That's an easy enough problem to rectify.
There's no particular reason for featuring Swiss Kroks.
But they are rather delectable.
I've never had the pleasure of being hauled by one.
But I keep thinking Switzerland might be a fun place to go for a railway holiday.
Does that make me insanely geeky?
7 comments:
So good to have another train post. Are you sufficiently expert on the Great Central, Britain's last main line and built to the European loading gauge, to give us an occasional series about it? It could be very interesting
Alas, I'm not really expert on anything, other than, maybe some of the more tedious bits of cinema. Or typography. Or maybe the M&GN -- I do know a bit about that.
The Great Central was a strange creation, driven by the ego and pugnacious nature of its chairman, Watkins. Very profitable when it was the regional Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, the ruinous expense of the ambitious London Extension nearly finished it off. Hence Marylebone, its London terminus, is the most modest and provincial of any of the London termini. They simply had no more money left to spend on it.
I'm intrigued: what's your interest in the GCR?
You certainly need to take the Gotthard tunnel before it is closed. You probably know that it gains and loses height by the use of spirals.
Are these locos really still in service on swiss rails?
Used to leap aboard for the odd unauthorised trips from school to London! The Master Cutler used the route. Most stations were island platforms up aloft accessed by stairs from below. Never knew much about it and wondered if you did...
The island platforms were a deliberate design feature -- the route was double track but it was planned ultimately to make it quadruple track, and the huge costs of rebuilding every station could be avoided by the simple means of laying an extra track on the outside of each the existing lines. It gives a sense of their [misplaced] ambition. The lines were never quadrupled and, instead, the stations all appeared to be stuck in some sort of barren wilderness.
The philosophy behind it was also unusual: whereas most railway lines deliberately zigged and zagged in order to serve any decently-sized town en route, the GCR avoided them: the plan was that it would provide fast access from the main system in the north to & from London. Alas, this did little for the economics of operating it.
It does seem a shame that the route was closed in the 1960s. It would have been tremendously useful today as a freight route (the costs of gauge widening elsewhere are horrendous), or as a possible high-speed rail alignment. But then, lots of routes were closed in the 1950s and 60s that would be useful today.
To answer Niall's question, none of these "oldies" are still in regular services. They are museum locomotives used only during special occasions. They are about 85-90 years old.
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