Swiss rail journey starts with multiple flights

As readers of this blog are aware, I’ve just returned from a train-chasing trip to Switzerland. The wonderful opportunity came about through an extraordinary birthday gift from my brother Terry who arranged an entire railroad themed tour for the two of us. 

The first day saw us flying from Vancouver to Montreal on Air Canada then transferring to the German airline Lufthansa for the leg to Munich. Having never flown first-class before, I’ve often wondered what goes on behind that tactfully drawn curtain at the front of the aircraft. I now know, thanks to brother Terry who had gone all out and booked us first-class. Yes folks, it’s a different world beyond economy. Not only the food and the service levels are a leap above, but you also get a bed to sleep in.

Landing in Munich we transferred to our third flight of the day, this one bound for Zurich. After proceeding through immigration in Zurich we picked up our baggage. Considering the numerous flight changes, I was impressed (and relieved) when our luggage came tumbling onto the carousel. Finding an escalator we landed in the train station situated in the basement level of the airport. Here we picked up our 15-day Swiss Rail Pass allowing us to ride the country’s entire train system and tram/bus system around-the-clock.  The passes also allowed for first class travel. To locate the 1^st class rail wagons (coaches) all we had to do was look for a car marked with a big yellow #1 on the side. Boarding a train headed for Lucerne, we arrived at our destination one hour later. Grabbing a cab to the Montana Art Deco Hotel we took a little time to deal with jet lag.

(Above)We had a glorious view from our hotel room looking over Lake Lucerne and the central Swiss Alps. 

I found Lucerne to be an unhurried and charming city. The cobbled streets bordered by houses, shops and hotels painted in medieval style and decorated with displays of flowers enhanced the city’s beautiful location. 

(Above)One of the main attractions in downtown Lucerne is the famous Chapel Bridge built in 1333 across the Reuss River. The covered bridge is unique since it contains a number of interior paintings dating back to the 17^th century. Sadly many of them were destroyed in a 1993 fire that was allegedly caused by a discarded cigarette. Subsequently restored, the Kapellbrücke is the world’s oldest surviving truss bridge.

We’d come to Switzerland to ride a quantity of trains. Our first venture involved passage via this sleek lake boat (above) to the town of Vitznau where we boarded a cogwheel train (Red Train) to Rigi-Kulm. The historic railway was constructed in 1871 to access the mountain overlooking Vitanau and Lake Lucerne. This was my first encounter with cog railway technology, which uses a toothed rack rail between the normal running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cogwheels or pinions that mesh with this middle rail (above). The system allows for the trains to tackle extremely steep grades. During the summer my wife Pat and I are volunteer conductors on the Alberni Pacific Railway in Port Alberni. Our steepest grade is 3.8%. This Swiss railway had grades on some sections topping 40%, making ours on the Alberni Pacific seem pretty tame.  At times I could barely keep my balance when standing.  After lunch at the summit we boarded a second cog railway called the Blue Train (below), descending the opposite side of the mountain to the community of Arth Goldau.  Here we caught the fast inter-city Voralpen Express (below) back to Lucerne, detraining on the edge of town at the Swiss Transportation Museum.

(Below) Outside the museum entrance a huge crane was lifting the drilling head for a modern tunnel-boring machine onto a pedestal to be bolted down for permanent display. Soup Campbell, our crane-master in the Industrial Heritage Society in Port Alberni would have loved watching this operation in progress.  

Promoted as one of the best of its kind in the world, the Schweizerisches Verkehrsmuseum Luzern I found absolutely fascinating. Examples of steam and electric locomotives and railroad cars from different parts of Switzerland over the last 150 years are displayed on more than a kilometer of track. A model railroad shows trains working the Gotthard Pass through the Alps. The photo at left shows a novel way of displaying automobiles. The cars are stacked on racks of steel shelving. When a museum visitor wants to look at a particular automobile, the rack number is punched into a computer and the yellow machine on tracks picks up the car and lowers it to a stage area for close up viewing. The museum even has an actual Swiss airliner on display.

(Below) Walking the Lucerne waterfront that evening we passed the city’s arts centre for the performing arts. The unique looking building was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel with American architect and acoustics engineer Russell Johnson designing the acoustics. The concert hall (lower photo at left) has been acclaimed by leading conductors and soloists as one of the best in the world.

Looking at the lobby entrance I noticed a poster promoting a jazz pianist the following evening. Attempting to order tickets online from my laptop I couldn’t cope with the German language website so I had the desk clerk at our hotel talk me through it. The artist was Dominican Republic born pianist Michel Camilo. I confess I’d not heard his playing before on recordings. However, Camilo listed his main influences as Chick Corea, Keith Jarett, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, which was a tailor made concert for my ears.  The only downer was Camilo playing without his regular bass player and the sub from Los Angeles didn’t have the trio’s repertoire under control. Still it was a stunning display of straight ahead jazz piano trio performance coupled with the latin percussion playing of added sideman Giovanni Hidalgo.

Looking at the lobby entrance I noticed a poster promoting a jazz pianist the following evening. Attempting to order tickets online from my laptop I couldn’t cope with the German language website so I had the desk clerk at our hotel talk me through it. The artist was Dominican Republic born pianist Michel Camilo. I confess I’d not heard his playing before on recordings. However, Camilo listed his main influences as Chick Corea, Keith Jarett, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, which was a tailor made concert for my ears.  The only downer was Camilo playing without his regular bass player and the sub from Los Angeles didn’t have the trio’s repertoire under control. Still it was a stunning display of straight ahead jazz piano trio performance coupled with the latin percussion playing of added sideman Giovanni Hidalgo.

Our second day of railroading in Lucerne included the Pilatus Railway or Pilatusbahn and is the steepest railway in the world with a maximum gradient of 48%. The line runs from Alpnachstad, on Lake Lucerne to a terminus near the summit of Mount Pilatus at an altitude of 6,994.8 ft. To my complete surprise brother Terry had arranged for me to drive the locomotive on the ascent. The driver was Nicole Torre (above) who incredibly not only knew where Vancouver Island was, but had stayed in a hostel on Nanaimo’s Protection Island the previous summer.

The Pilatus Railway is laid on solid rock, securing the rails with high-strength iron ties bolted to the rock without using any track ballast. The line still uses original rack rails that are now over 100 years old. While the rails have worn over the years it was decided recently the easiest fix was to simply turn the rails over, exposing a new wearing surface that will be good for another hundred years. Nicole gave me a quick lesson on running the electric locomotive. Unlike a steam engine, driving one is quite simple. What looks like a steering wheel controls the amount of electricity going to the driving motors. In addition to a handbrake there is a dead man’s pedal that must be depressed at all times or the locomotive will stop. It’s a bit like controlling a model toy train using a transformer. The weather was quite misty the day we were there which may have been a blessing in disguise. I’m a bit squeamish about heights and this railway literally hangs from the mountain cliffs. We descended the mountain’s opposite side by cable car. Again the fog gave me a false sense of security. Yes, a clear day would have been preferred. 

Photo above

At mid-station on the Pilatus Railway we met trains returning down the mountain. The weather has turned misty making difficult to appreciate the steepness of the terrain. 

(Photo above)Early one morning just before leaving Lucerne , we walked a few blocks from the hotel to see the Lion of Lucerne. Carved into a sandstone cliff face in1820, the carving is a memorial to the Swiss soldiers who died attempting to save Marie Antoinette in 1792. The Swiss have a long tradition of supplying mercenaries to foreign governments. Because the country has been politically neutral for centuries, the Swiss  have long enjoyed a reputation for honoring their agreements and a pope or emperor could be confident that his Swiss Guards wouldn’t turn on him when the political winds shifted direction.

The Swiss Guards’ honor was put to the test in 1792, when, after trying to escape the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their children were hauled back to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. A mob of working-class Parisians stormed the palace in search of aristocratic blood. More than 700 Swiss officers and soldiers died while defending the palace, without knowing that their royal employers had left.

In the early 1800s, the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen was hired to sculpt the Lion monument to the fallen Swiss Guards. The sculpture has attracted countless visitors since its dedication in 1821. 

As so many others have done over the decades, I had my photo taken in front of the huge sculpture.

OK. I’ve checked everything out in Lucerne. 

Next blog – The William Tell Express to Lugano

The William Tell Express to Lugano

My wife Pat and I spent last weekend in Vancouver taking in a couple of musical presentations. The first was the Arts Club production of Cole Porter’s High Society. There are some musicals that stick with you even after only one viewing, and the movie version of High Society is one of them. The tunes lodge in the brain and stay there forever. Songs like I Love Paris, Just One of Those Things, It’s All Right with Me, Once Upon a Time and True Love remain as some of the all-time greatest songs of the American Songbook. Our good friend Ken Cormier, who has accompanied many shows for Pat and Timbre! in Port Alberni, suggested we come over and hear not only High Society (for which he was the musical director), but another production he was accompanying the following day - the Chor Leoni Men’s Choir directed by Diane Loomer in their annual appearance in the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival tent. Entitled Reeldiculous the concert was a hoot, full of music from the movies with plenty of humorously designed choreography for the choir members  We had a wonderful time at both events.

Returning home we had a two sailing wait at Horseshoe Bay so I got out my lap top and put together another blog covering my recent tour of Switzerland by rail. As readers of this blog know, my brother Terry organized the trip as a birthday present for me. Each day’s itinerary was presented to me as a complete surprise. 

Today we travel from Lucerne in central Switzerland to the city of Lugano situated on the south side of the Alps. Checking out of our hotel in Lucerne we grabbed a cab to the downtown lake pier and boarded the paddlewheel steamboat Uri sailing south on Lake Lucerne to Fluelen. From Fluelen we would be catching the William Tell Express train to traverse the Alps. 


Steamboats began plying Lake Lucerne as early as 1837. Originally stoked with coal, the paddle steamers were later converted to oil-firing. In 1972 a group called the Dampferfreunde association was formed as a lobby and advocacy group for the preservation of the historic steamers. Today the association contributes not only historical research data to the company that owns the tourist ships, but helps them financially with the restoration of their heritage inventory. To date five steam driven paddlewheelers have been fully restored.

The restored steam engines were immaculate. You could have eaten off the engine room floor it was so clean. If you look carefully you can see one of the engine crew making adjustments to the speed as the ship approached the pier at Fluelen.

(Photo above) Terry had reserved a table in the ship’s elegant dining room for lunch. Our mother used to tell us stories about being a passenger aboard the graceful CPR S.S. Sicamous paddlewheeler that plied Lake Okanagan during the early 1930’s. It crossed my mind that during our lunch this was exactly the style of travel my mother was referring to.  We were recreating the moment. 

(Above)Lake Lucerne is known locally as the Vierwaldstättersee or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, and is considered to be the most beautiful lake in Switzerland and the most spectacular, with mountains on all sides and forests coming to the shoreline in many places.

(Above)Along the shoreline we passed this chapel (built in 1871) dedicated to the most famous name in Switzerland. William Tell exists only in legend. The true story is that the first Swiss Cantons (provinces) met near this point back in 1291 and formed the Swiss Confederation, which still exists to this day. 

On the chapel walls are several frescos by Ernst Stückelberger depicting scenes of the legend: 1) The bailiff Gessler forces William Tell to shoot an apple off his son's head with his crossbow. 2) William Tell escapes from the boat of the bailiff Gessler during a storm on Lake Lucerne. 3) William Tell shooting the tyrant Gessler.

However, the mountain scenery was spectacular. The railway through the Gotthard Pass is a marvel of Swiss engineering. At one point the train passed a village church just before we entered a tunnel. Emerging from the tunnel a few minutes later the same church was still there, only now it was on the opposite side of the train and we were a little higher at grade. The train had spiraled within the mountain, looping over itself. It did this several more times to gain altitude before plunging into the darkness of the nine mile long Gotthard Tunnel, emerging 10 minutes later on the south side of the Alps.

Reaching the end of the lake at Fluelen, we walked a short distance to the train station and boarded the William Tell Express to travel over the famous Gotthard Pass to southern Switzerland. Settling into our coach seats I couldn’t believe it when the car’s attendant began playing a recording of Rossini’s William Tell Overture as we pulled out of the station. It was so hokey I couldn’t stop laughing. 

The railway car in which we travelled was built especially for a visit to Switzerland by the Pope. I wondered if this may have been the chair the Pope sat in.

Currently another tunnel called The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is being drilled beneath the Swiss Alps and is expected to open in 2016. With a route length of 57 km (35.4 miles), it will be the world's longest rail tunnel, surpassing the Japanese Seikan Tunnel. Its main purpose is to increase total transport capacity across the Alps, especially for freight, notably between Germany and Italy, and more particularly to shift freight volumes from road to rail to reduce environmental damage caused by ever-increasing numbers of trucks. A secondary benefit will be to cut the journey time for passenger trains from Zürich to Milan by about an hour and from Zürich to Lugano to 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Leaving the William Tell Express we changed trains at Bellinzona (having only 4-minutes in which to do so) and traveled west on a local commuter train to our day’s destination. Lugano is the most important city in Southern Switzerland and part of the Italian-speaking canton (province) of Ticino. Our hotel was only a few steps from the train station. Resting for an hour we headed out for a quick supper – genuine Italian Pizza of course. After dinner we walked a few blocks to the Palazzo dei Congressi (the local concert hall) to hear the Lugano Festival Orchestra play Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony #8 and Beethoven’s Concerto #5 for piano and orchestra played by the Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky. The applause after his performance, went on for over 15-minutes. He had to come out and play a short encore before people would stop cheering.

Also part of the music festival was the Lugano Jazz Festival featuring a potpourri of jazz artists. There were free concerts in plazas throughout the city. Here the SMuM Big Band performs in the plaza just outside our hotel.

(Photos above) The climate around Lugano is very Mediterranean. Dotting the shoreline of Lake Lugano there are many Venetian-type villages, showing off the closeness of its neighbor, Italy. We traveled by lake boat to visit the village of Gandria, according to the tourist guidebooks, one of the most picturesque.

On our third day in Lugano we took a day trip to Lake Como in Italy. Locating the bus stop where the Italian Bus Line operated from took a little detective work. With the coming of the European Union, crossing the borders these days is quite translucent. Physically there are still border crossings in place but one just drives or walks through them. The border guards are still employed at the crossings but they don’t seem to have much of anything to do. I don’t know if they still stamp passports as we didn’t stop to find out. 

Our destination in Italy was Menaggio. The cliffside highway getting there was so narrow that when we met another car or truck one of us had to back up to let the other through. However our Italian bus driver didn’t do much backing up, preferring to lean on his loud 3-chimed bus horn while racing along the roadway through tunnels and around curves like it was a freeway. It was a white-knuckle ride all the way. 

The best way to see Lake Como is to catch one of the many ferryboats plying the lake. Taking a passenger only ferry we crisscrossed the lake making a number of stops at resort locations. At the village of Varenna we disembarked for lunch and then caught another ferry to the village of Tremezzo to tour the gardens of Villa Carlotta. The villa was built from 1690-1743 by the Clerici, a wealthy Milanese family of merchants. In 1801 Gian Battista Sommariva (a famous politician, businessman and patron of arts) bought the villa.  Under Sommariva much of the estate has been transformed into fascinating gardens containing plant specimens from every corner of the world. Sommariva's heirs sold the villa in 1843 to Princess Marianne of Nassau (the wife of Albert of Prussia) who gave it to her daughter Carlotta as a wedding present on her marriage to Georg II of Saxen-Meiningen. Hence the name Villa Carlotta.

At the end of World War I, the villa risked being sold in an auction. However, the Rotary Club of Milan managed to put a stop to this and the villa was finally entrusted to the Ente Villa Carlotta, a foundation especially constituted by a royal decree on May 12, 1927. This foundation still takes care of the villa and all entrance fees are used for the maintenance and the conservation of the building, the works of art and the gardens.

At the village of Varenna we disembarked for lunch. The meal was fish caught that morning in Lake Como

Lake Como over the last decade has become very well known due to the Hollywood movie star George Clooney’s ownership of a luxurious villa on the lake. Sailing past the villa I tried to get a good photo of a party in progress on the property but was thwarted by a Norwegian Amazon who wouldn’t budge from her place at the ferryboat’s rail. George was having a party for what looked like a couple of hundred guests. I was kicking myself for forgetting my binoculars back at the hotel room. Who knows who I could have identified enjoying champagne and caviar. This photo (above) was the best I could do.

Then unexpectedly, just past Clooney’s Villa our ferry stopped dead in the water. Pushed by the wind, we stared to drift towards the shore. I started to wonder if we were going to be involved in another Italian cruise ship disaster. Sadly no one from George’s pad launched a rescue mission.  However, within a half hour a smaller ferry arrived and was lashed alongside us. Passengers were then transferred to the smaller vessel over a swaying gangplank. I don’t know if anyone was counting but well over two hundred people were crammed aboard the smaller ship that I’m certain was not licensed for that number of passengers. Finally we arrived at the ferry dock in the City of Como Lake.

It was about a 30-minute hike to the train station where we purchased a ticket to the Swiss frontier at Chiasso as our Swiss Rail Passes didn’t cover the Italian Rail System. Walking through customs the border guards stood around smoking and didn’t ask us anything. For the second time today we just walked through. 

Boarding a Swiss train that was going through to Zurich, we detrained at Lugano and took a short vehicular ride down the hill to our hotel. The jazz festival was still in full swing so after supper we listened to a couple of vocal jazz performances in the plaza next to the hotel. 

LUGANO STREET

Next Blog: The Bernina Express to St Moritz and Montreux

Riding rails culminates at Queen's Golden Jubilee

Fast trains, steam trains, slow trains, mountain rack trains, commuter trains; during the past several weeks I’ve ridden variations of them all. I even had the chance to drive one of them. This wonderful opportunity came about through an extraordinary birthday gift from my brother Terry who arranged an entire railroad-themed tour for the two of us to Switzerland. I the train aficionado, and he the seasoned traveler who knows his way around Europe - were the definitive duo.  Consequently readers - for the next several postings you’ll be riding the iron along with my brother and myself on a journey aboard most of Switzerland’s famous trains and a number of unique railways not so widely known. 

However, since Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee celebrations just ended on Tuesday, I’d like to begin this blog at the end of our European journey. Much of what’s written is based on a daily blog I emailed to my wife Pat who was in Nanaimo instructing her dedicated class of piano students. Some were preparing to play in the BC Festival of the Arts, and others, their Royal Conservatory June Examinations and year-end recital. 

Last Monday Terry and I arrived in London from Zurich. We had been in Switzerland for 15 days riding trains throughout the country. After being held in a holding pattern over London waiting for a slot to land at Heathrow, then proceeding through immigration and taking a train into London, it was after 3pm before we checked into the hotel at Paddington Station.

The Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations were in full swing with a concert programmed for the front of Buckingham Palace at 7:30 pm. We had tickets for the musical Billy Elliot this evening so we decided we’d better start figuring out how we were going to get to the West End theatre district through the massive crowds that had been gathering all afternoon in the city. 

Boarding a bus at Paddington Station we managed to get close to the area and then walk in. On our way through St James Park we decided to see how close we could get to the Jubilee concert stage venue in front of Buckingham Palace. The crowds were enormous but great fun to be part of. People were dressed to the nines in British gear and dancing on the Mall leading down to the palace gates. Many had camped overnight to stake out an area in front of giant TV screens located throughout the park. Only those with tickets to the concert grandstand got beyond the police lines surrounding Buckingham Palace. Veteran British performers Elton John, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney and others unknown to me, had been announced as the headliners.

Photo: These ladies were high-stepping their way down the mall towards Buckingham Palace.

However, we managed to get fairly close to the palace before being turned back by the police lines. Steered along a treed pathway we wormed our way out into the West End Theatre district and located the Victoria Palace Theatre where Billy Elliot was playing. After picking up our tickets we still had an hour before curtain time so we hiked back to a side street alongside Buckingham Palace to see if we could see any celebrities show up. No luck there. The Billy Elliot musical started at the same time as the Queen’s Jubilation Concert so we had to leave before hearing any of the Buckingham Palace event. However, we can at least say we were onsite and one of thousands out to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilation that evening. 

On Tuesday morning Terry and I watched the Queen’s thanksgiving service TV broadcast from St Paul’s Cathedral while we were having breakfast. We agreed right there and then that being in London during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a reigning monarch ride through London in an open coach. If at all possible, we must at least try to view the royal spectacle live. 

So at 10:30 am we left the hotel and took the tube to Trafalgar Square. Emerging at street level we found the crowds massive but managed to maneuver into a position along the sidewalk where we would clearly see the royal parade.  We didn’t know if we’d be able to physically remain standing in one location for over two hours, but we were darn sure going to try even with no washroom in sight. The crowd in our area got larger and larger as the hours ticked away.  At one point we became a bit nervous about the crush of the crowd surging behind us.  Leaving wasn’t an option as there was no way to get through the crowd. However, several policemen arrived and started steering latecomers back into side streets away from the parade route and wouldn’t let any more people enter the area. This helped and the crush eventually eased off.

Our patience was finally rewarded when a vehicle made its way down the street. It was the Queen being driven from St Paul’s Cathedral to her coach a few blocks away where she would initiate the parade. She passed only a few feet in front of us so we got a great view of her. Rain had been threatening for the last few hours so to everyone’s surprise the authorities bumped up the parade starting time by about 15 minutes to avoid the threatening storm.

Suddenly down Whitehall Street came the galloping Royal Household Cavalry followed by the Queen with Charles and Camilla in an open carriage. The Duke of Edinburgh was not with her as he had been admitted to hospital the day before with (the newspapers said) a bladder infection. Then came another open carriage carrying Prince William and Kate. His brother Prince Harry was sitting facing them. They were only a few feet in front of us as the carriages had to move to our side of the street in order to avoid colliding with a statue of General Haig that occupies the middle of the roadway. To record the event Terry and I decided to use our cell phone video features instead of still camera shots. Both videos turned out perfectly and the following still photos, I downloaded from the video clips on my iPhone.

Photo above: The Queen with Charles and Camilla in an open carriage.

Photo above: Following the Queen’s coach were Prince William, Kate and Prince Harry.

After a late lunch at a Noodle Shop alongside the Thames at the London Eye, we ducked into the Southbank Centre to get out of the rain that had thankfully held off until after the Royal Carriage Parade. The Royal Festival Hall Orchestra was performing an afternoon concert of British music in celebration of the Royal Jubilee. The program was well underway so we watched it on an HD TV set up in the lobby. We then hoofed about 8 blocks through the soggy narrow streets to the Cambridge Theatre where we had tickets to see a new musical called Matilda. 

Like Billy Elliot, the musical had a large number of youngsters in lead roles. The story line is about a girl named Matilda who discovered a love of books and by the age of three taught herself to read. At four she has read all the children’s stories in the local library. However, Matilda has an unhappy home life. Her goofy parents wished she would watch television instead of reading books all the time. At school she becomes a heroine by organizing a rebellion against a headmistress who detests intelligent children. The role was played riotously by an actor in drag. Full of wonderful songs and high-energy choreography, in my opinion the jaw-dropping talents of these youngsters make the likes of those who appear on shows like American Idol and Glee pale in comparison. The musical ends with you not knowing whether to cry or cheer. It depends on how you feel about your own school days.

Next Blog: Lucerne – The City. The Lake. The Mountains 

Following - Photos from the Queen’s Golden Jubilation concert night

Dressed up ready to cheer

Camping out on the mall

I couldn’t resist enjoying a supper of British fish & chips