http://www.la-traction.ch/. They only have the tracks within the depot itself but run frequent excursions on the narrow gauge network.
We first came across La Traction which had an excursion at Glovelier using ex-Portuguese Mallet compound E.164.
E.164 is an 0-4-4-0T Mallet built in 1903
Taking water
Don't stand underneath while taking water
However to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Yverdon-Ste-Croix railway a second Mallet was trucked across to Yverdon-les-Bains for a celebratory trip to Ste-Croix.
Mallet E.206 approaching Baulmes
Baulmes
The whole town was out to celebrate
E.206 is taking water at Baulmes. It is a larger locomotive built in 1913 to the 2-4-6-0T wheel arrangement. The extra power will be needed on the very stiff climb up the mountain to Ste-Croix
Ste-Croix
It was fortunate a couple of days later that we happened to be at Noirmont on the CF du Jura and happened across E.206 which had just been taken off a truck which had brought it back from Yverdon.
They were obviously going to be there for some time before moving off to Pre-Petitjean.
Quick change of plan which involved an excellent lunch at Noirmont.
Then is was back to the station to watch E.204 getting its train ready.
Pre-Petitjean is on our bucket list of places to visit. Here are a few video clips.
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...
love those Mallets
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