Colin Churcher 2020

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 cheerful lady checked us into the Utrecht Railway Museum.    Our hotel (The Moxy on left) is in the centre of town. It has tram lines right in front of it protected by crossing bells and lights. The trams go into the building on the right and do a 90 degree turn inside. We took a train to Utrecht Centraal but had just missed the connection to the railway museum which is located at Utrecht Maliebaan. We took a train to Den Polder. At Den Polder this lady went up and down looking for somebody. Things became even more wierd when our ride to the museum arrived. This was a train from the museum collection which had been let out for the day to take railway enthusiasts around the area dropping back into the museum from time to time. The museum is located at the end of a short branch line which serves the town of Maliebaan as well as the museum with an hourly service to Utrecht Centraal.  We were checked in by the cheerful lady shown above. We didn't realize until some time later that

  The very pleasant lady in period costume who checked us in at Hoorn Today we took a train to Schiphol Airport and changed for Hoorn which is on the coast and the starting point for a steam trip. There was a little time at Den Haag and we admired the transport integration. The bus terminal is above the main station Several tram lines have a station above the main concourse while others serve the street outside. At Hoorn we were greeted by the lady shown above who gave us some pointers what to see and do. The main attraction was the 0-4-0 steam tram which hauled a train of twelve four-wheeled coaches. This might seem a lot but the land is level and there are very few gradients, if any. I had a quick chat with the fireman who showed me his fire. He was using Belgian coal which came in fist sized lumps - just right for this quite small firebox. View over the bicycle carrying car that was attached to the engine There was a stop at Wognum where I saw this rain l dated 1942 - put in during

Delft We were surprised at how easy it is to use the Dutch train and tram system. One can now use a credit card. We just had to tap in at the beginning of the journey and tap put at the end. On the train this is done at the station, on a tram there are reader machines on the doorways.  We took a train to Delft to look at the old town and the Thursday market. The market with a good supply of meat, fish, cheese and other local produce was in an interesting setting of the old town with many interesting buildings. I was surprised that all the buildings, walkways, roadways were built of brick, many of them very small. I presume this is because rock would not have been available locally. The original Delft station is now a restaurant, it having been replaced by a larger modern structure. We then took a train to Rotterdam Centraal station, a vast overall roof and an impressive facade. The Miniworld at Rotterdam is only a short walk away from the Centraal station. It concentrates upon Holland

  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 opportunity to