Friday 25 August - Ancient Side Rod Switcher

 

Picture of the Day - A 1946 Side Rod Switcher at Sumiswald Grunnen
The first object of our travels today was to get to Sumiswald Grunnen, at the end of a little used branch line where, hopefully, one or two very old side rod switchers would be on show. To do this we took a comfortable BLS double decker from Olten to Burgdorf where there was a little time for us to walk around the town. It was typical of the towns of this area where there is emphasis upon pedestrians with just a little motor vehicle traffic going through the the main streets. 
At Burgdorf the buses and trains are very close to each other

Even the traffic islands are worth a second look

From Burgdorf we took a train directly to Sumiswald Grunnen with a reversal at Ramsei. The country is mixed farming with much forest on the adjacent hilltops. Very pleasant area that we will be visiting again in a couple of weeks time to ride the steam train. 
At Sumiswald Grunnen we were happy to see one of the ancient side rod switcher locomotives built in 1946 and in a very good location for photography. The second locomotive was presumably up the short branch line to Ruwa.



The locomotive was easily viewed, even the grass had been cut, and the light was right. The last ones were taken out of regular service some ten years ago

I was taken with the flowers on display at this house, which even had a robot mowing the lawn

We caught the train right back to Bern. We noticed several stork in the fields but very few cats - maybe it was too hot for felines. At Bern we walked down the tourist area took the regular tourist pictures and then walked back up to the Migros restaurant. As usual lunch was very good and quite reasonable. After lunch we took the number seven tram out to the end at Bumplitz, stayed on it and came back to the main train station.

Bern

Bern

No 7 Tram at Bern Bumplitz

Our next objective was to get to Oensingen to get some pictures of trains on the main line. We could have taken the regular service train but decided on a different route. We went to the underground platforms at Bern and took the RBS narrow gauge train to Solothurn. There we took the subway under the main line platforms and caught the Aare Seeland narrow gauge train on to Oensingen via Niderbipp. These lines are very relaxing as they wend their way through pleasant country calling at small villages.

RBS at Solothurn
Painting on the side of a building at Solothurn

Aare Seeland at Oensingen

This switcher was pretty active at Oensingen

This Re 4/4 was stabled at Oensingen

On the main

On the main

A local train brought us back to Olten 


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railfan Tour of Switzerland - Wednesday - Zurich Hauptbahnhof Part One

Image
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...
Read more

Coming Home - Wrap Up - Sunday 15 Setember 2024

Image
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  
Read more

Travel Basel to Den Haag - Wednesday 11 September

Image
  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...
Read more