August 30 - Bremgarten and Swiss Museum of Transport

 We caught an early local train first thing from Zurich to Dieticon where we transferred to the narrow gauge local tramway which took us to Bremgarten. On Saturdays there is an interesting local market which we walked through, then along by the river to examine the old highway bridge and an early hydro plant. 

It is amazing what you can see stuck to a wall

Fish

Bread

Cheese



An interesting spectator

Back in town we caught the tram on to Wohlen. We were running a few minutes late and there was a manic scramble from our train down through the underpass and up to the platform to pick up the main line train to Lenzburg. The driver held his train for us and I think everybody made the connection. 

Seetalbahn train at Lenzburg - it is across the road from the station

At Lensburg we had another short connection to the SBB line to Lucerne known as the Seetalbahn. It was a relaxing enjoyable ride through pleasant farming country. Cattle (dairy and beef) sheep, goats as well as corn, sunflowers and a large number of apple orchards. We ran by the side of two lakes and this was a very relaxing trip. 

At Lucerne there was a short connection for the train to the Swiss Railway museum at Verkehrshaus. Having bought our tickets the first thing we did was to have lunch at the very large self-service restaurant. 

From there we went into the museum to look mainly at the railway exhibits which now includes an SBB Swiss Express locomotive number 8 a model of which Paul has on his own layout. 

Paul has a model of this locomotive on his layout

An interesting rack of Edmondson card tickets

Two generations of Pilatusbahn cars.

A Waldenburgerbahn locomotive, It was in steam quite recently but came here after the main line was re-gauged to one metre.

There is a very good HO scale model of the Gotthard north ramp. The church at Wassen is prominent.

After a quick walk around outside where we watched the children play with the various items that are put out for them to work and understand like pulleys, railways and barges. The children and their parents were having a grand time


We decided to change our return rather than go back through Lucerne we took the train to Arth-Goldau, spend a bit of time there and then made our way back to Zurich via Zug. I had hoped to see a freight train with three Re 620s on the head end like we did last time (33,000 hp) but no such luck. 

A wonderful piece of whimsy at Arth Goldau. A statue of a dog is looking at the garbage.


We had a stroke of luck later on at Zurich when the Churchill car came in to take passengers on a wine and dine cruise. We will be dining on it on Thursday.


Tomorrow we have a ride behind a steam locomotive.





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