Model railway The fascination of the Gotthard Railway
The Model Railway Fascination Gotthard Railway is a permanent exhibition on the theme of the Gotthard Railway of the Swiss Federal Railways , with a realistic replica of the Gotthard northern ramp as a 1:87 scale model railway . The exhibition is located in the district of Reichelshofen ( Steinsfeld / Bavaria) near Würzburg and Rothenburg ob der Tauber .
history
The operator of the plant is Sieglinde Köttgen. The system was created out of the desire to preserve for posterity the models of nominal size H0 that have been collected in the family for over fifty years . For this purpose, the building of a farm was bought in 2000 and converted accordingly for the exhibition. When exactly the facility was opened to the public is unknown, but from 2002 a special parking lot was available for visitors.
description
On the layout, the construction of which began in 2001, 900 meters of rails are laid according to the original track plans. The topography of the model was recreated and the locations and train stations from Erstfeld to Göschenen were reproduced according to original plans and photographs. The modeled north ramp is 30 km long and rises from Erstfeld at 472 meters above sea level to the summit tunnel at over 1100 meters above sea level. The difference in height of the route shown is actually 600 m, in the model a little more than 2.5 m. It is particularly interesting because of the artificial length development of the mountain railway with many bridges, protective structures and three spiral tunnels near Wassen : the Pfaffensprung, the Wattinger and the Leggistein tunnels. The Pfaffensprungtunnel is a roundabout tunnel , the other two tunnels belong to a double loop .
The 1:87 scale system ( nominal size H0 ) with a floor area of 260 m² is designed as a two-wire digital system with an electronic interlocking for the 214 points. The overhead line with the portals are only mock-ups in the system. In normal demonstration operations, the trains on the two-lane route are controlled in block operation .
The Gotthard Railway route is shown as it was operated in the 1960s and 1970s. The company buildings and tracks that existed at that time are shown, as well as the signaling technology and vehicles used at the time. Prototypical electric locomotives are used, such as the Swiss crocodile . The A2 motorway , which has now been built in parallel, does not exist in the model. The design of the landscape and settlements surrounding the railway line is based on the epoch shown. However, in addition to many cars from the era, there are perhaps a little more cyclists on the accompanying road than was common at the time.
The ends of the tracks lead behind a cover over a track helix into a shadow station in place of the approach routes from Arth-Goldau and the Gotthard tunnel . The shadow station simulates the trains coming from the north from Basel or Zurich or from Italy and Ticino. The length of the journey of a single model train is 514 m until it is back at its respective starting point.
The facility is located in two buildings formerly used for agriculture and largely follows their outer walls. Connected to the large terrain model is an exhibition of several hundred up to 50 year old models of locomotives and trains. There is also information about the builders of the Gotthard Railway, such as Alfred Escher and Louis Favre , but also about miners , conductors and travelers .
Special features of the system
From the Reuss valley , viewers can only see the valley flank behind the railway line, the other side is not shown. The railway changes the valley side with the Intschireuss bridge, which is also shown . The route is almost at eye level with the viewer, so that visitors can walk alongside the trains and follow the ascent of the route. The route is about 135 m long in the model.
There are seven villages along the route with 22 replicated tunnels and galleries as well as 46 bridges and viaducts. Almost no commercially available buildings were used for the houses in the villages. 255 buildings replicated for the complex give the towns their individual appearance in that era.
The valley walls are planted with more than 18,600 trees. The long valley sections with no engineering structures or settlements are impressive and show, true to the original, the dimensions of the interference with the nature of the Alpine region through the construction of the railway. The construction of the surrounding area is almost complete.
The elevation of the 1500 m long spiral tunnel and the two 1100 m long spiral tunnels near Wassen are prototypically shown in the model. Unlike, for example, on the Gotthard facility in the Swiss Museum of Transport, the trains require the actually observed times for their passage. In Lucerne, the trains turn two circles in the tunnel to achieve an approximate effect. The height difference there of the overall greatly shortened, visible route is 1.49 m compared to 2.6 m in Reichelshofen. The double loop with the spiral tunnels near Wassen is used to gain the height of the route in the particularly steep valley in this section. They can be easily recognized in the model in their sequence when the trains go up or down due to the depth development of the landscape model. The old bridge between the country road and the adjoining tunnel portals are prototypically reproduced.
Special structures
- The tower of the nobles of Silenen after the model from the middle of the 13th century.
- The Amsteg power plant is shown with an open roof over the machine room so that the turbines can be seen. The service track along the pressure lines on the rock face is also reproduced.
- The Chärstelenbach Viaduct near Amsteg and the Zgraggental Bridge
- The Secken Viaduct at Gurtnellen, the only bridge that is still in its original state today, albeit widened to double lanes.
- The Wassen power plant
- The Schöllenen cog railway station is shown without operation. It is almost at the highest point of the facility on both sides of the Göschenen SBB station .
See also
Web links
- Homepage Fascination Gotthardbahn.de (Sieglinde Köttgen, Steinsfeld-Reichelshofen)
- Pennula, system video , 24 min. ( Plus a photo documentary about the film production on the same website )
- Photo series: Photo collection Niefern-Öschelbronn , 2010 (over 50 well-documented detailed photos )
literature
- Faithfulness to detail is more important than quick completion of the expansion. Fränkischer Anzeiger, January 5, 2006, accessed September 19, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our story. In: The fascination of the Gotthard Railway. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
- ↑ Rainer Schach, Peter Jehle, René Naumann: Transrapid and wheel-rail high-speed railways: A comprehensive system comparison . Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-28335-5 , pp. 125 ( Google Book ).
- ^ Hans-Peter Bärtschi: Swiss Northeast Railway (NOB). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 30, 2011 , accessed July 10, 2019 .
- ↑ Technical information on the homepage
- ↑ Pennula
- ↑ Construction report at: The VHS Gotthard Railway model layout built by members of the EMBL ( Memento of the original from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and at Eisenbahn Amateur (CH): 1957
- ↑ The fascination of the Gotthard Railway. In: golden-sokrates.de. Retrieved September 19, 2015 (Figures 10 and 11).
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↑ Pictures: The model is a 120 m long stone arch bridge (the replica)
Pictures of the historical building ; "... all other bridges and viaducts were reinforced several times and finally rebuilt.
Coordinates: 49 ° 26 ′ 26 " N , 10 ° 12 ′ 43.3" E