St. Gallen and the Sitter Viaducts - Friday August 23

It is now possible to see the Zurich station without scaffolding around.

We left Zurich for St. Gallen in a comfortable ICN train - sitting in the quiet zone. No loud talkers. At St. Gallen we transferred to a local train to Bruggen, a short three minute journey.

Bruggen station
From here it was a short walk to see the SBB viaduct over the Sitter river. This is the main line and trains were running through here at a good speed.

The SOB Railway has a spectacular viaduct over the Sitter river fairly close by. There is a good walking path but there is a long drop down - steep climb back. I climbed down and was surprised to find a couple covered bridges over the small stream.


It was a beautiful day with much sun and very little wind. This area is attractive with much wild woodland.
It was difficult to get a good picture of the SOB bridge which is reputed to be the highest railway bridge in Switzerland. However, Paul managed to get this excellent shot of the Voralpen express going over the Sitter viaduct.
This is only a single track bridge but movements over it were probably about eight an hour.
We climbed back up (slowly) and walked to the SBB Bruggen station where we caught a train back to St. Gallen. The plan was to take the Appenzellerbahn narrow gauge train to Gais, change to the incredible rack line down to Altstatten Stadt, have lunch at the Migros Restaurant there, then return to St. Gallen in time to visit Zubateck Model Railway store which opens after lunch at 1330.
At Gais we found out that the rack train was under repair and a substitute bus was in use. This must have happened quite recently because I checked the timetable a couple of weeks ago and found nothing. We decided to return to St. Gallen and ate at the excellent Migros Restaurant in the main station building. After that we found out that Zubateck had closed at 1200 for the weekend!
We decided to take the Appenzellerbahn to Trogen and back. This gives wonderful views northwards over the lake and the countryside is excellent. This area has a great deal of grassland, all of it the same colour and the same type and height. It is the sort of grass that railway modellers will put on with one layer of electro-static grass. The only other places I have seen grasses like this are on golf courses.
Appenzell train at Trogen. The turnround time was so short that I could not get to the front.
Rather than come straight back to Zurich we decided to stop at Wil and ride over the narrow gauge tram to Frauenfeld.
At Frauenfeld the tram sits outside the SBB station among the buses.
While waiting for the train back to Zurich ae saw a Stadler locomotive pulling a train for Liverpool, England. A little later we passed the Frauenfeld Sugar Factory and saw several more Liverpool trains stored in adjacent sidings.
The day provided us with much of interest but there were some disappointments to contend with as well.










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