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Glorious NSE

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Everything posted by Glorious NSE

  1. In other news, Alternate view - it's cheaper to provision having outside contractors around to pick stuff up quickly with no independant investigation needed or wanted than it is to resource your railway so that you don't have multi train collisions that drop loco's in the river in the first place....
  2. There's also another vid from the same producer, apparently the remaining non-Bernina EW1 cars also go in December, with the exception of the Barenland cars and a couple headed for the heritage fleet. (They also did a great vid on the retirement of 241)
  3. I'd have thought difficult to kitbash to anything that didn't originally start out as a GP7/9/18/20 as the battery boxes/cab sub-bases are part of the weight casting on the Atlas model so you are rather stuck with them unless you want it to get very involved! If you can't get a spare Atlas shell, the Proto ones are made of lots of different subcomponents, so you should be able to split one of those down to just a hoods and cab with no walkway or battery boxes?
  4. Huge number of sets end up stabled overnight outside the city though, so cycling loco's off the sets that had overnighted outside the city at a faster rate than the coaching stock gets cycled for maintenance makes some sense: BNSF/Metra have a similarly huge diesel shop and car yard complex south of CUS just opposite Amtrak's And the Rock Island route has what looks to be a 4th diesel shop, a bit further out between 47th and 51st st!
  5. If you want a working theory, we know the loco servicing (at least heavier servicing) happens in separate places to the whole train set (including loco) stabling - the servicing is near the core of the network, but lots of the trains are often stabled nearer the outer ends of the multiple lines as it saves empty movements. So given that, swapping at least some loco's out for servicing and replacing them with fresh ones when they are in the city in the quieter middle part of the day makes some sense. (Even if it looks really weird! 😁) (The cynic in me says also likely a big degree of "if it was good enough for <insert previous railroad> then we shouldn't change anything....")
  6. I'm currently playing "guess which entrance the next train comes in from" whilst watching the morning rush - that's a cool camera, wasn't aware of Steel Highway before yesterday but it looks like they have quite a few really cool locations.
  7. Thanks Paul, so that adds a few more numbers to the yellow dropside variants I had. It also adds the similar green painted wheelset carrier dropsides 9377 and 9378 https://rhbstations.co.za/goods-wagons/service-wagons/xk-9377/ Movable platform module carrier 93001 Module carrier 93114 (can't find an image of it with that ID, but it was once 91601 as pictured here: http://www.beretta-modelle.ch/gleisbaumaschinen/html/body_rhb_containerwagen_bd.html Tunnel fan module carrier 93115 https://rhbstations.co.za/goods-wagons/service-wagons/xk-93115/ Looks like those last 3 would be very easy conversions as it looks like they were done after they had been converted to container wagons. 94001 (a previous identity of 9354 which I pictured) https://rhbstations.co.za/goods-wagons/service-wagons/xk-94001/ I think they may have once been van chassis oddly enough as some of the private owner vans are on it - though i'm not convinced this is useful info from a kitbashing point of view! 😉 I'd guess the chunkier "modern" underframe was more useful as a base for conversions (particularly for things like dropsides where there's no other strength) than the older straight frameones which might be why surviving vans they still own seem to be from older batches?
  8. It's another day 🙂 The engineers fleet has a bit of a minefield of tiny batches of odd wagons, so this might be messy, and you should definitely regard it as incomplete: So I think the fishbelly chassis is a match for the yellow semi-dropside opens 9333-9336 9345, 9348 (different variants on flats with handrails which look to be support for wiring trains) Dropsides 9361-9367, 9375 Also Private Owner P10173 (nice verandah!) - support for the Vanomag Kirow attached (looks like this was one of the above dropsides once) Also some (but not all) the Uc cement tanks, based on these: http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ch/narrow_gauge/RhB/car/freight/U/pix.html Looks like Holcim liveried 8086, 8090, 8095, plus Rhb liveried 8085 are possibilities? There's various others which are about the right size but don't have that fishbelly too, depending on how important you think that feature is, some of the crew cabins look about right for length...
  9. Ref the Lb wagons, i've some shots here, (that older one in the recycling centre in Davos with a skip load might just have had the skip dumped on it rather than travelling - it didn't appear to move all week!) There's some non-Coop refrigerated containers (Volg and CCC) in the mix too if you want some idea's for variations for those. https://ukrailwaypics.smugmug.com/Non-UKrails/Switzerland/Overseas-Rails-Rhätische-Bahn/RHB-Freight-and-Engineering-Wagons-and-Plant/RHB-Freight-and-Engineering-Wagons-and-Plant/7803-7881-Lb-2-axle-intermodal-flat/ I think as Paul says their fishbelly style chassis will be a match for some other things too (gut feeling is they might match one of the dropside opens, and maybe some of the cement wagons?) but will have a dig another day.
  10. Bit bizarre that, could end up with the odd situation of anyone being able to use the GEX like they can with the BEX! Just a bit of expanding on my thoughts - back in 2019 pre-Covid every other Albula diagram was worked with Allegra's, so in that fairly stable state of operating (pre covid, pre Capricorn,) they had effectively three "extra" (IE very competent, but plainly not what they were ordered for!) Allegra available every day, logically you can surmise they were extras purchased to cover retirement of the last three pair of Bernina railcars when that time came, as building a small batch of 3 a decade later than the rest wasn't likely to be viable. At that time from memory they were running both a Landquart-Davos-Tirano BEX and a Chur-Tirano BEX, and the former hasn't resumed - so far at least, so that accounts for only two of the three Albula ones needing to move across now I guess. The juggling diagrams to free up resource is really fun to watch :)
  11. These are something I was massively impressed with, in a "why don't we do this?" kind of way.
  12. Thanks, that's the underlying change i'd not spotted - presume that's as from the December timetable change? Not at all surprised at that being the cascade, but i'm a little surprised they've gone through with it at this moment before being up to full strength on the GE4/4III 🙂
  13. The Allegra hauled ones seem to be the standard stand-ins if you know what I mean, not seen a GE4/4ii show up for ages on one tho, nice to see! Other news, from the webcams it looks a bit like the 4 car Allegra's are back to their old Chur area commuter diagrams again after doing Scuol-Pontresina's for a bit?
  14. GE4/4ii and hauled stock/push pull trailer set on one of the Chur-St Moritz services today - different! Just passed Filisur heading south. https://www.schmalspurbahn.ch/filisur/webcam/m221212140202263
  15. That's an interesting 2016 article - if the LED lights are a reliable spotting feature* of a refurb, then 641-644, 646-648 were done by the time I visited in Aug 2020. 645, 649, 651, 652 were not done at that time, and 650 wasn't out and about when I was there (or it avoided me if it was!) as far as I could tell. A 2016 plan to get them all upgraded by 2019, but with IRL several still to do by 2020 tallies up with the "back burner project" take. FWIW I kinda like the wings version, that would have been classy. (*And I appreciate changing the old headlights out is the kind of think that conceivably might be coincidental!)
  16. Looks suspiciously like it was a Christmas Tree unfortunately :(
  17. Yes, I was careful to say the 4 car ;) Just on a tangent - whatever happened to the additional pair? of GE4/4iii they were reported to have picked up secondhand, from memory they were expected to be added to the fleet at the time but they don't seem to have been so far. Did the sale not happen, or have they just been a handy parts supply maybe?
  18. I'm interested to see how they work it. I think there's maybe some likelihood of one-off mixed trains on the other routes in the very early mornings, trains like R4718 from Ilanz to Chur or RE4011* Landquart to Davos for instance - but the capability that odd wagons get attached to the back of things throughout the day goes over much of the network. Presumably that means on some routes there will be additional dedicated freight workings as the single freight connection of today won't be able to allow wagons to do a round trip in the day. (*RE4011 I could see being run by a 4 car Allegra rather than hauled stock, as I think they will have two of the five sets un-diagrammed, and the trailing load is never more than a single wagon.)
  19. FWIW, my take is that: Everything becomes Capricorns on a regular hourly timetable except: Scuol-Pontresina (4 car allegra push pull sets) Arosa (Allegra) Bernina (Allegra/DC cars) Albula (Allegra/Loco) (Plus the heritage diagram to Filisur) A commuter fill-in to Ilanz starts (already running in the peaks) Landquart-Davos service finishes as a separate route The Disentis-Scuol will drop 4 cars for Davos at Klosters The Landquart-St Moritz will drop 4 cars for Davos at Klosters on the opposing half hour, recreating the half hourly service (Stations between Landquart and Klosters have been extended so those trains can run longer than the normal 8 cars if any of those need to run longer due to events)
  20. Yeah, I think here's a few examples where you can surmise the original small level station area has been expanded and extended onto the grade at one or both ends, but I can't think of one where the main part of the station isn't level.
  21. I'm surprised they don't have a whole 7th rake to cover the 6 daily diagrams! They seem fairly conservative in terms of having spares elsewhere. When we were over in 2020 odd additional EW coaches were very common, but they were always either locked out of use or reserved for booked parties when we looked at them - might be a "catering for different markets" thing, though it certainly makes the trains look less sleek. Though it still doesn't look as odd as the scratch rakes to cover the inevitable Alvra maintainence. 🤣
  22. There's no spare Alvra rolling stock, so using one of the Universal ones as a stand in is logical to get the rest of the set back in use (suspect they have more Universal ones than they need deliberately to do this, and I suspect if one was ever written off, one of the 52xxx would get converted to be a new 57xxx!) Quite a rebuild!
  23. Yep, that's what i'd expect from the plan: My observations from 2020 (note 900/901/906/907 were not running due to Covid at this time) are: #622 brought train 903 into Chur (and I hope somebody on this was a track basher as that's a fun bit of routing!) 😉 #633 took over on 903 #642(!) brought 905 to Chur #622 took over 905 So far the same as the plan above.... #633 came back with train 902 as per the plan above... But rather than stepping back it must have run round, as 633 was still the loco on 902 when it passed us at Thusis... And as we saw 622 at Preda on 904, whilst we didn't see it on the Disentis leg by process of elimination that one must also have run round and stayed with the train at Chur rather than being swapped. I suspect the diagramming for the GEX loco's will have been the same (barring the morning/evening freight/extra passenger use as that was GE6/6ii territory in 2020) but with that diagram if they get a loco failure, even if they need to free up a loco to cover for a failure elsewhere on the system they can magic up a spare loco just by running round the train at Chur rather than stepping back loco's as per the diagram. Shortest Chur call seems to be 11 minutes (most are a fair bit longer) - so they have the time.
  24. This feels like it's got a bit messy... There's 8 trains in total forming the GEX service at present, run by 6 coaching stock rakes (two sets only run a partial route and work out-and-back in a day, the other 4 run a single working from one end to the other each day and return the following day.) https://www.glacierexpress.ch/en/travel-planning/timetables/ Both pairs of St Moritz-Zermatt and return trains (trains 902/3/4/5, 4 trains total) are standalone trains on all legs, so all 4 of those will either runround or get a new loco on the back at Chur, as per Paul's example above. I would bet there's a booked way to do each one, I note the Chur calling times vary a lot. but I would not want to bet on the exact same sequence happening every time, or even that it would work the same for two consecutive trains or the same train the following day - I can vouch for both methods being used in 2020 based on trains passing Reichenau based on a day there for example. The Zermatt-Chur and return (Trains 900/907) are also standalone trains, and don't do the Albula leg anyway, so again, either a new loco or a runround of the one that brought it in during it's layover at Chur. The St-Moritz-Brig (901) is the one on the rear of the Albula working (IR1120) behind the loco heading towards Chur, so yes logically I would presume that one just has a loco dropped onto the back at Chur to continue it's journey. The Brig-St Moritz (906) seems to go on the rear of the Albula working (IR1165) behind the push pull set, given the Albula rakes sit at Chur for almost an hour and the GEX only has 34m allowed - I suspect what happens with that is that either the GEX arrives and then they shunt the push pull rake onto the back of it, or they pull the GEX out the Landquart end of the station and back it onto the far end? Either would get you the right configuration. (If you wanted a guess it would be the latter - as the Albula rakes seem to like to always use the same platform at Chur to get a cross platform connection to the big railway.)
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