This engine was considered state-of-the art for two decades - inside the fameous Re 425
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 เม.ย. 2024
- For two decades, the "Brownie" was the standard newer engines had to compete against when it came to tractive force. Developed specifically for pulling trains across the alps, this locomotive model has served for sixty years. However, its days are counted.
This is the story of the Re 425 a.k.a. Re 4/4 BLS a.k.a. Ae 4/4 II. A huge thank you to BLS for making this video possible!
If you'd like to support my independent work, please consider becoming a patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=83250136 - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
This channel has got to be one of the most underrated channels out there. Just a guy with a camera sharing his passion of really cool technology, miraculously able to document the heart of how these engineering marvels work.
Thank you, much appreciaited!
I know right, there are so many channels which try way too hard to overproduce, but sometime you just want a chill moment with a vid like this. He also looks at stuff with such detail!
I was a Class I U. S. locomotive engineer. I can attest to the complexity of air brakes. Air brake theory was an entire week of classroom training at engine school in the early 2000s and probably still is.
North Korea already has antigravitation brakes
Yup can confirm, I'm currently training as a locomotive engineer, we spent a whole week on air brakes, and even if we have moved on, every time someone names the word brakes by chance we do a complete review, since the complexity and importance of the topic.
I just hope a pair can be preserved, in the UK, one of each class is preserved but only a few in regular working order to pull excursions and other special trains .I know the Swiss and Germany also has preserved many locos, 😊 by public demand and appreciation
I camped in Kandersteg last summer for two weeks near the entrance to the Lötschberg tunnel, hearing and seeing the Re425s all day every day was amazing and I never grew tired of it! Glad I was able to see these beasts in action before they are all withdrawn.
At least one will be preserved by BLS Historic :)
Maybe some private nostalgic train associations will also take a few.
me too, waking up in the morning, dew on the mountains looking out the bathroom window at the trains going by, one of my favorite places on earth.
We also stayed in Kandersteg and took this train a couple of times. (travelling with the car threw the Lötchbergtunnel.)
Awesome video, Sandro! I really love these old Swiss electric locomotives, especially because we have several locomotives here in Norway that were based on Swiss designs.
Our first "proper" electric locomotive, the NSB class El 11, was directly based on this Re 425, but built by local companies. Following this, the stronger El 13 and El 14 were all "Swiss" locomotives built locally in Norway.
The most interesting of these is the 6900 horsepower El 14, a real beast based on the Ae 6/6 "Gotthard locomotive" that is still running freight trains across the mountains to this day. (Although sadly they are really run into the ground compared to the relatively pristine conditions you keep your older locomotives in!) We also have a local variant of the Re 460, called the El 18, as well as an ever increasing fleet of FLIRT trains built by Stadler. :)
Not to mention all the steam locomotives. SLM have a history of delivering to Norway dating back to the 1800s. In the NJK-database you'll find many examples, a large number of these being built for a narrow gauge of 1067mm.
Are they planning on sending a few of these to BLS Historische Fahrzeugflotte and to Verkehrshus Luzern? Hopefully they will be seen on the rail in the future too. I was, unbeknownst to me, taking pictures of some of the last regular Brownie services along the Thunersee just over 10 years ago. The brownies were so common they seemed immortal, but alas, here we are.
@nimaforoughi7266 RE425 165 was designated a historic vehicle in 2017 and is now preserved in the BLS depot at Burgdorf.
Absolutely brilliant, and yes an absolute credit to everyone involved, but you have to hand it to BLS for allowing you to document what is the ending of an era.
First time on this channel: I've been glued to the screen the entire time. I don't even like trains that much. Absolute gem of a video!
Thanks for that detailed video. I have worked with heavy haul iron ore trains as a professional engineer in Australia and I have also travelled on the Swiss SBB rail passenger trains which amazed me with their smoothness and very low noise level. This video was perfect for me.
Thank you for the look round this beautiful locomotive which is sorely missed having hauled me over the Lötschberg bahn quite a few times since 1981. The lokomotivführer has a really thick accent!
I don't know how I found your channel but I am so thankful that I did!
Nice Video, i like it!
Small correction: "Schleuderbremse" is comparable with anti-slip regulation (ASR, prevents a wheel from slipping when accelerating). You said it's like ABS.
There is a system for trains comparable with the ABS, called "Gleitschutz" (prevents a wheel from blocking when braking), which i am not sure if the loco has one. Most of the passenger carriages have one.
It's also not called "tension," it's called "voltage." Tension is purely mechanical, voltage is electrical. If you apply tension to a motor, this means you are putting the motor in a hydraulic press, or (in German) "spannt den Motor." This is not what is meant, you mean "apply a voltage," i.e. "Spannung anlegen"
@@JoJoModdingI have heard of high voltage being called high tension, but it seems to be a European thing (including the UK).
@@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis it probably is always a translation fault because voltage in german means "spannung" and tension in german means "spannung"
so if you just google translate it, you probably get the wrong answer.
pretty sure thats whats going on
@@JoJoModdingWe used to say “tension” for voltage in the past, but as others said, the term survives only in the term “high tension” (like power lines).
@@mutzbunnyActually it’d be translation error. ;) (A fault means more like a breakdown, whereas an error is a mistake. In German, both are “Fehler”, although I suppose you could call a fault a “Panne” or “Defekt”.)
Great video. I've ridden behind them year's ago and enjoyed it. Efficiency is very important but so is history. I hope the keep some around for special trips and museums.
Great video, thanks a lot. These Re 425 Loco's are very well maintained and look like they are only a few years old, althought their technology betrays them. 🙂
Sad to see these true workhorses go. Many years ago I spent 5 days in a holiday home in the spiral just below Blausee-Mitholz station, and it was awesome to see the trains at 3 levels across the windows. The Re4/4 made up 80% of all trains then, completed by the Re465 but also still some Ae4/4 I and even the historic Be6/8 which double headed with a Re465 for a train, which also had a Re4/4 pushing.
Loved it, Thanks for making the video and looking forward for the next one.
Thank you for a wonderful video, the old tech is really interesting
tx for you and anyone involved
Thanks for the video. Really interesting.
Superb video! Explaining things clearly and visually.
Someone sent me this video and it's so interesting! Watched some of the other videos too and it's so fascinating to see how these marvels of engineering work. I loved the steam boat one especially. Great channel Sandro!
Great video again, loved it
I wonder if someone somewhere has one of the traction relay blocks detached from the transformer so you could film the switches themselves in action. I love my power electronics more than anyone but there's a certain magic about seeing the contactors fly in and out as the power is applied.
my friend collects power electronics like that. recently he brought home a huge ass 400A Contactor... i definitely wanna mess around with it sometime
Very interesting report Sandro, and how clean it is inside the loco as well.
Greetings from UK, absolutely superb video, credit to you Sando, and also Christan and John Paul, I have been visiting Switzerland for over 30 years, these locos are very special,
I absolutely love your videos as a fan of swiss railways, especially with all the technical stuff!
Please keep making this Videos, they are incredibly entertaining ajd I learn a lot from them.
Great film thanks 👍
I would love to see many more technical stuff & oddities of Swiss rail, already am fan of the channel❤❤
Great content!
I spent a week in Kandersteg last year, and watched the car shuttles going back and forth. Those brown locomotives looked really out of place next to the freight locomotives and the bright green BLS passenger sets that also went past.
Fantastic video
Great video!
It’s interesting learning about how they took a different approach to wheelslip control, EMD went with radar instead on the 40 series. It also seems that weight adjustment systems are becoming common now, although they are computer controlled and use pneumatic pistons to make adjustments.
th-cam.com/video/v2JOlzNjQxQ/w-d-xo.htmlsi=J5i9u2B1Izp23ydk
The Re 4/4 170 actually managed to pull a passenger train again last week. A special charter train from the Verein Pacific 01 202 and Zermatt Rail Travel. From Lyss over the Lötschberg to Bouveret and from there via Vevey back to Lyss
Erstklassiges Video. Vielen lieben Dank!
The old locos really have the charm, the newer locos remind me of a jelly mould !
This is so similar to the EL14 we have in Norway, only it is even more powerful. I have 1000's.of hours driving it. It was based on the Swiss Ae6/6 and bears many similarities.
As a train fan I hope that last few of these last locomotives and the first are in preservation.
Super Video! Sowohl Seilbahn- als auch Eisenbahntechnik hat mich schon immer fasziniert, gerade, wenn es um ältere geht. Mir scheint, als hätten wir da einen recht ähnlichen Geschmack.
bei mir kommt dann auch noch Uhralte computer Tech mit dazu. ich sammle like 1960er und 1970er computer stuff...
Surely one will be put in a museum?
Super cooles video!
Good old reliable tech.
Built to last and not be thrown away in a few years like everything these days.
Really good footage and technical detail. As a locomotive engineer myself, it was interesting for me to note that the brake gear was of Davies and Metcalfe manufacture, much used in British railway locomotives, and superior (in my opinion) to Westinghouse equipment.
12:12 Oerlikon FV4a, we use allot of these on Croatian Railways. :)
instantly subscribed from the first minute alone
Cool locomotive!intresting video .
I hope there is a national rail museum that will save one or two off these units when they are finally decommissioned and scrapped.
this is funny. I know ändu personally the fahrdienstleiter...
its so funny how small teh nerd world is.
The RE425 is such a beautiful Loco. i really will miss it.
also, if you can get access to a Domino Switching system or something that would be amazing. i am pretty sure you gonna absolutely go nuts when you see all the relays go clickedy clack.
I may have you some contacts of the RBS that possibly can get you through
I see RE 425, i upvote
the vid isnt here anymore but the step shwitch of a old ae 7/14 was shown while working .... it had special spark channels to disperse of the sparks while switching the power to the engines and boy oh boy that were sparks like lightning ...
Damn, that would have been lovely to film!
Thank you, Sandro, for a very interesting video. Do you know when the RE425s will actually finish? Best regards from the Ian, in the UK 🇬🇧.
I hope they preserve the class leader; Re 425-161
15:10 : müsst glaub 38056 si :)
wunderbars video. Danke dir vil mol dass üs mit uf de weg nimmsch :)
I really hope there is one saved or will be at least one saved for a museum or for history.
I didn't understand the air with no sand, what does that do? And in my limited locomotive electrical repairs, the older traction control I am familiar with is triggered when the motor current drops, indicating less torque applied. Not when the current goes up as was mentioned, but maybe lost in translation. Awesome video as always and looking forward to the brake video. Curious to how similar it is to N. American type WABCO brakes.
If you are curious to as what is going on in the load switch, look up transformer LTC (load tap changer) videos. There are different styles, but all do the same basic function by changing taps. Some are really cool looking too. Being a substation / generation plant electrician I've rebuilt a few throughout the years.
To answer the "sander", this is the thing that cleans the rail in front of the locomotive. The high pressured air stream blows away water, leafs etc, enhancing adhesion. Regarding the skidding protection, I did understand that the current goes up indeed (as the affected axle spins very quickly when it slips). But then, I talked to an engineer (driver), not an engineer (developer). Damn, that word is truly broken in English, how can it be the same for both?
Thank you for your compliments and recommendations!
@@sandro-here OK, so it cleans the rail. I can see that with leaves and such and I guess it works for there, for 60 years at least.
As far as slipping, it slips when it loses traction and the traction is what's giving it the load. Less load, less current. But they may be comparing it to the axle that still has traction, you would expect to see the current go up on that axle when the other axle(s) lose tractive effort. Forgot to add before, I work on a lot of ABB high voltage equipment and have only seen a few BBC pieces of equipment here and there, very rare. So cool to see the BBC train before they merged to become ABB. There is a lot of older ASEA electrical equipment in the US though.
And I hear ya on English!!! Pain in the ass for native English speakers too. Don't forget to take a break after you check the brakes. Wind the watch before the wind blows. Add flour to the mix and watch the flower grow. After you read the paper you can say you read the paper. It goes on and on.... Insanity!
@@inothome Your argumentation make perfect sense! However, being an IT guy, I can't discuss with you here I'm afraid! Perhaps someone else will speak up.
@@sandro-here No worries, all good.
I think RE 425 no. 165 is preserved.
I am going to miss the Brunellis
Hallo Sandro, ich habe deinen Kanal vor kurzem entdeckt, absolut grandioser Inhalt! Bist du selbst als Lokführer bei der bls tätig?
Merci fillmal! Nein, ich bin Software-Ingenieur - kalsan.ch
@@sandro-here Sehr cool, weiter so!
i assume an example is to be preserved?
i remember the rail shuttles in Switzerland fromy my only visit
they were very fun :^)
another piece of my nostalgia disappears
Are they going to preserve one?
The Re420 does have recuperative braking. What’s the reason for the Re425 not having it?
the 420 is not as old as the 425
Werdet aber hoffentli scho eis zwei als Museums-Lok im fahrbare zuestand übrig blibe?
D BLS history het eini, u in Luzern im verkehrshus steit gloub ou eini, wenn i mi nid tüüsche
Today, recuperation (electricity return to the line) is probably a question of a software update :)
Still Im surprised that it is not worth the upgrade..
Maybe the motors in brake mode have some crazy parameters that are difficult to change to the line parameters ?
This is 1960s tech. The "update" would be to replace the huge resistors on the roof by some very expensive electronics.
@@sandro-here These electronics used to be expensive, now it is super common to have recuperation.. Well I hope you guys save at least one, they look awesome.
Great video ..... and great engine!
The doubled one: fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLS_Ae_8/8 built from the former Ae 4/4
those are cool, but sadly not really a thing anymore...
How many jokes have been made over the decades of a train having a steering wheel.
Great story but the asymmetry of its front is killing 😂
I love it.
its different. it gives the loco such a cute and nice apearence...
I wonder if there’s any more info on the electrics of this locomotive somewhere. Even the German Wikipedia article seems pretty bald. Does it use an AC motor or a DC motor? What AC motor type ☺️
It uses a 1Phase AC motor, directly fed from the Transformer via the so called "step switch" which essentially is a Tap changer of the transformer. the schematic is plain simple
15KV in, transformer, step switch, direction swtich, main power contactor (if that one gets stuck you get a stepper switch explosion), motor
(I might be wrong on this one, but im like 95% sure thats how it is)
@@mutzbunny Hmm so it’s a universal motor then? Probably possible that it’s a DC motor as well, but voltage control with the taps and then through rectifier.
@@juliuseskola1281 its most certainly not a DC motor. Probably just a AC motor
@@mutzbunny That’s what I also suspected at first since I knew how the original 16.7Hz system came about. But to my understanding of the German wikipedia, the later Re’s used DC motors with a rectifier, before the advent of VFD technology. Don’t know about the brownies specifically.
damn, still has 19th century drawhooks as couplers?
The carrages look like BR 1970s colours. It seems as the swiss arn't just good at making cuco clocks. Over all they are very good at precision engineering.
Interesting that movement orders are verbal and not written. The signal system must be the formal control.
Indeed, check for ETCS level 0
I am surprised they cannot convert it from radiator dynamic brake to grid feed.
Probably not economical. The Re 465 are getting freed up due to self-propelling trains replacing older person trains, so it seems logical to se them I guess.
it would mean probably replacing the transformer and step swtich. that would mean essentially rebuilding the entire loco, so why not just buying a better, more powerful one anyway, because this loco is like already past its life expetancy anyway
@@sandro-here I see. I am stuck in the canadian railway mindset of rebuilding and upfitting old locomotives because they don't make any new ones.
deine tension ist eigentlich voltage.... ;P
There are plenty of nations that are electrified enough to use these (if they have the right gage) hope the find new homes beyond the scrapper's magnet
What language are you guys speaking in video? It's not German?
Technically it is :-D It's called Swiss German, which is a plethora of dialects, none of them sounds like actual German at all.
@@sandro-hereinteresting. It sounds like Scandinavian languages to me. I have some distant family living in North Switzerland it seems to me that the German they speak is a "proper" German, even they say it's closer to literary German than the Bavarian dialect. What region is this in video?
@@chiefrebelangel817 No Swiss speaks proper German :-D In the video, you hear Valais and Bern dialects.
@@sandro-here thanks for clarification. Regarding "proper" German what I meant is like what would you would learn in school
@@chiefrebelangel817 Yes, there is no such thing in any place in Switzerland ;-) Very much unlike Germany, where thousands or millions speak closely to "proper". However in Switzerland, we only have dialects (we do ->write
3:32 - that would be PASSENGER train... I guess that LKW/ PKW naming convention just kicked in...? ;-)
Also, I'd consider changing the intro shooting angle - for me, a viewer, it feels as if I were a rabbit (or a rat) in a hole being greeted by a hunting dog (cat)... Why not "eye level" camera position?
5:21 - "Spannung" is indeed "tension", but "voltage" would be more accurate translation in the context of "electricity" (or "electrical potential difference") - so "carrying a current of 15 kV voltage, AC at 16 POINT 7 Hz". Again, not "wrong", but then not quite "right" either; the "dot" is the mark, when placed at the end of a sentence is called "full stop", when used as decimal point then it is, well, a point ;-)
Now, I know this is "about trains and locos", not "about English", but using language patterns and phraseology of foreign language when speaking it does help to convey the message, I'd say. Also, I'm not going to point all of these "carbon copy expressions" as I'm mostly skipping through this video (so I will surely miss most of them) and at any rate I'm not going to make fun of this - that earlier remark was meant merely to "point an issue" (or "provide a feedback"), and nothing more. Also, I'm not a native English speaker either, so I do understand how it works, and I do make, sometimes, similar mistakes. Cheers!
it's so loud! haha
Only 35
Hey Sandro
Ich heisse auch Sandro und lebe in der Nordwestschweiz. Ich habe einen guten Bekannten, der bei der Niesen-Bahn arbeitet. Wenn du gerne möchtest, könnte ich den Kontakt herstellen, falls du über die Niesen Standseilbahn einen Film machen möchtest.
Grüsse
Sandro
Salü Sandro, hüerogüet! Ich habe schon ein Video von einer Standseilbahn: th-cam.com/video/c1bqv3Q0Vjg/w-d-xo.html - denkst du, die Niesenbahn ist unterschiedlich genug, um für ein weiteres Video zu reichen?
BLS = Bastel-Laden-Spiez 😅
Such a shame to scrap a good loco a lot of British electric locos redundant by new vehicles have been exported to eastern Europe and still giving great service in a new country
Way can't they just modernize the inside of it instead of scrapping the whole locomotive?! That would be way cooler then replacing it with a new boring modern locomotive.
Its so sad they didn't replace them with self-powered locomotives and scrap those hideous power lines. Them newer locos look even worse. It would greatly improve the experience not seeing a power electric pole every 50 feet. I would rather take the bus.
First time here. WHY do you SHOUT?
No mention of the country
Schweiz, but I agree
I marked the exact location in the metadata of the video, hope this helps!
@@MrNissetuta From the last series of videos, describing that exact location, and all the Swiss towns it is connecting, along with maps, kind of superfluous to say, plus the entire crew speaking with Swiss accents also gives a massive clue.
@@sandro-here needs to be in the title and description
It is literally mentioned in the introduction?
Don't shout, man.
Which part are you specifically referring to?
..what ''deutsch'' is this ...? jeez man !..like speakin' portugese-deutsch, jeez !
Its the Vallis accent of swiss german. The most beautiful language in the world.
it was a blessing listening to him rambling about nerd shit.