Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Saturday - Brienze Rothorn Bahn Moutain Railway
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Brienze is served by Zentralbahn narrow gauge trains running between Interlaken and Meiringen. These trains which dated from the 1940s have now been replaced by shiny new multiple units.
The 800 mm gauge Brienze Rothorn Bahn is one of the few railways in Switzerland which is not electrified. There are some 14 steam locomotives running on the Abt rack system.
The boilers are set at an angle so as to be level on the gradient
The motion ios complicated - the drive being on the rack pinions
As we leave Brienze we see an early version of a green roof
As we leave Brienx=ze there are good views of Lake Brienze
Passing siding
We make a meet
And take water
At busy times trains are run in several sections
Views from the summit are wonderful
There is time to examine the locomotive before returning to Brienze
Steamer approaching the Brienze dock
the transport coordination at Brienze is a microcosm of what is practiced all over the country. the Zentralbahn trains meet here and are met by the steamer and at least one Post Bus so there is excellent interchangeability between water, road, two trains and the mountain railway.
There are many videos of this popular tourist railway.
This provides good views of the trains
This is billed as a driver's eye view. It is the view from the front - the driver is on the locomotive which is always at the lower end.
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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