Railway romance & high-tech on Lake Constance
After meeting at Rorschach railway station, our excursion began with a visit to the SBB depot facilities in Rorschach. This depot of the former Vereinigte Schweizer Bahnen VSB, which was initially even used as a workshop, may have seen its heyday, but vehicles are still serviced here for minor maintenance. Some SBB-Historic vehicles are still stationed here today. The journey continued with one of the rustic DZeh 2/4s of the Rorschach-Heiden-Bergbahn RHB up to the climatic health resort of Heiden and the RHB workshops located there. This workshop, which dates back to the founding years of the RHB, is well worth a visit if only to see the historic machine tools with transmission belt drive – which are still fully operational and in use today. Back in Rorschach, we ended our visit to the RHB with a tour of the mountain station depot. With our tyres still intact – more precisely with a Saurer Schnauzen postbus from 1958 – we now travelled to the Stadlerrail Altenrhein company. This branch of Stadler Bussnang, which emerged from the former Flug- und Fahrzeugwerke Altenrhein, now manufactures state-of-the-art GTW and FLIRT railcars for the global market. Passenger coach construction is also based in Altenrhein. We were given an insight into ongoing production here. At the end of this excursion, our Schnauzen-Saurer took us via its birthplace Arbon to St.Gallen, where this excursion came to an end.
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