Day 5 Sunday - Heritage Items including a ride behind and on a steam locomotive

 

There was a surprise waiting for us at Zurich Hauptbahnhof. An Re 4/4 in the original livery on a fast passenger train. This says something for the quality of the original paintwork.

Our first objective today was to ride a steam locomotive heritage operation from Triengen to Sursee. To get to the beginning we took a suburban train to Aarau and transferred to the narrow gauge electric line to Schoftland,

This operates as a roadside tramway. It is single track with passing loops and intermediate speeds are high.

At Schoftland we had to transfer to a Post Bus. The cross platform couldn't have been simpler but we had half an hour to look around Schoftland.

Schoftland turns out to be an interesting town. There is very large building called a Schloss which seems to have apartments under a fine tower. On the ground floor there  is a large open air restaurant and a number of other stores with a big wide green lawn outside. There is also an interesting church with a murder of rooks flying around trying to nest behind the clock hands.

Not sure what these are - not graves

At the station there is a Selecta machine with a Lavazza coffee machine and a photo print machine in between the two. A man arrived by car. Got out, got his coffee, returned to his car and drove off.

The bus ride was through pleasant country. Many small farms with crops such as corn and some sugar beet. There were not many passengers on a Sunday morning and we stopped a couple of times just to make up the timetable. 

It was a short walk to the railway station at Triengen the steam train was being prepared. Having bought the tickets we went up to the engine and I managed to get a visit onto the locomotive where I met Felix. We had a chat about how the steam locomotive worked and I mentioned that I had fired them many years ago. A little while later Paul and I were on the platform and Felix came up to us and asked if I would like to ride on the locomotive for the last part of the journey to Sursee. 

Felix cleaning his engine

8522 was built at Winterthur in 1913, it was one of the engines converted during WWII to use electricity as well as coal to heat the boiler. At that time coal was very difficult to obtain.

Lovely Welsh coal

Triengen

My response of course was yes please. The ride on the engine was through very pleasant farming country and I rode from the last station to Sursee. There was a driver, a fireman and Felix who seemed to be in control. He had a train radio and was also keeping a good watch ahead to ensure that the crossing gates and lights were working. The firebox on this locomotive was quite small and the coal they were using was Welsh in nice small knobs making firing easy as there was no need to swing the shovel. I put in one shovelful. There were two injectors which worked in the normal fashion and two sight glasses. The engine appears to be in good condition and sounded very square. The last section into Sursee was probably the best part of the trip because it goes through very heavy woodland. 

The regulator/throttle is barely open but the engine sounds good and square

Saying goodbye at Sursee

The line is normally freight only and these steam trips occur only on the last Sunday of the month. At Sursee the line runs onto the SBB main and the crew is fully qualified by the railway company. We ran into platform one and after saying goodbye the train moved out into the siding where the locomotive would run round for the return. Our connecting train to Luzern of course also ran into platform one. Right on time.

At Luzern we had a quick connection to a train back to Zurich where we caught an SZU (Sihltal - Zurich - Uetliberg) train to Langnau - Gattikon. There was supposed to be a steam excursion passing through which would have taken us back to Zurich but it didn't materialize so we took a regular train back.

Lunch was take-out pizza eaten on the platform at Langnau - Gattikon with Magnums as dessert,

The line up the mountain to Uetliberg originally ran on DC with the pantographs offset to one side so that they could run with the other trains running under AC. The Uetliberg line is being converted to AC at present and this is one of the new trains that will operate over the steepest standard gauge adhesion line in Europe. Seen here on the main line at Langau - Gattikon.

This is one of the regular trains on the line at Langau - Gattikon. They are similar to the SBB 450 class but their bright red overall livery is striking.

We travelled into Zurich on a hot Sunday afternoon. It was crowded. We took trams to the tram museum and enquired about the Museum tram service.  We were just in time to catch the last one back into town. These trips are free although we get all tram journeys free through our Swiss Travel Passes.

We had a great day but there was one further surprise in store. The Sudost Railway railcar No. 80, built in Koblenz in 1959 ran into Zurich on an excursion.

Another great day.

Click here to see all pictures taken on the Triengen - Sursee Railway

https://www.flickr.com/photos/colinchurcher/albums/72177720301655269