Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Monday - Biel - Tauffelen - Ins Bahn
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A train at Tauffelen, the center of the system
The meter gauge line between Biel, Tauffelen and Ins, close to Bern is run by the AARE Seeland mobil system which runs buses and a couple of narrow gauge railways in the area.
At Biel/Bienne (the only bilingual Swiss city) the train starts from a platform underneath the main standard gauge platform.
This is the track layout at Biel/Bienne. The narrow gauge sneaks out heading south
Once in the daylight we get a quick glimpse of older equipment
We soon pass through the city outskirts and the journey is then through very pleasant farmland. Paul and I chose to come this way one Sunday afternoon. We intended to go through to Ins and catch a local train back to Bern. The narrow gauge was on a half hourly service but only one an hour went right through to Ins. We decided to go as far as Tauffelen and wait for the next train through to Ins.
Tauffelen
Tauffelen was shut up tight on Sunday afternoon as was the railway.
One of the five standard 3 section articulated units arrives at Tauffelen.
The ride through to Ins was again through pleasant farming country.
We never knbow what to expect at Ins as it seems to be permanently under construction
There is a good chance we will see narrow gauge work equipment
Even the obligatory Post Bus seems at a loss to know where to park
Of course the connecting train to Bern arrives on time
This short video has a long introduction but it does give a good idea of the area through which the line runs as well as a narrow gauge freight train.
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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