Furka Dampfbahn rotary action

[Wayne Laepple]

Here's the Furka Railway in Switzerland, showing off their serious snowfall and rotary snowplow in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW-d-_wduck

[Graham Buxton]

Both the rotary and the locomotive pushing it are steam powered!   

[John Kokas]

Makes you want to build a 2 foot Rotary, right guys?    Just kidding ..............

[Benjamin Richards]

That video is way better than last year's video... I think they tried in the springtime and the slush jammed up the machine.

Almost as cool as a Gravely snow cannon...Just kidding!!! 

[Jeff Schumaker]

Very impressive.

Jeff S.

[John McNamara]

This is the line where they used to remove one of the bridges in the winter to protect against avalanches. The line is now bypassed by the Furka Base Tunnel. I had a cab ride though the previously used Furka Summit Tunnel -  the ride of a lifetime!

[Bill Baskerville]

Notice that the fireman feeding the fire box on the plow is standing on an oriental carpet.  Also, how clean everything was, and no one was wearing gloves.

[Benjamin Richards]

Notice that the fireman feeding the fire box on the plow is standing on an oriental carpet.

Wouldn't want to scuff the varnish underneath!

One hears tales of cooking various kind of food on the tops of fireboxes...here's one I'd actually eat from!

[Bob Holmes]

According to their website, they still remove the bridge every year.  Check it out.

[Graham Buxton]

The removable bridge has its own Wikipedia page, here:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steffenbachbr%C3%BCcke

That page is in the German Wikipedia, and the language is German, but if you use Chrome as a browser to view that page, you can tell Google to translate it to English.   (My primary browser is Firefox, but I could not find a way to get an English version using Firefox, hence my suggestion to use Chrome.)

[Vincent "Lightning" LeRow]

I found a video of an operable model of the folding bridge.  There's some real clever engineering going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVGx5m57KYo

[Benjamin Richards]

Comically, the German-language wiki page contains a schematic diagram which is annotated in...Italian.

Not that the Chrome auto-translator would be of any help on an image file anyway.

[Bill Reidy]

Not surprisingly, the Furka Steam Railway's website defaults to the German language and offers Italian as an option.  German, French and Italian are the predominate languages in Switzerland, with usage varying by canton.  Like Graham, I found Chrome provides a very good option for English translation.

The FSR website includes a link to a spring Youtube video of the removable Steffenbachbrücke being placed back into position for the 2021 season.  That's one amazing piece of engineering.

Michelle and I were fortunate to travel the Glacier Express route between St. Moritz and Zermatt in the summer of 1995 as part of an 11-day visit to Switzerland.  Our trip over the Furka Overalp took us through the Furka Base Tunnel rather than the heritage FSR route.