A Fascinating Video of Swiss Heavy Railroading

[C855B]

Unable to sleep, I was surfing YouTube indulging a recent interest in "minimal music". Philip Glass is probably the most significant composer in the genre, and has written several film scores. Anyway, the "related videos" column on YouTube highlighted a work by Steve Reich, Three Movements for Orchestra, with a thumbnail of a clearly European RR yard scene. I had never heard a Steve Reich piece and the picture was interesting, so why not?

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The volume and variety of rail traffic - wherever this is - is just amazing. Definitely not the little Swiss passenger shuttles you always see in travel documentaries.

Oh... a warning: most of you will probably want to mute the audio after a couple of minutes. Minimal can be the head-banging heavy-metal of classical music. It's definitely an acquired taste.

[Bulbous]

This is Spiez station, looking south mostly. The left set of tracks goes to Interlaken, the middle set to Brig via the Lotschberg Tunnel (old or new), the right tracks are to the carriage sheds/workshop. The ICE that pops up a couple of times heading to and from Interlaken is a great connection between Interlaken and Frankfurt Airport if you are travelling on an Interail pass, as you can take that one cross-border without paying a fee or changing trains (small win, but makes the trip out to Interlaken and back very comfortable!).

Cheers,

Matt.

[peteski]

Cool video but got bored after few minutes (with the view and with the music). 

[ljudice]

Search on SBB Gotthard  for more heavy Swiss railroading....

[Iain]

Unable to sleep, I was surfing YouTube indulging a recent interest in "minimal music". Philip Glass is probably the most significant composer in the genre, and has written several film scores. Anyway, the "related videos" column on YouTube highlighted a work by Steve Reich, Three Movements for Orchestra, with a thumbnail of a clearly European RR yard scene. I had never heard a Steve Reich piece and the picture was interesting, so why not?

/>
The volume and variety of rail traffic - wherever this is - is just amazing. Definitely not the little Swiss passenger shuttles you always see in travel documentaries.

Oh... a warning: most of you will probably want to mute the audio after a couple of minutes. Minimal can be the head-banging heavy-metal of classical music. It's definitely an acquired taste.

As an aside, Phillip Glass wrote a peice for my cousin, Bobbie.

[nkalanaga]

I enjoyed the video, but left my speakers muted, so can't comment on the sound.  The "warning" was enough for me...

I have some OLD VHS tapes of European railroading, including cab rides over a few routes.  A southbound cab ride over Gotthard Pass is interesting, especially the stacked spiral tunnels north of Giornico.  There's a high motorway bridge at the same location, and the railroad goes under it twice, in the open.  Under the bridge, into a tunnel, out of the tunnel, under the bridge again, into another tunnel, then exit alongside, and far below, the motorway.

https://www.google.com/maps/@46.4128017,8.8644098,4711m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Enlarge the picture, if needed, to 2000 ft resolution, and the tunnels are near the top of the page, between the "2" on the motorway and "ZONA S. GIOVANNI".  If you have a smaller monitor the tunnels and Giornico might not fit on the screen at the same time