REOS 028: Chiasso, the Italian border

DVDR £ 12,95  € 19,50   

The railways at Chiasso, on the Swiss/Italian border, consist of many sorting yards to deal with the volume and variety of freight and passenger trains arriving and departing daily. On track one, the overhead power can be switched from the Italian supply of 3000V DC to the Swiss 15000V AC. Trains arriving from Italy enter the station with their pantographs lowered.

We start at the South end of the station platform looking towards Italy. We witness passenger trains exchanging locos, whilst freight trains arrive and depart from Italy.

We visit the three marshalling yards, which cater for the different activities in handling freight trains at the border. The southern yard deals with freight wagons which are held for longer periods, the western “arrivals yard” is used to exchange motive power for trains continuing to Switzerland, whilst the middle “shunting yard” carries out marshalling of wagons to make new consists. Trains bound for Italy are hauled from the “arrivals yard” to Chiasso station by INFRA diesels. The centre of the return loop houses large goods sheds connected by platforms.

A steeply graded single track curve connects the “arrivals yard” to the Gotthard line.

With “open access”, we witness new train operating companies: IF Cargo, Railion and Rail4Chem. This adds to the variety of the footage.

Detailed maps are inserted between the scenes to identify camera positions. We only use original sound recordings, without any spoken commenrtary or music.

Runningtime: ca. 81 minuten.

DVD+R. Stereo/Dolby®-surround.

© REOS Beeldprodukties