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Zürich's post office railway
filed on: 17.12.2013 (17th Dec 2013)
Discussions on the Swissrail Yahoogroup have recently turned to the post office railway that once connected the Sihlpost (main post office) to the (now closed) post office 8023 in Hauptbahnhof. A similar line operated in Luzern. Like its longer London counterpart, the Zürich line was narrow gauge and presumably operated automatically. According to the German Wikipedia article on Sihlpost, the line was 340m long and had a gauge of 600mm and ran from 1938 to 1980. The car(s) had a wheelbase of 1600mm and a payload of 250kg. The power supply was by cables located between the tracks. Initially the power supply was three-phase 220V. This was converted to DC in 1958. Apparently, one of the cars survives in the Museum for Communication in Bern. The Wikipedia article has a photograph, which I have copied here (copyright Creative Commons, Sandstein). I have no idea why the car carries the Luzern arms.
See also my short 2007 contribution on another little know underground narrow gauge line, the EWZ railway.
This news item is from the 2013 newslog.
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