13th July 2012 - Another class cleared13th July 2012 Friday the 13th, superstitious? Its just another day to us so off we go to Brig for another “play” on the MGB…… or so we thought. Rather than catch the 07:01 IR train off Baar, we went for the S21 service at 07:06, which should have been top and tailed 540 units with four coaches between them but turned out to be a pair of class 450 S bahn loco sets, one of which was required for haulage so it wasn’t quite such a let-down. As the train rolled into Thalwil, we noticed there was a class 460 in the opposite platform heading south – 460 023!!! Quick, flap, panic, what is it on? Where is it going? We instantly realised there was absolutely no point in jumping off and trying to catch it; it would be long gone by the time we had gathered our stuff together and rushed over to the other platform so we grabbed the timetable and loco diagrams and quickly found out that it was going to Chur on an IR service, would be returning at 09:16 to Zürich and could be caught up with at Landquart. The IC train we caught from Zürich was a bonus in that it was Re4/4 hauled, only our third one of the trip; we much prefer these locos to the ubiquitous class 460s. Landquart was reached without fuss and there was time to rush over to the RhB station and grab a shot of the Chur to Disentis line centenary liveried loco before finally catching up with 460 023 (it’s only taken us 10 years to clear the class). Our plans to go to the MGB were now in tatters so, on arrival at Zürich we headed for Aarau to do the line to Schöftland which we had eschewed yesterday. In contrast to Menziken yesterday, there was a proper maintenance shed at the end of this branch so some photos were duly taken to record our visit. Line duly “ticked off”, we then returned to Suhr to have a closer look at the new station and interchange arrangements; there was plenty of interest here including two AAR locos, an SBB one, some transporter bogies (to convey standard gauge wagons on the metre gauge) and the trackbed of the old route of the AAR heading off towards Aarau. After duly recording all these photographically, we changed to the SBB line to go to Lenzburg where we saw a class 843 diesel waiting at the head of a freight looking like it was headed towards the line we had just come from; it showed no sign of moving so we started to make our way down the car park for a photo, only for it to shoot off when we got about half way there. We re-joined the same class 520 unit to do the whole line back to Zofingen as we had only previously covered this section of line in darkness on the return leg of a tour some years previously. Change at Zofingen to yet another version of the Stadler EMU family to Emmenbrücke on the outskirts of Luzern where there was a green Ae6/6 stabled in the sidings, just a little too far from the station to walk there and back in the time between trains. Not to worry though as this is the main line between Luzern and Basel so there were a couple of passing IC / IR trains to point the camera at though we just missed a privately operated freight as our train arrived. After that brief interlude it was back onto a class 520 unit to do the Seetalbahn which runs between Luzern and Lenzburg, largely alongside the local roads. Not so very long ago (until the early 1980s), this line was worked by “Krokodil” locomotives, one of which (15301) has been restored and lives in the shed at Balsthal, Something to target if we can find one of its trips to coincide with some of our time off. We returned to Zürich with the intention of seeing what was working the 17:09 EC towards Milan, but it turned out to be Re4/4 11158 rather than the expected class 484 so, after a brief ponder, we headed downstairs to the Sihltalbahn to see if we could find 456 551, our last loco on that railway required for haulage. The trains on this line run every 10 minutes in the peak but rather than camp out on the underground platform at Zürich HB, we went for a run to the end of the line at Sihlwald; the only previous journey we had made on the line beyond the Zürich suburbs was nearly six years ago shortly before the line between Sihlwald and Sihlbrugg (on the Zürich to Zug line) closed to normal passenger service. This also enabled us to check each loco as it passed us and, luckily, 456 551 was in service to it was just a question of getting off at Langnau-Gattikon on the return journey and waiting for it to catch up though there was one minor hiccup when the train shot off into the sidings after arriving, previous trains had reversed in the platform. We did wonder if we had missed out but, for some reason, the driver merely changed ends and brought it back into the other platform which did enable us to get a slightly better picture than when it was standing in platform one.
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