Interrailing at EIGHTY

[leslie10646]

Well, we've made it to Switzerland! Even using the Interrail App on my phone, I haven't been thrown off a train yet - but I still prefer paper tickets which you fill in in a moment, the App takes five minutes hard work per trip - not designed for the likes of me who jumps from one train to another, just because I see that the other is hauled by a loco I haven't travelled behind before!

The task for this trip is to travel behind as many Swiss Class 460 locos as possible - I've checked off half the Class as things stand., as well as a few new German Class 146/ 147 locos in the Black Forest area.

I saw my first class 146 at Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof yesterday - I'd just arrived from Brussels on the 0623 from that city!

The 146s work local trains with double decker coach sets, as you can see.

Pretty impressive Train shed? - it has about six of these arches covering about 4 platforms each.

After enjoying the view, I was less happy to find that my onward ICE train was running 40 minutes late from Berlin - so an hour's wait became two hours plus. Happily we found a sanctuary in the "Markthalle" where there were various outlets and plenty of tables and chairs.

The fourteen coach ICE4 (set 9018) eventually arrived, lost more time as it ran south via Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Offenbach and Freiburg. Free travel if you wanted to chance it - no ticket check!

Good announcements in German and excellent English - especially the one which told us that the train would terminate at Basel - rather than carry us direct to Spiez. No fun when we each had three bags festooned around us!

So we ended up on a Swiss InterCity train which, needless to say, kept perfect time with 460.087, which was "new". so that was all right.

Spiez is an important junction, but taxis it has none! So we took the bus up to our holiday place, arriving nearly two hours late.

The view, happily, is still as good!

The snow-covered peak is the Blumisalp.

Very wet today (Friday) - almost Hong Kong level typhoon level rain at one point. 

Shopping took up the morning, but we squeezed a run to Bern and back with 460s in the afternoon - 460.113 was new, but 460.082 coming back was an old friend first travelled behind 3 years ago.

Dinner in Migros, I had to wait for them to open for their evening food service! I thought that I was too late! Then bargain booze in Denner's next door, just  CHF19 for SIX bottles of Rose! I'll let you know if it is drinkable, says he G&T in hand .......

The evening DID produce a couple of lovely sights - first a rainbow.

and then "Liam's Mountain" - in other words NIESSEN, Switzerland's Pyramid which is almost in the back garden, as you can see. here pretending to be a Volcano thanks to the clouds and the setting sun.

Time for bed. 

Now, where to tomorrow - depends on what time I crawl out of bed - still getting over that 5am start yesterday.

 

Edited Saturday at 17:38 by leslie10646

[jhb171achill]

54 minutes ago, leslie10646 said:

Well, we've made it to Switzerland! Even using the Interrail App on my phone, I haven't been thrown off a train yet - but I still prefer paper tickets which you fill in in a moment, the App takes five minutes hard work per trip - not designed for the likes of me who jumps from one train to another, just because I see that the other is hauled by a loco I haven't travelled behind before!

The task for this trip is to travel behind as many Swiss Class 460 locos as possible - I've checked off half the Class as things stand., as well as a few new German Class 146/ 147 locos in the Black Forest area.

I saw my first class 146 at Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof yesterday - I'd just arrived from Brussels on the 0623 from that city!

The 146s work local trains with double decker coach sets, as you can see.

Pretty impressive Train shed? - it has about six of these arches covering about 4 platforms each.

After enjoying the view, I was less happy to find that my onward ICE train was running 40 minutes late from Berlin - so an hour's wait became two hours plus. Happily we found a sanctuary in the "Markthalle" where there were various outlets and plenty of tables and chairs.

The fourteen coach ICE4 (set 9018) eventually arrived, lost more time as it ran south via Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Offenbach and Freiburg. Free travel if you wanted to chance it - no ticket check!

Good announcements in German and excellent English - especially the one which told us that the train would terminate at Basel - rather than carry us direct to Spiez. No fun when we each had three bags festooned around us!

So we ended up on a Swiss InterCity train which, needless to say, kept perfect time with 460.087, which was "new". so that was all right.

Spiez is an important junction, but taxis it has none! So we took the bus up to our holiday place, arriving nearly two hours late.

The view, happily, is still as good!

The snow-covered peak is the Blumisalp.

Very wet today (Thursday) - almost Hong Kong level typhoon level rain at one point. 

Shopping took up the morning, but we squeezed a run to Bern and back with 460s in the afternoon - 460.113 was new, but 460.082 coming back was an old friend first travelled behind 3 years ago.

Dinner in Migros, I had to wait for them to open for their evening food service! I thought that I was too late! Then bargain booze in Denner's next door, just  CHF19 for SIX bottles of Rose! I'll let you know if it is drinkable, says he G&T in hand .......

The evening DID produce a couple of lovely sights - first a rainbow.

and then "Liam's Mountain" - in other words NIESSEN, Switzerland's Pyramid which is almost in the back garden, as you can see. here pretending to be a Volcano thanks to the clouds and the setting sun.

Time for bed. 

Now, where to tomorrow - depends on what time I crawl out of bed - still getting over that 5am start yesterday.

 

Enjoy your well-deserved travels, Leslie! Beware of cuckoo clocks......

[leslie10646]

A feature of Switzerland is that its transport system is INTEGRATED - not just a Sound-bite, but for real.

We are staying about 2 miles out of Spiez - at times there are FOUR buses an hour down to the station and if you time it right in your planning, you can be on a train out of Spiez within ten minutes of the bus arriving, often just FIVE - AND YOU CAN RELY ON THE BUS TO BE ON TIME!!!

After the rain yesterday, it was bright sun this morning, so I can show you Niessen in all its glory lit by the Eastern sun, as seen from our balcony where I'm typing this now, deafened by cow bells!

I decided to add a Track-Bash to my goals for the trip, so at about noon, we headed off to do the branch to LENK in Simmental. I'd last been down there in 2003. This isn't a great map but it may help - Spiez is about half way along the bottom of the Thunersee and we ran along the line marked "BLS" to Zweisimmen which is the junction at bottom left.

A "Mika" unit (a six short, articulated vehicle set), No.113. I'll post a piccie of these nice units later. The set arrived from Bern (off the top of the map) as the rear one of three such - the other two were heading straight on to Brig and Domodossola in Italy - so an EIGHTEEN coach train! Being the rear set it could easily reverse and head off onto the standard gauge line to Zweisimmen along a river valley, so lots of curves and no speed but overload of "Chocolate Box Lid Switzerland" - all meadows, trees, barns and grazing. cows.

At Zweisimmen, the standard gauge ends and beyond, over the mountains and down to Montreux is the metre gauge Montreux Oberland Bahn (MOB). We changed into a branch metre gauge train to Lenk - about 25 minutes along a pleasant valley. As we left Zweisimmen we got a great view of the premier train of the line - the Golden Pass Panorama Express - climbing up and over a saddle of hills, helped by a hairpin bend in a tunnel, so you see the train on two levels above you (it's just visible on the map).

Lenk seems to be a dumping ground for old trains:

Our train in the centre, with a graffittied old unit on right.

An even older unit had a huge snow plough.

We spent the next hour enjoying Carrot and Ginger soup (if you haven't had it, you've missed out!) on a terrasse by a posh hotel (suitably expensive - the waiter was from near Munster in North Germany, by the way) then we retraced our steps, changing into Mika No.109 at Zweisimmen. It had clouded over a bit, but bright weather returned.

Now my plan was to use the "other" route from Thun into Bern (the one to the left out of Thun on the map) and I thought that these unit-operated trains went that way - no, up the mainline we raced (helped by Mikas 111 and 117 which we joined onto at Spiez) and this 18 vehicle cavalcade pretended to be a Class 460 as it raced along at 100mph.

We returned by the route I'd intended to use - the line which dog-legs into Thun on the map. We arrived punctually in Thun at 1721, straight off, noted the Unit number (MIKA No. 217) and headed briskly down the ramp and up another onto Platform 1 which was solid with folk awaiting the train to Interlaken (off the map at the right hand end of Lake Thun). We excused ourselves past the Schaffnerin (lady ticket collector) and in to the front First Class coach. I managed to get our tickets into the Interrail Pass before she appeared to check us. "Passport please" (oh no, another Jobsworth!). Out came the Irish Id Card (saves carrying the bulkier Passport).

I forgot to mention that on leaving St Pancras that we'd used our Irish Passports and so avoided the glass pens for the Brexit-loving Brits, which looked like a good time consummer.

8 minutes 15 seconds later, off the train and headed for our bus which meets this train. I waited on the platform beside the open door of the bus get the loco number as 460.045 (NEW!!!) pushed the double decker set out. Off went the bus up the quicker of the two routes to the village and we were in the flat in UNDER a half hour from getting off the train at Thun at 1721. That's Switzerland for you. They can do it, why can't others?

Hopefully at least a sight of steam tomorrow!

[Signal Post]

Wow, sounds like a lovely trip. Enjoy the rest of your holiday.

[leslie10646]

A very mixed day, but not without its fun moments!. I decided that as there was a church service in Interlaken, provided by an off-shoot of the Church of England, that I really should go.

That meant a 7.30am rise, the 0909hrs bus from outside the door, dead on time, a short wait at Spiez station for the train which turned out to be an ICE4 (that's the fourteen coach version), which took us to Interlaken Ost by 1000hrs..

While I was getting the set number, my other half realised that she had left two of our walking poles in the train. We leapt on (the train terminates here - go any further and you're in Lake Brienz!) - straight to our seats but no poles, they'd already been swept up, but an enquiry sent us in pursuit of the cleaning staff. We met the lady train manager, who smilingly produced them from her office. By now we were in the sidings and there we sat until 1026 (the service began at 1030hrs) when the train set returned to the platform.

Off down the main street in search of the church - the Prod church is BEHIND the Catholic one (I can hear you say, "All right and proper") and we slipped into the chapel just as the minister was starting his sermon (based on a bible passage which I had read last night - all part of The Plan?). 

After our devotions, back to Interlaken Ost to catch a metre gauge train to Giswil, where we hoped to find a steam train. In a Zentral Bahn EMU we whirled along Lake Brienz to Meiringen, where I noted NO sign of a steam locomotive (they use two for the trips, one on the lakeside line and a rack loco on the steep bit!).  Instead there was a gleaming older electric in Military Green! Now we reversed onto the Rack section and climbed vertiginously up to Haslefelde, then cautiously down past Lake Lungern, where I noted a train of vintage carriages obviously heading back the way we had come! Steam had been substituted due to fire risk on a line surrounded by woods!

I had mixed feelings - I'd missed a "new" steam loco, but had saved a hundred quid (two of us for TEN miles). Swiss steam is unbelievably expensive. Happily I did the whole trip back in 2003 when it certainly didn't cost £110 each for the full trip.

So, at Giswil, I extended our tickets to take us on to Luzern and we arrived there after a pleasant journey - this line runs beside a succession of lakes and is recommended. The place was full of EMUs, but after ten minutes a loco-hauled train arrived and was announced as heading next to Basel.

460.044 (a new loco for me to have travelled with) pushed a double decker set, which we took to Olten (Switzerland's Crewe) - no speed greater than 88mph. A nice easy connection there into a train heading to Brig (beyond Spiez, our destination). So down the high speed line to Bern with about ten minutes at 123/4mph. At Bern, we changed trains into an Interlaken train which leaves three minutes before the Brig train - AND - most importantly - stops right beside the bus home at Spiez!

460.114 (new!) pulled a cavalcade of eight double deckers and four single deckers, assisted in the rear by an old friend 460.009. The Swiss stick locos ANYWHERE in a train and drive them from DVTs, so you can get a train with a loco at one end and another in the middle. 18m30s got us to Thun maximum a sustained 99 and the usual 8 minutes or so to Spiez, where a pretty full No.62 bus awaited us. We were in well before 6pm. Coffee and crosswords on the balcony in the sunshine, beneath  Niessen. It seldom gets better.

A walk tomorrow, as the weather looks ok - but WHAT A WALK! Wait and see.

 

[Mol_PMB]

Lovely!

I would have actually preferred the vintage electric to the steam loco, but then I have odd preferences… 

Looking forward to hearing about your walk tomorrow - I’ve done a good few in that area. 

[leslie10646]

A late start this morning as I was up late watching Match of the Day. The weather forecast for Murren was for clouds and frankly there is no reason to do that walk if you cannot admire the Big Three on the other side of the valley.

So Plan B was to do one of the mountain railways which run out of the Rhone Valley and over into France. Having mapped out a route and choosing a suitable bus I found that we made better progress than the Interrail planner thought I would achieve and we ended up on an earlier train in the form of one of the very ugly Class 503 trains which work through to Italy. You can see from the photograph below why I have such a such an aversion to them. Nonetheless the train ran on time we managed a cross-platform connection onto a train heading for Martigny.

460.043 hauled a double decker set and raced along at 99/100 by the river Rhone, as usual absolutely smooth upstairs in these super trains. The South facing slopes of the river valley and indeed most of the valley floor are covered in vineyards, in some places these are terraced thanks to decades of hard labour building them in years gone by. After a stop at Sierre (this is French-speaking Switzerland) we continued to Sion, formerly the seat of the Prince Bishop of Sion who ruled over the whole area; the Bishop’s Palace overlooks the town from a high promontory. A little bit of history here, one of these gentlemen, Matthäus Schiner (born 1465), in time became a cardinal and a military commander. He just missed the top job in the Catholic Church at the conclave of 1522. He later was one of Luther’s judges at Worms.

Back to the railway! We descended at Martigny at 1316hrs and having just missed the 1314 train (one connection which the Swiss planners failed to think of), we put our time to good use enjoying a coffee in a cafe opposite the station. In due course the train arrived to form the 1416hrs train to the French border and we joined a busy two car set - obviously brand new. This line was a close cousin of the Giants Causeway Tramway as it made use of an elevated conductor rail alongside the running rails. Most of the line is now overhead catenary but there are sections of third rail as you can see from a photograph below. The line runs level to the workshops at Vernayaz where we stopped. Soon after, the line joins the rack and climbs rapidly above the valley. Having gained a substantial elevation, the railway reverts adhesion while climbing along a contour-hugging course. Should you ever travel on this line I recommend that you sit on the left hand side as after the first 10 minutes or so the view is all on that side. The line climbs higher and higher above the steeply-sided Trient valley.

Today when we arrived at the frontier, passengers were informed that the line over the border was closed due to engineering works and that there would be replacement buses. These appear to have been very effectively organised and the passengers off our train were quickly on their way into France. Likewise, before our train returned to Martigny two buses arrived with passengers from France. Below you will find some photographs which show the unit used by us at the frontier station, and a couple of shots on the way down, one of which, if you look carefully, clearly shows the third rail; a video of a nice bridge and a look up the valley to show you a village perched over the precipice. Finally, what I believe is the current collector on the unit.

Onwards to France?

The station at Chatelard Frontiere.

The above-mentioned bridge, complete with much reflection!

 The THIRD RAIL - don't touch!

A view up the valley.

the unit at Martigny.

and its conductor show.

After this super line on, as you could see, a God-given afternoon we returned to Visp behind 460.043 (again!). A bit of a gallop through the underpass to Platform 4 there to catch 460.113 (first travelled behind in 2023) which traversed the Lotschberg Base Tunnel in 11m40s and got us into Spiez in great time to easily catch the 18.38 bus, which had us back on our balcony by about 1848!

Hopefully, the Walk tomorrow!!!!!

 

Edited 7 hours ago by leslie10646