21 December 2020 · Branch AGM followed by “A-Z of Swiss Railways” final part

Our AGM was held on 21st December and was opened by our chairman Steve Ollive who welcomed everybody to the Zoom call. As with all aspects of the Society, Zoom has now become the norm for all meetings and the delayed Society AGM was no different. The Branch had held some test meetings during the summer and started a full program of meetings from September. This has enabled members from many branches and too remote to attend physical meetings to join us, and this has included a member from Canada at some of our meetings. Steve also detailed other important elements for the Society that have been reported elsewhere in the RO over recent months. Our branch membership is down slightly on last year. The original meeting plans for the 2020 · 2021 season have had to have some modification as not all speakers are willing to present on Zoom. With the absence of physical meetings, book sales have dropped to nothing since our last meeting in February, but despite this the branch still made a surplus for the financial year to the end of October.

For the second half of the meeting, Steve presented the final part of his story of an A to Z of Swiss Railways. In our summer meetings, Steve had covered all of the private railways and explained the vehicle classification systems and the four different types of rack system in use in the country, as well as giving a potted history of each company and showing us views of current rolling stock. For the final part Steve gave us a brief introduction to the primary infrastructure companies and their locomotives before giving us a brief history and covering the current rolling stock types of the three primary operators- the BLS, the Sud Ost Bahn and the SBB. Whilst there are many standard types which many European companies operate, there are still examples of Swiss built rolling stock in operation. Many of the new freight locomotives of BLS and SBB are able to operate in multiple countries, which removes the need for locomotive changes at borders. Both also lease locomotives, and Steve showed an example of an SBB Cargo International locomotive in Germany, that is not authorised to operate in Switzerland!

Report by: Steve Ollive