European Railroad Discussion > Street Running Swiss style

An interesting video showing street running in the middle of Zürich, to supply grain to a silo in the middle of town. It tkaes a few seconds for the video to start.

http://www.nzz.ch/video/der-koloss-von-zuerich-west-mit-dem-gueterzug-durchs-trendquartier-1_8fiwwxmq

Enjoy!

Thomas Eckhardt



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/16 13:53 by Krokodil.

Danke

What a cool operation.  Thanks for sharing.

I see that graffiti and fools around active railroad operations are not limited to North America.

I'm a bit surprised at the graffiti and the "passenger" who hopped on at one point. My impression is that the Swiss are much more rule conscious that we Americans are. (Well, at least some Americans.) It was fun to hear the Swiss German accent of the train crew members -- it brought back memories of my first time in Switzerland 30 years ago. I went to purchase a ticket at the Basel station and tried using my college German, explaining that I did not speak German well. The agent smiled and replied in English: "The Germans don't think we speak German very well either." 

That's a good one! Incidentally, the grain train runs normally with remote control from the front car. The engineer was only present because of the film crew. There is no fix schedule, depending on season up to four train are running on a day, each transporting about 1000 tons of wheat. This area of Zürich was industrialized, but with heavy industry (Escher-Wyss for example) disappearing it has become heavily gentrified. Maybe in a couple of years, this operation will be a tourist attraction! Interestingly, the location of the new grain elevator under construction is next to the original elevator.

Thomas Eckhardt

Awesome video! I had seen that track from the Googel Street View while looking at some of the trolleybus and tram lines in Zurich. That answers the what that track does and more importantly if it is still in use. That's some intense city street running, for anywhere this World. Thank you for posting!

Jim

Swiss German is not easy to understand. Even the Germans have trouble with it. To me, it is more
high pitched and a bit nasal. But like Germany, the swiss all speak english fluently. At least everybody
under 60 or so.

ValvePilot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But like Germany,
> the swiss all speak english fluently. At least
> everybody
> under 60 or so.

They don't of course, why should they? But they do often speak more than one of their own languages ie French, German, Italian or Romansch. That's a good way of maintaining unity in a rather disparate nation, however small.

 

Years back, it was my understanding that in school, they had to learn three languages, with English being one of four options.