Our objective today was threefold:
1. Take a look at the Interlocking Tower at Kerzers
2. Ride the Bern steam tram
3. Train watching at Spiez
We achieved all three.
We caught a train earlier than anticipated to Neuchatel and managed to catch another train on the BLS as far as Kerzers. We were pulled by a BLS 465 locomotive.
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| These BLS 465 class electrics have a little over 9,000 hp! |
Here we were surprised to find there was a direct access right off the platform to a park in which the interlocking is located. We were able to walk all around and get as many pictures as we needed to compare them with the model on Paul's layout. One interesting item was for bells set up outside the interlocking with labels showing the for adjacent interlockings on the two lines.
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The bells are marked with the name of the adjacent interlocking with which Kerzers communicated:
Muntschemier, Galmiz, Gummenen and Fraschels |
Paul has a little bit of tweaking, such as adding a fire extinguisher cabinet, but his model is very accurate.
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| THis park will become dangerous in a few weeks when the horse chestnut trees drop their conkers. |
We arrived in Bern in good time to walk around and find where the steam tram departure point.This was the first trip of the day and it was very busy with people standing both in the front and rear platform. There were a large number of small kids all of whom seem to enjoy the trip - many just enjoyed looking out of the window. A little girl of about five sat next to me with a large squirrel puppet. It had a luxuriant tail and cuddled it all the way. This time we took a different route from last year, down to Saali and there was no intermediate break, the run coming straight back to the originating point. The tram had many onlookers who were surprised to see it as it only operated on the first Sunday of each month.
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| The frying pan is an indispensable part of the operation |
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| The tram runs through the city on the regular tramway routes |
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| After our trip Paul and I went down to the old city and took pictures of the next run |
We caught a train to Spiez where there was quite a lot of action although we saw very few freight trains.
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| BLS has a selection of locomotives ready tp assist trains through the Lotschberg. These are Bombardier Traxx |
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| Three BLS 465s and a couple of the brown liveried Re 4/4s |
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| Train from Italy |
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| BLS Re 4/4/purchased from SBB |
We went on through to Brig and came back via Lausanne,
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| THis evening we ate out. I had the healthy salad with horse. Paul had horse and chips. |
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