It’s cold as shit, so I figured I might as well sight, edit and upload my vacation photos from Venice, several months ago. There’s far too much to reshare here, but you can see them on my Flickr. Highlights include:
(I messed up the Flickr share because I blogged this from my smartphone. Click here for the Flickr page and full-sized image.)
By the way, the building this tag is on is the same one you can see in the background of this older pic:
Recently, I did a couple of trips to Zürich for a job application (it didn’t work out). This also meant I had a couple of hours for some photographing each time. Yay!
The first thing of note is the Sihltal-Zürich-Uetlibergbahn (SZU). They operate two lines, the Sihltalbahn (with 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC) and the Uetlibergbahn (with 1250 V DC). Funnily enough, both lines share the tracks on the last kilometer or so before reaching the central station, so somehow they need two separate power lines on those tracks. How did they do that? Easy!
Centered above the rail is a catenary for 15kV AC – that’s the right one in this image. The other catenary, which is off to the side, is filled with delicious 1250V DC for the Uetlibergbahn trains. When looking towards the Zürich main station, it’s off to the left. Along with the catenary, the pantograph is also set to the left side looking towards Zürich (trains can’t turn in the SZU network). The new dual-current trains have both centered pantographs (for AC) and offset pantographs (for DC). Note the different sizes of the isolators in the photograph.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the trains, but you can find plenty of those on the interwobz.
Then, there’s the Forchbahn. They operate a suburban train line on narrow gauge that suddenly joins the tram tracks of the local transport authority (VBZ) between Realp and the Stadelhofen station.
And then, of course, there is a lot of regular railway stuff. Like the new S-Bahn station at the central station, opened only last year along with the S-Bahn tunnel from there to Zürich-Oerlikon. From time to time, it’s also used by long-distance trains.
One of the more iconic features of this station are the elevators: They are all slightly slanted, because the platforms in the tunnel are a bit offset against the platforms above. Note that the yellow tint is due to my incompetence when operating a camera.
There’s even a nice zen garden!
And, of course, there’s a bunch of cool trains and vehices, like this Ee 3/3, built in 1943 and still working.
Or the RBe 540, which still hasn’t been entirely taken out of service and is drafted for shunting services or for replacing broken engines from time to time.
Or, of course, the Ee 922, which runs 80kph, has 600kW of continuous power and 120kN of starting tractive effort and is also available with a handy little diesel engine for those non-electrified sidings. It’s way more awesome than a shunting engine should be allowed to be.
There are a lot more and better photos on my Flickr account – these here are just those I wanted to say something about. So, if you found this interesting and want to see more, feel free to head over there and follow me.
This sunday, I tagged along with a friend for some trainspotting in the Allgäu. Thanks to a burnt down diesel engine, some ALEX trains near Immenstadt are currently operated with NE81 DMUs that are not indigenous to the region.
While waiting for our mark, we tried some motifs with other trains on the quite busy route from Immenstadt to Obersdorf, like this InterCity:
In 1972, Munich was host to the Olympic Games, and the region got a nice new regional train (S-Bahn) system for this event. The stadium area was connected to the rail network by a new-built station, which was closed down after the games because it wasn’t needed anymore. The subway (U-Bahn) now connects this area to the city center, with Olympia-Einkaufszentrum being the nearest stop to the former station.
I wanted to take some pictures of this ruin for a while now, but never actually went there, mostly because I was told it was a bit hard to find and there’s not much to see anyway. Yesterday, I spontaneously decided to just go there for a couple of photos in the snow. That turned out to be a rather bad idea, because it was hard to make out anything in this weather, and I’ll definitely go back there in the summer.
This is the view across the old station, with the station building barely visible through the falling snow. The rails, catenary poles and platforms are all that remains.
Same location, other direction – the point area has been dismanteled even more.
In addition to the four passenger tracks, there are also some rails that do not connect to any platform and seem to pass the station building. No clue what they were used for back in the day.
As a bonus, I also spotted my first Velaro D (aka “New ICE 3”).
Hit To Key 