tones
Tones deaf
The narrowest gauge railway in Switzerland (75cm), the Waldenburgerbahn, runs past my office. Or did, until Easter Monday. The line is owned by the BLT, one of Basel's tram companies, and it has decided to bite an entire arsenal of bullets and change it to metre-gauge, the gauge for all Swiss tram lines and most of the narrow-gauge mountain lines. Although it's only 13Km of track, this is a monumental undertaking, which will disrupt traffic in the valley until December 2022.
The WB trains are being loaded on to trailers just down from my office, for transport to their new home, a railway in Slovakia that bizarrely runs through a football stadium:
The new WB rolling stock will be more comfortable and air-conditioned:
https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/waldenburgerbahn-fleet-sold-to-slovakia/
but it's still sad to see the old ones go. It also meant the end for the WB's steam locomotive Gédéon Thommen - I'd imagine that regauging a steam locomotive would be prohibitive (if it would even be technically feasible), and the BLT made it quite clear that it would NOT be paying for it. So it was retired to a special museum exhibit.
The WB trains are being loaded on to trailers just down from my office, for transport to their new home, a railway in Slovakia that bizarrely runs through a football stadium:
The new WB rolling stock will be more comfortable and air-conditioned:
https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/waldenburgerbahn-fleet-sold-to-slovakia/
but it's still sad to see the old ones go. It also meant the end for the WB's steam locomotive Gédéon Thommen - I'd imagine that regauging a steam locomotive would be prohibitive (if it would even be technically feasible), and the BLT made it quite clear that it would NOT be paying for it. So it was retired to a special museum exhibit.
