Blonay – Chamby museum railway
The museum railway Blonay – Chamby , abbreviated to BC , French Chemin de fer-musée Blonay – Chamby , is the first museum railway in Switzerland . It began operating in 1968 on the Blonay – Chamby railway line operated by the Chemins de fer électriques Veveysans until 1966 . The supporting organization is the Blonay – Chamby Museum Railway Association with an annual turnover of CHF 400,000 (as of 2013) and the Blonay – Chamby Museum Railway Cooperative , the French Chemin de fer-musée Blonay – Chamby Société coopérative .
The Blonay – Chamby museum railway is a railway company . She is traveling between Blonay and Chamby the infrastructure of transportation Montreux-Vevey-Riviera with an access permit and a federal passenger transport - concession .
history
The Blonay – Chamby Museum Railway Association , originally Société pour la création du chemin de fer touristique Blonay – Chamby , was founded on December 5, 1966. 82 people attended the inaugural meeting.
On January 25, 1967, the first hit car , a tram - motor car , one in the museum train. The first steam locomotive followed on June 9, 1967 , this was the G 3/3 6 of the former Bière-Apples-Morges-Bahn .
Parallel to the procurement of the vehicles, the association began with the restoration upgrading of the railway Blonay-Chamby for museum operations, such as trimming work had to be done. The first work train ran on July 1, 1967. The authorities granted permission to operate the railway on May 1, 1968.
On July 3, 1968, the Blonay – Chamby Museum Railway Cooperative, based in Lausanne, was entered in the commercial register. In the meantime, the cooperative referred to itself only as Chemin de fer-musée Blonay – Chamby . Originally it was called Chemin de fer touristique Blonay – Chamby .
The first public museum train finally ran on July 20, 1968. Over the years, theme-specific motto events have become a specialty of the museum railway. For example, in 2008 one found rail tractors - and service vehicle festival , a Bernina -Weekend and a tram Festival instead.
Museum area in Chaulin
Above Chaulin , directly on the railway line to Blonay, today's museum area, called Chamby-Musée, was built over the years. It consists of the operating facilities of the museum railway as well as the possibility of accommodating guests and club members. On the street side, the area can only be reached via a non-public dirt road.
In 1973 a first five-person depot was opened in the rear museum area . Four tracks are used to park and present vehicles, three of which are provided with a catenary , one has a continuous investigation pit . The fifth track on the outside left on the valley side is separated by a partition and serves as a workshop. It is equipped with a gantry crane. In the rear part of the hall there are sanitary facilities, changing rooms and a spare parts store.
In order to be able to park more vehicles under a roof - and thus to reduce maintenance costs - an additional hall was put into operation on the Chamby side in 1993. It has three tracks and is adapted to the local chalet style, all tracks are electrified. Between the two halls, a restaurant with a terrace was built in 1998, which replaced an old barrack.
In the course of time, the area was completed by two barracks for club purposes and an open-air facility for coaling and purifying the steam locomotives, supplemented by a water tower .
vehicles
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Vehicles of the Blonay – Chamby museum railway
The extensive meter- gauge vehicle fleet with which the Blonay – Chamby railway is operated includes steam locomotives, electric locomotives , electric multiple units , trams, passenger cars , freight cars , company vehicles and a steam snow blower .
Technical framework
The vehicle fleet of the museum railway is largely adapted to the normality of the meter-gauge adhesion network of the Chemins de fer électriques Veveysans (CEV) and the Montreux-Berner-Oberland-Bahn (MOB) on which the museum railway operates . With a few exceptions, this also applies to the wheel tire profiles. These exceptions include some of the tram vehicles, which means that they cannot run on the route network or only to a limited extent. The latter are only allowed to drive as far as Vers-Chez-Robert when coming from Chamby.
The following scheme applies to the couplings : Railway vehicles have a central buffer coupling with a screw coupling located below the central buffer . The trams, on the other hand, have trumpet couplings of the type known from the Bern Municipal Transport Authority (SVB).
When braking system which predominates vacuum brake . Depending on the company of origin, there are also a few vehicles with compressed air brakes . In the case of trams, the motor vehicles usually have a resistance brake , the trailers a solenoid brake. The corresponding braking systems must be taken into account when forming a train. Individual vehicles therefore also have continuous brake lines from a different brake system.
The electric vehicles are designed for a contact wire voltage of 900 volts direct current . Since the older vehicles are relatively generously dimensioned with regard to voltage fluctuations, the relevant adjustments were minor. The vehicles of the urban and interurban tram companies were designed for 600 volts, those of the meter-gauge railways for 750 to 1200 volts. The vehicle fleet of the former Leuk-Leukerbad-Bahn was built to operate with 1500 volts.
literature
- Peter Willen: Locomotives and railcars of the Swiss railways. Volume 2: Private railways in Western Switzerland and Valais . 2nd, revised edition. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-280-01474-3 .
- Michel Grandguillaume, Gérald Hadorn, Jean Paillard and Jean-Louis Rochaix: Crémailléres et funiculaires vaudois . Bureau vaudois d'adresses (BVA), Lausanne 1982, ISBN 2-88125-002-5 .
- Michel Grandguillaume, Gérald Hadorn, Sébastien Jarne, Jean-Louis Rochaix, François Ramstein: Voies étroites de Veveyse et de Gruyère . Bureau vaudois d'adresses (BVA), Lausanne 1984, ISBN 2-88125-003-3 .
- Sébastien Jarne (ed.): Le chemin de fer touristique Blonay – Chamby . Lausanne 1986.
- José Banaudo, Alex Rieben: à la decouverte du Chemin de fer-Musée Blonay – Chamby . Les Edition du Cabri, Breil-sur-Roya 1992, ISBN 2-903310-98-X .
- Alain Castella, Charles-Maurice Emery: Faire La Voie, Chemin de fer-Musée Blonay-Chamby . Department of Education, Youth and Culture (DFJC) - Office for Culture (SERAC) of the Canton of Vaud, Lausanne 2010.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alois Feusi: Citizens of the world with a sense of railway tradition . on: NZZ Online. August 12, 2013. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
- ^ A b Chemin de fer-musée Blonay – Chamby Société coopérative. in the commercial register of the canton of Vaud. (Accessed July 15, 2010)
- ↑ a b c 40 years of Blonay – Chamby as the first Swiss museum railway! to: bahnonline.ch , October 14, 2008. (Accessed October 15, 2018)