August 31 - A Steamy Sunday

The weather was beautiful all day. The sky was blue and the few clouds were well above the mountain peaks. We had two objectives today. To ride the steam train between Triengen and Sursee and to meet up with our friend Ruth who volunteers on this railway. The second objective was to see the steam rack operation between Meiringen and Giswil.

Getting to Triengen is not straight forward but a lot of fun. We took a main line train from Zurich HB to Aarau, then a local narrow gauge street tramway to Schoftland and a Post Bus to Triengen.  The whole is delightful farming country and each item of transport adhered to the timetable.

Local tram at Schoftland

The ubiquitous Selecta machine is now paired with Lavazza and a photo machine,

We like to have time to see the rooks nesting around the local church

We arrived in good time at Triengen where the ticket staff were expecting us and pointed to where Ruth was working at the small coffee/bar counter. We had so much to catch up on that I only managed one shot of their steam locomotive.

This locomotive was one of two that were converted during WW2 to use electricity from the overhead wires to heat the water to make steam. It now runs on coal.

We have always enjoyed this run through pleasant farming country.

The steam train runs into the platform road at Sursee and passengers can either get out and watch from the platform or they can go into the siding where the engine runs around. We got off and caught the main line train to Luzern from where we joined a narrow gauge train to Giswil.

This is the Bombardier train that brought us to Luzern. They have had a chequered history but we found it to be very comfortable.

As we approached Alpnachstad we could see a steamer approaching to dock. A trip up Pilatus on such a clear day with the possibility of a steamer ride back to Luzern was seriously iscussed but we decided to go on to Giswil

The rack train was at Giswil but the locomotive was hidden away in a corner taking water so we decided to go on to Meiringen to catch some of the action there. The original plan was to make a quick round trip tp Innertkirchen but on arrival at Meiringen another steam locomotive was in view as well as an old narrow gauge locomotive in SBB colours.

This non-rack equipped 2-6-0 was standing on a small turntable waiting to double head the train back to Interlaken.

The steam special finally turned up from Giswil and the engine had to be serviced and turned. There then followed an incredible series of manoeuvres to get the two engines and a service van on the front of the train.

Giswil train arriving at Meiringen.

After much messing about the double headed train is now ready for departure.

It was now getting late and we took the narrow gauge back to Luzern and a good running Stadler double decker back to Zurich.

A great but tiring day.