I’m always conscious of local culture when we’re out on a trip. A special interest in local beer culture makes a trip all the more interesting. In the background of this photo, you can see the buildings of the Brasserie Meteor. This independant brewery is home to Meteor (pils and lager) and Wendelinus (blonde and roussa), and also creates occasional brewings. We saw many trains, … Continue reading Brasserie Meteor
When travelling around often, you get to know your favorite places. Whenever I travel between home and Switzerland, I try to include a stop at “Boulangerie Bernard” in the center of Mommenheim. Their butter rolls are de-li-cious and more than worth the short detour! On the morning of january 29th I had no effort convincing my fellow traveller to stop over at Mommenheim. We were … Continue reading A busy breakfast
The last freight train of the day, headed to Pontresina, passes us at Bever station. We awaited this train before heading home. Weather forecast wasn’t looking good, and because of last night’s accident, we decided to make a stop-over north of Strasbourg. It had already gotten rather dark for this photo – some boosting of the light was necessary to get a decent result. Continue reading Evening freight
While the local shunter is still sorting the cars, the return train is already being composed. It all happens with relatively few people, and it goes fast. I wonder if this is a profitable business, considering the number of cars the freight trains carry. Continue reading Ready, set, …
Once the freight train arrives at it’s destination, it is quickly pulled apart and the cars delivered to where they will be unloaded. Swiss railways work very efficiently, no different here: in almost no time the first car was delivered to a local distribution centre. Continue reading Shunting Pontresina
When shooting freight trains, we usually look for locations that show a lot of train. Same for this train, but it turned out pretty hard to combine sunlight and a good view… it turned out not to be necessary; 3 cars easily fit within the frame. The train on the photo comes from Chur and has almost reached Pontresina, it’s final destination. Continue reading Almost there
A bit of looking around usually does the trick. Shot from almost the same location, with a tele instead of a wide angle lens, this view is something quite different compared to the previous photo. I prefer this one, by far: it reduces the train more to it’s real size compared to the giant mountain in the background. Look closely and you’ll see that the … Continue reading Proportions set straight
The search for photo opportunities became harder as the forest became more dense. No big deal though, getting there is half the fun; that is one of the reasons this hobby has become a passion. Right on time for the next freight train up the mountain we found this view on one of the Albula railway’s many typical bridges. Loco 626 is in charge of … Continue reading Through dense forests
Sledges are dangerous. Trust me. I would experience that in person in a couple of hours – at this moment we were only making sure not to be hit by Continue reading “Long freight”
Initial plans for this trip focused on the Gotthard railway. When wheather turned out to be better in the eastern part of Switzerland, I was happy to propose the Rhaetian Railway, on my photo-bucketlist for a long time already. We hadn’t prepared for shooting photos in this region, but in Bergün it all came together. We left the car in town and hiked into the … Continue reading High and higher
Railscapes 