Gotthard Cab Ride

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Switzerland for a family event and since I was already flying all the way to Switzerland, I figured I might as well stay a day longer and take advantage of an offer by the Swiss Federal Railways: since they celebrate the 125th anniversary of the Gotthard rail line this year, they had some special events going on this year. One of them was that they offered tickets for cab rides on trains over the Gotthard line from Locarno to Arth-Goldau and vice versa. Well, it wasn’t cheap, but I decided that the opportunity doesn’t come along so often, so I went ahead and booked the trip. It actually seems like a lot of people decided to do the same thing, since I was told that they’re pretty much sold out through the end of the year.

(Click for more photos)

My trip started in Locarno - we were two people who booked the trip that day. At the Locarno station, a retired SBB engineer was waiting for us - he would be accompanying us and provide explanations, etc. during the trip (since obviously the real engineer who was driving the train was supposed to be doing just that - drive the train …). So we ended up being four people in the cab of the class Re 460 engine, which was rather cramped, but still ok.

Our train - #2280 from Locarno to Zurich - had only 7 coaches and was rather light, at just 309 metric tons. Should be no big deal for our 6100 kW / 8000 hp strong class Re 460 engine. We left a couple of minutes late, due to the fact that the train had arrived just shortly before and they needed to switch out some coaches before being ready to depart again. We made up the time on the way over the Gotthard though and arrived in Arth-Goldau ontime.

(View these video clips on YouTube)

Unfortunately, the trip was already over after only 2 1/2 hours - but it was definitely worth it!

Posted in: Uncategorized | October 3, 2007 9:35 pm

3 Comments »

Adron, on October 14, 2007 @ 11:40 pm

So what was the top speed reached on this run? 70-90mph? Seemed there was a good pace through some of those areas.

Marcel Marchon, on October 23, 2007 @ 4:07 pm

I think it was 125kph.

Peter, on October 28, 2007 @ 4:53 pm

I see: some people have to pay for this trip, some people get paied for the trip. You made the so called “Farmer’s Run” with more frequent stops than the express train from Chiasso. In some places you sure made 140 kph.