Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Saturday - The Interlocking at Kerzers
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Today will be a little different as we will visit Kerzers where there is a heritage interlocking. We will take the train from Neuchatel to Bern, getting off at Kerzers.
BLS operate the trains between Neuchatel and Bern. At Kerzers a BLS 465 is pushing a train towards Neuchatel
This cab ride starts at Kerzers and you can see the interlocking tower right ahead at the beginning of the video which takes you all the way to Bern.
This is the current track diagram. The interlocking is marked "Stellwerk". The BLS runs from northwest to southeast while the SBB runs from northeast to southwest
The interlocking tower is beautifully preserved in a pleasant park directly accessible from the passenger platforms. The park is planted with several horse chestnut trees so be careful if you come when the conkers are dropping
Beware of falling conkers
These are the bells which were used to signal to four adjacent stations
The interlocking is well worth a visit although special arrangements have to be made to see inside.
This blog covers the interlocking when it was still in operation
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
This is the only picture I took today - Hamburg Hauptbahnhof We took Air France from Ottawa to Paris with a connection to Hamburg. There was great chaos in the security section at Ottawa airport. One of my bags was diverted onto the intense search section and it was evident that with the speed they were going it would take a long time. I found a supervisor who explained and facetiously offered to get me a chair to sit on while I waited - which I facetiously accepted. After this it seems the whole process was speeded up and my bag was quickly released from the security prison. This made us late getting to the gate but a quick word with one of the staff at the gate in which I explained how my leg could be very painful if I had to stand up for some time and we finished up being in the first group to get on the aircraft after the wheelchairs. At Paris we had a long wait for our connection to Hamburg and this time one of the security staff came over and invited Paul and I to be first on the...
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