On the day of the inauguration of the new Lötschberg Base Tunnel, special (public) runs where made through the tunnel, using a standard IC2000 trainset with an Re 460 electric locomotive. Unfortunately, on one of the runs, they managed to get stuck in a neutral section, just before the tunnel entrance, apparently due to an inappropriately placed red signal. So, a BLS Am 843 diesel had to come to the rescue...While you could see this train nearly every day currently, it's still pretty unusual. Its a push-pull freight train, on this picture pushed by a BLS Re 420.5, hidden behind the trees. The interesting part is the control car leading the train. It's one of the original German "Cargo Sprinter", of which only 7 prototype units were ever built (newer, heavily modified variants exist for special uses). The idea was to have a cheap, lightweight, diesel-powered vehicle, which you could use to serve private sidings, and when you had to do long runs on main lines, you would simply couple a few units together to form one larger train. But they were a huge failure, because they were way more expensive than planned, unreliable, underpowered and uneconomical in operation, and therefore barely ever used. Until some Swiss companies decided that they wanted to have push-pull freight train normally hauled by an electric locomotive, but with an auxilary diesel engine for non-electrified sidings. So two of them were rebuilt and can sometimes be seen on the Swiss railway network. Unfortunately, they are still unreliable.Private railway operators in Switzerland have one huge problem: Where do they get locomotives that are allowed to run in Switzerland? Buying new locomotives is expensive, because they need various additional technical installations to be allowed on Swiss rail networks. The Swiss Federal Railways don't sell their old locomotives, because that could benefit the competition. So Rail4Chem thought they were very clever, and found some privately owned, retired Ae 4/7 locomotives built in the late 1920s (!), and put them back into service. This was obviously a railfan's wet dream, but unfortunately the whole episode was over way too soon. They got the locomotives to work (at least more or less), but only one actual commercial run was ever made, and after that Rail4Chem was bought up by Veolia, who put an end to this. The picture was taken on a trial run on which they tested the MU equipment.The Swiss television SF wanted to show something special to their viewers, so on September 30, 2008, they staged an opera ("La Traviata") in Zurich main station. The picture shows the orchestra in the main hall.In Zurich, all trams are blue/white. All...? Well, not for two weeks. The "Tango" tram is the latest development of Stadler Rail. The first series was ordered by Baselland Transport, so they carry their colors. But because VBZ, the tram operator of Zurich, was evaluating new tram types, the very first Tango tram was lent to VBZ for testing in regular passenger service during two weeks. The picture was taken at Zurich's most famous place, the Paradeplatz, with the Credit Suisse building in the background.
