Lucerne: Today was our last full day in Switzerland, and was in its own way the equal of yesterday with respect to uniqueness. We hopped a train to Bern, the capital. There we boarded an extremely odd conveyance, a chartered steam tram or streetcar.
Think of a tiny coal-fired steam locomotive no longer than a sedan pulling one passenger car. That was our 120 year old vehicle for touring Bern, using the regular streetcar tracks. We rode around the city for a couple of hours attracting envious stares and hundreds of smiles, waves and grins. Our picture was taken by a zillion cell phones too.
The steam tram makes regular runs one Sunday a month, and does charters like ours. Our group had the whole tram to ourselves. I never remember seeing a photo of such a tram in old scenes in U.S. cities. I was of the opinion we went directly from horse power to electric power. You will soon see photos of the tram on the other DrC's blog, found at cruztalkingtwo.blogspot.com.
Tomorrow we train to Zurich, then to Paris, and finally to London where we overnight. The next day we take Delta from Heathrow to Minneapolis, and then home to Jackson. We've had a great time but I'm ready to go home.
Geoff Cooke does this RR-oriented excursion very well, and is a good guy too. If riding nearly every passenger conveyance that can be considered a train sounds like fun, check out his website
at geoffs-trains.com. Switzerland is superfine too, I love the mountain scenery.
