Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Sunday - Funiculars at Locarno, Vevey and Glion
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Today we finish the tours of the funiculars we have visited.
The meter gauge funicular Locarno - Madonna del Sasso links the center of Locarno with the pilgrimage sanctuary of Madonna del Sasso and the municipality of Orselina. There are three intermediate stations and at At Orselina there is a connection with the cable car to Cardada, which in turn connects with a chairlift to the summit of Cimetta.
At Orselina there are good views over Locarno and Lake Magiore
The meter gauge Vevey - Mont Pelerin funicular runs through the vineyards and has two intermediate stations
From the top there are good views over Vevey-Montreux and Lac Leman
This video shows the switches with no moving parts as well as the winding mechanism
The Glion funicular has good connections at the lower station with the trolley buses as well as the SBB local trains. On the right is one of the original cars which has been preserved in place.
The top station connects with the Rochers de Naye mountain railway which we will visit later.
Glion is an interesting community in itself albeit built on the side of a mountain
However, the signature view is that over Lac Leman towards Villeneuve and the Chateau de Chillon.
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 single island
Tuesday 23 August Paul and I travelled to Zurich on Air Canada via Toronto. The flight from Ottawa was over an hour late - luckily we planned for this with a three hour connection in Toronto. Toronto airport was disgusting. It was overcrowded and there was nowhere for people to stand while waiting to board their flights. Obviously the Toronto airport focusses on relieving passengers of their money. Once aboard the plane things went well. There was plenty of space for carry on and the flight was excellent. It seems that the problem with airline travel is the airports rather than the flights. Our flight landed four minutes ahead of schedule (Wednesday) which was 0800. By 0820 we had cleared passport control and by 0840 we had taken a connecting internal tram and found the tram to downtown. We could have taken the SBB trains but we were in no great hurry and we enjoyed the 35 minute tram ride to close to the hotel. At Gladbrugge we passed two SBB 6/6 locomotives on the main line close by
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
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