Switzerland - railways and incidents (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[stuving]

Several reports I've seen say this was a downhill run, working within an agreed limit of power sent to the  power grid. I saw part of a presentation by one of the railway's managers in which he was making a big thing of how many homes it was powering - odd, since this was only done for the RhB's benefit. An example from trains.com

The record-breaking, 100-car train was 1,910 meters (2,089 yards). It left Preda at 2:20 p.m. and shortly after 3:30 pm. crossed the Landwasser Viaduct. The 15.6 mile (24.93 kilometer) journey from Preda to Alvaneu, was downhill starting over a mile above sea level (Preda is at 1,788 meters, or 5,866 feet) and descending nearly half a mile to 1,000 meters, or 3,281 feet. During the descent, the train — which weighed 3,300 tons (or 2,900 metric tons) — was using electrical regenerative braking and generated 4000 kilowatt-hours of power. It travelled mostly at around 20 mph.

[infoman]

Jungefrau,BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) 24 hours news item on monday 20 march 2023,about the lack of snow on the mountains.

[stuving]

Maybe we should not complain too much about a bit of rain and even flooding. From euronews:

Several people injured as two Swiss trains derail during storm
By Euronews  with AP  •  Updated: 31/03/2023 - 22:27

A train derailed in the Swiss town of Büren zum Hof, 20 kilometres north of Bern, 31 March, 2023.

Two regional trains in Switzerland derailed in separate incidents, injuring more than a dozen people Friday after a storm brought high winds and strong rains to the small Alpine nation, police said.

The incidents occurred at Lüscherz and Büren zum Hof, near the western city of Bern, police said.

In Büren zum Hof, a police spokeswoman said that 12 people — 9 adults and 3 children — were injured. Of those, one person's injuries were severe.

Television footage of the incident showed train carriages lying on their sides and the driver's cab embedded in a metal pole.

Police also said several people were injured in the derailment at Lüscherz, but further information about the number of the injured and the severity of their condition was not immediately available.

The transit agencies responsible for the trains, Aare Seeland Mobil and Regional Transit Bern-Solothurn, also confirmed the derailments on their respective websites. They noted that the affected rail routes were closed in response.

Judging by the video in that report, the train did indeed get rolled over onto its side by the wind! Maybe having trains of restricted height has its advantages.

[stuving]

There are other factors too, like these both (RBS Bern - Solothurn and the ASM^▸ (Assistant Station Master) Biel - Tauffelen) being metre-gauge, and with lots of stuff up in the roof because the floor is so low. Two pictures from nau.ch:

[broadgage]

I wonder if it would be worth converting these lines to standard gauge, keeping the loading gauge/vehicle dimensions as at present.
Full size rail vehicles on metre gauge tracks simply LOOK unstable, and in extreme winds can be ACTUALLY unstable.

[grahame]

I wonder if it would be worth converting these lines to standard gauge, keeping the loading gauge/vehicle dimensions as at present.
Full size rail vehicles on metre gauge tracks simply LOOK unstable, and in extreme winds can be ACTUALLY unstable.

That sounds like a 1st April idea - and yet I was struck by the yards at Regau on the Douro Valley line in Portugal last year, and suspect that the narrow gauge tracks were simple converted from there up the valley, leaving the old narrow gauge terminus and dual gauge yard abandoned, without even removing some of the locomotives that are rotting away there.