Northern Switzerland

Luzern

(or Lucerne) The city of Luzern sits at the north end of Lake Lucerne (or Vierwaldstättersee) at the northern edge of the Alps. The mountains here aren't as high as those in other areas, for example the Bernese Oberland which you may have just read about on my previous page. Luzern is an old city with some interesting old areas, including unfortunately at least one reproduction, an old footbridge that symbolizes the city, the Kapellbrücke over the Reuss river which flows out of the lake and through the city. The bridge, originally built nearly 500 years ago, was mostly destroyed by a fire just a few years ago. The Swiss have accurately rebuilt the burned bridge except for a short original section at one end which you can recognize by the aged wood and burn marks where it joins the rebuilt section. The reconstruction, while faithful, looks new because the wood is new.

There are numerous boat trips available on the lake, most starting at Luzern and making various stops at towns along the lake and ending at Flüelen at the other end of the lake (schedules available through the Swiss Train Timetable). There are a number of notable mountain rides in the area of the lake. Pilatus boasts the steepest rack railroad in the world (I haven't been up this one). The Rigi Bahn on Rigi mountain east of the lake is the oldest rack railroad in Europe (opened in 1871, 2 years after the oldest rack railroad in the world on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA). This picture shows Rigi Kulm (the top of the mountain). The peak is accessible only by train, (unless you want to hike) from two different routes, Vitznau on the lake or Arth Goldau on the other side of the mountain or by cable car connection from Weggis, another town on the lake.

[Vitznau] This is the train station at Vitznau, which is at the edge of the lake and connects with a boat to Luzern. The railroad up this side is the old side, nearly as old as the Mount Washington railroad. The Mount Washington Cog Railroad is still much as it was when opened in 1869, with rickety old track built completely on a wooden trestle and old coal burning steam engines that go very slowly up the mountain with lots of smoke and shaking and with lots of hard work by the crew. I rode the Mount Washington railroad in August 1997 just 2 months before riding the Rigi railroad. In contrast to the Mount Washington railroad, the Rigi Bahn has been completely modernized. The track is modern. The Mount Washington track is the original design, with very complicated 9-part manually operated switches - the Rigi track is built on the ground and sturdy stone and steel bridges rather than a rickety wooden trestle, and is a more modern design with automatic switches, electric power, and newer style railcars. Mt. Washington does everything the "old" way on purpose, much of their old-looking equipment is actually not so old. The Rigi Bahn is also slow, one of the few things it has in common with the Mount Washington cog railroad, but instead of an engineer, brakeman and fireman who has to shovel a ton of coal, all the engineer on the Rigi Bahn has to do is turn on the electric motor. The picture here shows the station at the bottom, a completely modern structure with a turntable and modern workshop (not shown). The Mount Washington railroad is strewn with junk and broken equipment and looks more like a firetrap. The other side of Rigi mountain has... another railroad. The other side of Mount Washington has... a road - typical of America's attachment to its cars and need to go everywhere by car. My first Rigi picture (at the top) shows the blue and white cars that climb the eastern slope; the second picture shows one of the red cars that climb the older western slope. There are a couple of places in Switzerland that still run some old "nostalgic" steam engines - the Rothorn Bahn in Brienz, and an effort to reopen the original Furka pass at Andermatt that was closed when a tunnel was built, but I haven't ridden any of these.

[Old Rigi Vertical Boiler] Like Mount Washington, the Rigi Bahn originally used vertical boiler engines. I found this original Rigi engine on display at the Swiss Transport Museum (Verkehrshaus) in Luzern. Mount Washington also has an original vertical boiler engine on display. This Rigi engine is completely restored and looks like new, the Mount Washington Peppersass is an old rusting broken relic. The Swiss Transport Museum is a very good museum, where I spent most of a day and didn't have time to see everything. There's a lot of trains, also airplanes, various forms of mountan transportation (cable cars, etc.), cars, a lot on communications including postal and electronic forms, and some other things including Switzerland's only IMAX theatre (large-screen format, which shows a moderately interesting film on Switzerland twice a week - most of the time it shows other mostly American produced movies - the Switzerland film has some good photography of the country, but also some less interesting subjects such as banking).

Schaffhausen

Switzerland's northern most city is Schaffhausen near the German border. The most interesting sight in this town is the Rhein falls, Europe's most powerful, by volume of water (but definitely not highest; Switzerland's highest is the Staubbach Falls, barely visible as a thin thread of water on the right in my Lauterbrunnen Valley picture). This is the limit of navigability from the Rhein's terminus in the North Sea. Boat rides are available from either bank to the rock "island" in the middle of the falls. Interesting, but smaller in scale (both the falls and the tourist business) than Niagara falls. The water here is low, because I was here after a long dry spell.

Stein am Rhein

The town of Stein am Rhein is nearby on the Rhine river (hence the am Rhein), with a well known old center, with many ornately painted old buildings (the most interesting appeared to be concentrated in one area on one street, although since I only spent one hour in this town I could have missed some things).

Zürich

I've been here 3 times, by train, plane, and automobile (once each), but each was just passing through (changing planes, driving through on the way to the mountains because there's no road around, and to change trains at the main train station), but none of these allowed me to see what the city has to offer, so I have nothing to report here.

Created June 27, 1998
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