A visit at the passenger car shops

[RailRon]

Olten is one of the most important railroad nodes of Switzerland with about 1000 trains going through per day! Therefore you find large maintenance facilities both for locomotives and passenger cars - less than a mile from my home! :thumb:

Last weekend they had an open house in the newly built car shops. Here are a few pics, showing some aspects of the operations.

Ron

1: From the outside it doesn't look spectacular - in fact, this could be any old warehouse.
2: But inside there are clean and spacious workplaces.
3: A passenger car diaphragm and an engineer's seat (comfortable, isn't it?)
4,5: A test stand for a toilet in a hi-speed passenger car. The little girl finds this very interesting!

 

[RailRon]

Let's move over to the car repair shops:

1: This is about one third of the car bays. In the foreground the pit for the transfer table
2,3,4: The pride of the car fleet - a first class panorama car. Great riding, and you have a beautiful view when rolling through the Alps! But alas - one window was cracked and has to be replaced with a special machine with suction cups.
5: This woman demonstrated how graffity are removed from 'decorated' cars. (Yes, we have the same idiots spraying their 'art' on everything which is more or less flat. Unfortunately car sides qualify as 'canvas for sprayers' )

 

[RailRon]

1: A double decker passenger car
2: This is one of two air-condition units which can be removed in one piece.
3: This is a similar car with an engineers cab for push-pull traffic. Today almost every train in Switzerland is run this way.
4: And here is a look into the engineer's cockpit. Meters are replaced with computer screens, brake and throttle levers look much like the joysticks in a fighter plane cockpit. But there's still that good old 'dead man's pedal' on the floor

 

[RailRon]

On to the revision of trucks:
1: This is a truck of a double decker car - designed to run at speeds of 150 mph!
2: A closer look on a disk brake. It's a little bit more massive than on your car, isn't it?
3: And here is a wheelset just coming off the wheel profile lathe. A perfect RP25 contour! :thumb:

 

[RailRon]

1,2: There was also a contest for kids where they had to drop a ping pong ball into a box with a forklift. Great fun - and it worked with a little help from the RR mechanic!

3,4: The visitors were shuttled back and forth from the RR station to the car shops: Two old passenger cars and a diesel switcher.

I hope you enjoyed the visit!

Ron

 

[tillsbury]

Thanks for sharing! Very interesting photos... and no-one can complain about nice shiny new wheelsets after looking at those photos!

 

[Bob Collins]

I am just back from 4 weeks of riding the trains in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Italy, Austria and Germany. The Italians win the prize for the most consecutive trains that were late. I still haven't seen one that was on time. I particularly enjoyed the ride from Verona, Italy to Salzburg, Austria. It was beautiful. I also rode the train from Salzburg to Bertesgarten which was really fun. The weather was perfect. Visited the Eagles Nest for the first time in over 30 years. They added a restaurant up there which sort of spoils it :cry:

I lived in Munich about 30 years ago and this was our first time back. Quite a rush of memories

Bob