A photo from back in 2006 of the viaduct at Tellenberg, Switzerland, showing a northbound frirght train.

Note the two viaducts; the elegant masonry one dating from the original openng of the line in the early year of the 20th century, and the more utilitarian modern structure alongside it, built to accomodate increasing traffic in the 1970s.

Switzerland is not in the EU, but the formation of the EU had a big impact on this railway line. It’s the Bern Lötchbern Simplon railway, part of a chain of lines linking Italy to northern Europe via the Simplon tunnel.

Why did traffic increase in the years after World War Two such that this like across the Alps needed to be widened at great expense? One reason was surely the formation of the European Union, which resulted in greatly increased trade between northern and southern Europe.

Think about this on June 23rd. How much trade between Britain and the rest of Europe might be put at risk in the event of a Leave vote? And how many jobs will that put as risk?

It’s the time of year when continental manufacturers announce their new models, and there are some interesting things in the Minitrix New Items brochure (pdf).

The Cisalpino Re484 with matching coaches has been on my wishlist for a while, since they were regular performers on the Lötchberg route in the mid-noughties. Cisalpino was a joint Swiss-Italian venture for through trains between Switzerland and Italy over the Lötchberg and Gotthard routes. The coaches on the Lötchberg were the standard Swiss EC stock, initially hauled by pairs of Re4/4s, later by dual-voltage Re484s that eliminated the need to change locomotives on the Swiss/Italian border.

They’re selling as a set with the locomotive and three coaches (two first class and one second), with additional second class coaches sold individually. This will enable modellers to assemble the correct prototypical six-coach formation of two first class and four second class coaches.

The EC coaches have been in the Minitrix range for several years, as has the 4-pantograph Bombardier TRAXX locomotive. Since a similar train has also appeared in the Arnold catalogue this year, using Eurofima coaches, I’m assuming the simultaneous appearance is to do with past licencing issues with the livery.

Here’s the prototype at a rather wet Spiez in 2007. The six-car Cisalpino sets were frequently strengthened with older Swiss coaches during their run through Switzerland, in this case the three leading vehicles are rebuilt RIC stock, available in model form from Kato, which means the whole train can be modelled.

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.

It appears as though Swiss railway’s changes to ticketing policy has turned into a major PR disaster, especially for a nation that’s always prided itself on the quality of their train services.

If the BBC report is remotely accurate, it looks as though they’ve introduced a penalty fare system along the lined of that introduced by some train operating companied in Britain, and just as has happened in Britain, it’s had the effect of penalising honest travellers rather than habitual fare-dodgers. As in Britain many are wondering if that’s really an unintended consequence at all. Their system seems excessively harsh; at least British train companies allow their conductors to use their discretion, and make allowances for ticket machines not working. And their penalties are far higher than the British equivalents. Does a broken ticket machine really mean you can’t travel, or is that inaccurate reporting?

Still working on migrating photos from my defunct Fotopic website to my new photo gallery. These are from 2005 visit to Switzerland, not all of which I’d actually uploaded the first time round.