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Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

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Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#91

Post by mrlonglong »

gpvos wrote: post #77
crote wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All European railway operators are legally required to offer this, by the way: it's an open market, so (provided there is physical space) they have to allow anyone to run their own train. Normally this means freight trains, but it also means companies like FlixTrain can attempt to compete with the large national train operators - and of course it allows for one-off charters. The only downside is that preference is gi…

The infrastructure operators have to allow anyone with a train operating license on their tracks, and such license is very nontrivial to acquire. Usually you would hire a train from a train operating company, and those companies are not required to rent out their trains - although several have been set up explicitly with that goal, of course.

Back in Victorian times very rich people owned their own railway carriage which they would have hauled across country.

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#92

Post by Stevvo »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #80
Stevvo wrote: post #71

The prices are really quite good for a country where everything is so expensive. Only 3000 for an aluminium rail car. Probably the scrap metal value is higher than 3000, although you could spend far more than 3000 transporting it to the scrap yard.

3000 is the address not the price, which is "upon request".

That is the RABe 520. On the 2nd page of vehicles there are ABt trains with a listed price of CHF 3000.

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#93

Post by TylerE »

bluGill wrote: post #21
voidUpdate wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure you get one that matches American gauge and isn't one of the the meter gauge mountain trains

gauge is likely easy to change. Not cheap, but Amtrak demands expensive inspections and refurbishment to run, so the cost of changing the gauge is likely fairly small compared to the other costs.

No, it isn't easy to change at all. Not unless the car was specifically designed for it, and not nearly that much of a jump. The ones that exist in real life are almost all for switching between Russian (5ft) and Standard (4ft 8.5in) gauges.

To be eligible to run as part of an Amtrak train any car must past all FRA rules/guidelines, which a Euro-spec car absolutely will not without hundreds of thousands of dollars of work.

It would be MUCH cheaper to start with a car already in the US and meeting those standards. Much, much cheaper. Still not cheap, but in the realm of the practical.

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#94

Post by antonvs »

wongarsu wrote: post #22
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When SBB has a bridge to sell you, you should pick it up in person.

When London Bridge was sold in the 1960s it was also on the buyer to pick it up from its original location and transport it to the US

> to pick it up

That was necessary because it was falling down

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#95

Post by Caracas288 »

kortilla wrote: post #4
mplanchard wrote: post #3

You can pay Amtrak to haul your train car around[0], so you’ve just got to figure out a way to get the car from Switzerland to the US, and then you can really get around in style. [0]: https://www.amtrak.com/privately-owned-rail-cars

Is there someone that does this frequently with a breakdown in costs and their experience? This sounds lit as a goal for an eccentric millionaire.

Somewhere, the locomotove nomads travel the wastes of North America in their reinforced rail cars. They never speak to one another, but sometimes you can glimpse the deisel smoke of a distant train on the horizon at sunset…

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#96

Post by andrewshadura »

dheera wrote: post #54
user_7832 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it directly helps here, but multi gaage railway cars are a thing. Iirc on some European lines, the trains switch their gauge.

Yeah some overnight trains can adjust their gauge on the France/Spain border. On the China/Mongolia border on the other hand they disassemble the train, lift the train cars up one by one (with passengers inside), switch out the boogies and then reassemble. 3 hour process, you can fully sleep through it and not notice.

Not notice loud banging and violent shaking underneath you? You can sleep through that, with practice, but you will notice it.

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#97

Post by m463 »

m4rtink wrote: post #51
elil17 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but some trains can even change gauge while in motion: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/kq6eds/this_is_how_...

This is actually quite a significant technical achievement - for example, a similar project in Japan failed. Japanese Railways wanted to build a train that can run at full speed (~300 km/h) on the standard gauge (1435 mm) regular Shinkansen lines but also use the narrow gauge (1067 mm) existing lines at slower speed. Those older lines would not have to be rebuilt for the Shinkansen standard & there would still be sig…

They don't seem to say why it didn't work.

I wonder if it was not just the change in gauge, but tolerances as well.

I got to see "Dr. Yellow" running on the shinkansen line and it checks everything out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow

I wonder if the slower-speed lines have looser tolerances.

Then maybe running the gauge-change train on the slower lines might kill the train's tolerances before it moves back to the super smooth high-speed lines.

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#99

Post by fc417fc802 »

fortran77 wrote: post #73
mwexler wrote: post #17

I just want the clocks. Mondaine tries, but they aren't the same. That 58.5 second rotation then pause is quite clever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock

I remember when Apple just went and stole the Swiss railway clocks. See: https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/apple-pays-21mn-to-swi...

I thought trademarks were for brand distinction. Since it doesn't seem like anyone is going to confuse an ipad with a wristwatch let alone the operator of a train station I don't understand the issue.

Well anyway why couldn't they have removed the circle on the end of the second hand and called it a day? Regardless of how I feel about the legal situation how is that circle worth $20 million to them?

Re: Buy a train, bridge or tracks from the Swiss Railway

#100

Post by dheera »

gpvos wrote: post #75
lostlogin wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s taking 3 hours on a passenger train, a 5-10 minute transfer seems vastly more efficient.

On a night train such as the Transsib that takes several days to get from A to B anyway, being able to sleep through it and not needing to lug your stuff around is usually considered more important. (Although in some cases you are woken up for border formalities.)

> (Although in some cases you are woken up for border formalities.)

Yeah although you can just stay in bed for this. I've been on the train. The Chinese officials just wake you up, stamp your passport, and off you go to sleep.

Then the Mongolian officials came on, asked me a couple questions to see whether I respected their country, why I was going there, grumbled something unintelligble, stamped my passport and moved on.

Much better than getting in line for 2 hours if you ask me (which is what happened at the Bulgaria/Turkey border and the Georgia/Armenia border when I crossed those)

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