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Swedish museum makes way for iconic train

Railway buffs in Sweden are on track for a treat as a rare Swiss locomotive is set to roll into a Swedish transport museum in the coming days to celebrate a century of electric trains in the Nordic country.

Published: 2 September 2015 08:09 CEST
Updated: 2 September 2015 09:23 CEST

Swedish museum makes way for iconic train

The iconic Swiss locomotive. Photo: SBB

One of Swiss Federal Railways' (SBB) emblematic locomotives headed out of the country on Monday for a final trip – to a transport museum in northern Sweden.

The 'Crocodile' electric locomotive, built in 1925 to haul freight through the Alps on the Gotthard Bahn, began its journey to the museum from Olten on Monday morning.

It was to be hauled to Germany where it will be pulled by another locomotive to Poland and then transferred to a cargo vessel to Sweden.

After a trip of eight days it will be transported to Sveriges Järnvägsmuseum (the Swedish Railway Museum) in Gävle, about 170 kilometres north of Stockholm.

Painted green, with yellow trim, the locomotive will go on display for a week as the museum celebrates 100 years of electric trains in Sweden.

“Generations of Swedish children grew up with a toy model of our 'Crocodile' and the model today in the bedrooms of many Swedish children and adults,” SBB said on its website.

The 20-metre-long train engine is particular for being composed of three sections hinged together to navigate the curving rail routes wending through mountain passes.

The 131-tonne locomotive is being accompanied by three dozen travel enthusiastists, 20 Minuten newspaper reported.

They are paying 2,900 francs for the one-way journey, which includes meals and stops in spa hotels.

The locomotive is set to arrive in Gävle on September 7th and is scheduled to be returned to Switzerland on September 22nd.

Norway’s transport minister Knut Arild Hareide has asked the country’s railway authority Jernbanedirektoratet to investigate the options for opening a night rail connection between Oslo and Copenhagen.

An answer is expected by November 1st, after which the Norwegian government will decide whether to go forward with the proposal to directly link the two Nordic capitals by rail.

Jernbanedirektoratet is expected to assess a timeline for introducing the service along with costs, market and potential conflicts with other commercial services covering the route.

“I hope we’ll secure a deal. Cross-border trains are exciting, including taking a train to Malmö, Copenhagen and onwards to Europe,” Hareide told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

The minister said he envisaged either a state-funded project or a competition awarding a contract for the route’s operation to the best bidder.

A future Oslo-Copenhagen night train rests on the forthcoming Jernbanedirektoratet report and its chances of becoming a reality are therefore unclear. But the Norwegian rail authority earlier this year published a separate report on ways in which passenger train service options from Norway to Denmark via Sweden can be improved.

“We see an increasing interest in travelling out of Norway by train,” Jernbanedirektoratet project manager Hanne Juul said in a statement when the report was published in January.

“A customer study confirmed this impression and we therefore wish to make it simpler to take the train to destinations abroad,” Juul added.

Participants in the study said that lower prices, fewer connections and better information were among the factors that would encourage them to choose the train for a journey abroad.

Norway’s rail authority also concluded that better international cooperation would optimise cross-border rail journeys, for example by making journey and departure times fit together more efficiently.

The Femahrn connection between Denmark and Germany, currently under construction, was cited as a factor which could also boost the potential for an overland rail connection from Norway to mainland Europe.

Night trains connected Oslo to Europe via Copenhagen with several departures daily as recently as the late 1990s, but the last such night train between the two cities ran in 2001 amid dwindling demand.

That trend has begun to reverse in recent years due in part to an increasing desire among travellers to select a greener option for their journey than flying.

Earlier this summer, a new overnight train from Stockholm to Berlin began operating. That service can be boarded by Danish passengers at Høje Taastrup near Copenhagen.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about the new night train from Copenhagen to Germany

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