Some photos from a visit to Switzerland back in 2003. It was a time when I was working on an N-gauge layout based on the Bern Lötchberg Simplon line, and took a lot of photos detailing train formations, rolling stock and structures as research.

I used the town of Spiez as a base. It’s both a major rail hub with lines leading off in four directions, and a lakeside resort that’s quieter than tourist traps like Interlaken.

A few of these were on my long-dead Fotopic site, but never got migrated over to my replacement site. This was my last year of using film before I went digital; these are taken from CD-Roms scanned at the same time as the films were processed.

Here we have a veteran SBB Ae6/6 arriving at Speiz on a local freight made up largely of cement tankers, which I think originated from the Interlaken branch. These locos, dating from 1952, were once the principle power on the trans-Alpine main lines, especially the Gotthard line. By 2003 these fifty year old machines had been relegated to much humbler duties such as this one.

This BLS Ae4/4, seen here coming off the Simmental line with a train from Zweisimmen, is even older, dating from 1941. These locomotives are hugely significant historically, as the first modern-style bogie locomotives; prior to their introduction all electric locomotives were rigid-framed or articulated designs.

An SBB Em3/3 arrives with a short local freight, which I believe came off the Simmental line. With the entire network electrified and small shunting tractors available at many stations, diesel locomotives aren’t particularly common in Switzerland. They’re largely restricted to short-distance trip workings such as this one.

The sun doesn’t always shine in Switzerland, and here’s another venerable Ae6/6 on the cement run. This is one of the so-called “Kantonsloks”, fitted with chrome trim and names after the Swiss cantons.

A trip down the rabbit hole of YouTube lead me to this gem. This was filmed around the time of my earlier visits to Switerland, before I started taking a serious interest in modelling the Lötchberg line and didn’t take detailed notes of the train formations. On later trips just after the turn of the century things were less varied, with EWiv push-pull sets on all but a handful of international through services. But back in 1990 it was a real mix; just look the very first train, with it’s mix of Swiss, Italian and Belgian coaching stock, and a rare BLS livery EWi restaurant car.

It’s notable just how few trains are uniform rakes; proof that you don’t need a full rake of anything to make up a realistic train. In particular the EWiv coaches were still being delivered, and the BLS didn’t have enough of them to make up complete rakes, hence the sets make up from a mix of EWiv and older EWi and EWii stock.

The other thing of note is the Re4/4Iv locomotives, which were operating over the Lötchberg at the time. Only four were ever built, and the class never went into series production. All four were eventually sold to the Südostbahn.

When I’m not running trains in British outline mode, the layout can represent a station somewhere along the Bern Lötchberg Simplon main line. The distinctive brown Re4/4 locomotives are a signature item of motive power for the line. For many years the only available version in N gauge was the very old and long discontiued Arnold model. I managed to acquire a few of these a decade or so ago. Although acceptable in it’s time they’re crude models compared with more recent releases from Fleischmann or Minitrix, and indeed fall well below current British outline models from Farish or Dapol.

Which is why a new model of this iconic locomotive is good news. It’s from Arnold again, now part of the Hornby group, and it’s an all-new retooled version rather than a reissue of the long in the tooth original model.

Needless to say I’ve gone and ordered one.