A  DAY AT THE SWISS TRANSPORT MUSEUM

One attraction in Lucerne that we had read about and was highly recommended was the Swiss Transport Museum - the Verkehrshaus der Schweiz.  The Museum was about a half an hour walk along the lakeside from the centre of Lucerne.  We enjoyed a quiet stroll along the shoreline.  There were a number of parks and green spaces on the journey.

The water tower on the Chapel Bridge with Mount Pilatus in the background

A sculpture on the way

The Museum as opened in 1959 and has series of halls featuring Railways, Transport, Ships and Aircraft.  We started in the Railway Hall and one feature of the museum are a large number of interactive exhibits. It was not surprising that the St. Gotthard Tunnel is featured, the tunnel we had come through from Milan a few days before.  For this they had created a  special exhibit illustrating everyday life and work in Göschenen, a village at the entrance to the tunnel. You ride a service train to the tunnel's workface, you meet men and women (talking dummies) who helped build this important project linking Europe's north and south. In its day the Gotthard tunnel was Switzerland's largest construction site by far. The 15 kilometre long tunnel took ten years to build was broken through on 29 February 1880 and opened at the end of May 1882.

There is a new tunnel being built at this time.  The new tunnel, the Gotthard Base Tunnel is expected to open in 2016. With a route length of 57 kilometres and a total of 151.84 kilometres of tunnels, shafts and passages, it will be the world's longest railway tunnel.  The new route will save up to an hour on the journey from Zurich to Milan because it will be straight and avoid the need for spiral tunnels into the mountain which the old line employs. The traveller will get there sooner but will miss a lot of the wonderful mountain scenery on the current route.  We were glad we did the journey it opened.

There is a large railway model showing the line from the northern exit from the old tunnel passing through the village of Wassen and continuing down in the direction of Zurich.  There are a series of trains, both passenger and freight that run every hour.  They complete one circuit by returning through the model inside the structure.  It was very impressive.  The section at Wassen shows the line going south, making a 180 degree turn inside the mountain emerging going back north across the valley, entering another 180 degree turn inside the mountain on the other side before emerging going south again towards Zurich. 

The line through Wassen

 

The line below Wassen

   
There were many real locomotivies, carriages and railway paraphernalia on show.

The next hall was Transportation.  The outside of the building is covered with road signs.  It was full of real and model cars, trucks, buses and anything on wheel or tracks.

The outside of the Transport Building

The Aircraft Hall as obvious because it had two real aircraft outside, a Convair Coronado and a Douglas DC-3.  The Coronado was, in its day, the fastest jet airliner in production.  This was the era of the more successful Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8.  There were only thirty seven Coronado built, used mainly by American Airlines and Swissair.  Although fast, it didn't live up to its full specification in terms of range.  The version on display is the last in line, the 990A.  Swissair had eight and they were quite pleased with them using them from 1962 until 1975.  In 1975 the one on display was flown for the last time from Zurich airport to a military airfield near Lucerne.  From there it was put on a barge and moved to the shore by the Museum.  You can walk inside right up to the cockpit and learn the history of the aircraft.

The Swissair Convair Coronado HB-ICC

The prototype Douglas DC-3 was flown in 1935 and over 16,000 were built.  Over 600 were for passenger use and over 10,000 were the military version, the C-47.  There were a number built in Russia and  Japan.  The version on display began life in 1937 with the US Airforce as a C-47.  It transferred to the RAF and then was taken over by Swissair and used a freighter.  In 1998 there were still over 400 in service across the world.  

Swissair DC-3 HB-IRN

The final Hall was Ships.  They also had a show about navigation, the Nautirama, where you are taken on an audio-visual tour through the history of navigation and experience a realistic (and prize-winning) depiction of the turbulent events of the early days of steam navigation.  Again we were lucky as we were the only people there at the time so we had the English version.  There was the usual collection of ships models and other nautical items.

This was part of the Ship display and was a ball railway in the style of Emmett with nautical overtones

We found so much to see and do that we were there for a full day.  We had a simple lunch in the cafe and from there we could see a special exhibit on transport.  They had created a set of roads, railways, cranes, a harbour and a set of containers where children (and adults) could play to their heart's content. It was nice to see this going on and there wasn't an electronic device in sight.

We made our way back to the centre along the lake shore, There were always plenty of boats to watch and quite number of swans.

A view across the Lake and one lonely swan

The swan, with a baby on its back, in close up

Another of the famous things to see is the Lion of Lucerne, just up from the Chapel Bridge to commemorate Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Mark Twain praised the sculpture of a mortally-wounded lion as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.

The Lion of Lucerne

He did look pretty sad indeed.

The lion is situated in what was probably in the most crowded place in Lucerne.  Our final stop for the day was the the Church of St. Leodegaris which is the most important church and a landmark in the city of Lucerne. It was built in parts from 1633 to 1639 on the foundation of the Roman basilica which had burnt in 1633.

 The Church of St. Leodegaris