Travel from Montreux to Yverdon-les Bains - 5 September 2024

 

The tram at Bex for Villars sur Ollon
Today did not turn out as expected. It started off well. We checked out of the hotel at Montreux and took a train to Bex.  The tram for Villars sur Ollon starts from the station forecourt and runs through some very narrow streets through Bex before starting out, on the rack, to climb up all the way to Villars sur Ollon. It had begun to rain. Half way up we were due to pass a down bound tram. We waited a few minutes and were then told there was a problem and our tram would return to Bex and the other tram would go back to Villars sur Ollon. It was not clear what the problem was but we suspect there was a problem with the upper switch. Bearing in mind that it was beginning to rain heavily and our plan was to catch a bus down to Aigle we decided to return to Bex.
At Bex we looked at the timetable and decided to go straight to Yverdon-les-Bains. The easy way would have been to transfer at Lausanne or Rennens but this train was going on to Morges. We could transfer there for Yverdon and see what the narrow gauge railway was doing in the way of transferring freight cars on to narrow gauge skates.
This worked out well. While waiting for our train to Yverdon we saw a transfer of one wagon which was attached to a former passenger car which was being used as a locomotive.
Manoeuvring with the narrow gauge "locomotive"

Pushing the standard gauge wagon on to the skates.

With one set of skates for each axle the "train" is now ready for the locomotive.

Attaching the locomotive

All that is now required is to attach the air hoses for the brakes and the train is ready to leave.
Our comfortable ICN train took us to Yverdon where is was raining quite hard. We checked in and had lunch at the Migros Restaurant then wondered what we should do in the rain. The original intention was to go to Neuchatel and ride the La Coudre funicular. As our train approached Neuchatel the rain cane down even harder, We decided to go on to Biel/Bienne where it was completely dry but looked as if there would be rain shortly.
We took some pictures of the narrow gauge line to Ins. This was supposed to be a substitute bus!
It started to rain in Biel and we decided to return to Yverdon where the rain had stopped.
A train from Ste-Croix entering Yverdon

Close up of a narrow gauge "skate"

The narrow gauge is not used for sugar beet so these are presumably only used now for the occasional carload of ballast for work service.
Ah well. At least we saw some interesting things even though our day did not go as expected.




 

Comments

  1. MarkSeptember 7, 2024 at 1:05 PM

    re: the skates... this sounds like the dual gauge mechanism that Paul described to me a while ago.

    ReplyDelete

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