Virtual Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Thursday - Zurich Tram Museum
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The Zurich Tram Museum is located at Burgweis, a former tram depot, served by tram routes 11 and S18 (the Forchbahn). It is open on weekends in the summer and there is a regular service of heritage trams on route 11 which will take you right to the door, at regular ticket prices.
Getting there is twice the fun.
At peak periods they add a trailer to handle the crowds
The trams are well maintained.
At the museum the first item you are likely to see is this "tug" which is used to move trams around and to make more room inside the building
This short video gives a good introduction
This is for the kids. They can move it along using pedal power
The museum provides an interesting visit after which we can look for a tram on route 11and take it out to the end of the line at Zurich Rehalp
Regular tram at Zurich Rehalp
Zurich Rehalp
From Zurich Rehalp we can either take a tram back into town or change to the Forchbahn for a trip into the country. We will save the Forchbahn for another day.
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
We had two objectives today :- Visit the open day at Hochdorf, on the Seethalbahn, which is now a country branch operated by the SBB. From there we planned to go to Lucerne and visit the Transport Museum. From Zurich we took a local train to Brugg where we changed to another local train to Lenzburg. The Seethalbahn starts from a platform across the road from the main station. Leaving Lenzburg one has the impression that this is just a local town run. But very quickly we leave the houses behind, the land turns green and a church on a green treed hill indicates the real nature of this branch line which is to serve the local farming communities. The small villages are built around a typical church with its clock and spire, and many of the larger backyards contain apple trees. Farming is mixed with some arable, particularly corn and sunflowers but also there are cattle and presumably pigs in the farms as well. The train service is quite good there being at least two an hour in each direc
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