GoldenPassLine

As a Gold Pass Line simplified, also called Gold Pass, is called a co-branded by the Swiss railway companies Montreux- Bernese Oberland Railway, Central Railway and BLS train from Lucerne to Montreux. This initially leads on the meter gauge Brünigbahn to Interlaken Ost, then on the standard gauge routes Thun and Spiez -Erlenbach train -Zweisimmen train to Zweisimmen and from there on the turn meter-gauge railway Montreux- Lenk im Simmental goal. The entire train is 189 kilometers long, of which 53 km standard gauge. The journey, including the two Umstiege is about four hours and 45 minutes.

Warped concept of the third rail

As early as the 1930s, the first idea to build the connection by building a three-rail track into a continuous meter gauge connection originated. After several studies, most of which were adopted as a result of lack of money on ice followed. The last study from the years 2005/ 06, showed mainly the problem that would arise in Spiez train station. There currently cross the trains on the tracks of the Lötschberg axis. For security and capacity reasons, the BLS denied here a crossroads of meter gauge on the same level with the route to the Lötschberg base tunnel. This would therefore have a complex structure in space Spiez unbundling requires, for example in the form of an underground railway station. Thus, the necessary infrastructure costs were estimated at 205 million Swiss francs. Add to that the necessary costs for the vehicles would come, because the MOB used a driving voltage of 900 volts DC, the other lines, however, are electrified with 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC. In addition, the rack sections in the course of Brünigbahn. In September 2006, the consortium of BLS, SBB and MOB came to the conclusion that the necessary funds of around a quarter of a billion Swiss francs were unobtainable in the near future.

Common brand

In the years 2001/2002 the connection was decided to apply with a common brand identity. As a result, according to vehicles of MOB, the BLS and SBB Brünigbahn were in a new color scheme white / gold / black repainted / pasted. During the year 2013 ended this appearance.

Planned lane change car

On 3 October 2008, the MOB presented a new variant, the massive savings compared to the concept of the third rail promises: the development of a novel lane change bogie for 1435 and 1000 mm track gauge. This new development is necessary because the existing lane change bogies work in a much narrower range, such as the Talgo between 1668 mm broad gauge and standard gauge. The bogie change that comes closest to the requirements, comes from Japan. Here are since 1994 already bogies in testing, which can switch between the 1067 mm wide Cape gauge and standard gauge. This should go on the track Hakata- Shin- Yatsushiro to scheduled operations in 2010/2011. However, none of these existing bogie types let transferred or adapted to the Swiss requirements. This was prevented mainly by the limited to the MOB axle load of eight tons; the existing two- bogie types are all designed for an axle load of 16 tonnes or more. The currently available systems would therefore be too heavy for use on the Golden Pass Line. Another point is that the existing rolling stock should be used to keep the costs low. It was therefore only a modification of the truck on the narrow gauge cars in question, which would guarantee a further use of the bodies.

The patent for the new truck was registered on 18 February 2008. This bogie has individual wheels which are each mounted on one side in a triangular half-frames. These half-frames are mutually fitted to a stub shaft and connected by a crossmember. This Traverse is raised during the lane change process and then allowed a displacement of the half-frame, and thus the change of gauge. Because of the different height of the support for standard and meter gauge and the car body can be brought to two different floor heights, which is advantageous, since present on the standard and meter gauge network different platform heights. In the first testing phase is to dispense with the installation of a braking gear. Therefore, in the first phase of deployment of the train route will be limited to the portion of Montreux- Interlaken Ost, which first requires the establishment of only one Umspuranlage in Zweisimmen. The first bogie prototype and a prototype Umspuranlage were successfully tested in 2010. The plans of the participating railway operator and MOB, which were approved by the cantonal and federal authorities in 2011, provide that from 2016 with three spurwechsel enabled train compositions of the scheduled train service between Montreux and Spiez is taken; individual trains will travel to Interlaken Ost. The total cost is estimated at 97 million Swiss francs, of which 42 million Swiss francs are provided for the infrastructure part.