SBB Historic is a foundation aiming at preserving historical documents and artefacts from the history of Swiss railway transportation . It was founded by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in 2001 and it is based in Windisch .
25-529: The Foundation's services essentially include: Shortly after it was founded in 1902, the Swiss Federal Railways planned to build a railway museum in order to make the existing historically valuable vehicles and other railway artefacts accessible to the public. After lengthy discussions, a small railway museum was opened in 1918 in the service building of the Zurich freight yard on Hohlstrasse. As
50-675: A national exhibition in 1914, the Swiss Railway Museum was founded by Swiss Federal Railways in 1918 in Zurich. The concept eventually grew to encompass all transportation and, in 1942, the Swiss Museum of Transport association was established. Swiss Federal Railways was joined by the Swiss Postal Telegraph and Telephone as well as other private transport, trade, industry, and tourism organizations. However, when no suitable site could be found in Zurich for
75-489: A new location for their tests in Viry , in neighbouring France . The aircraft was assembled there on December 16 and a number of successful flights were made that same afternoon. The following day, the aircraft refused to takeoff on a number of attempts, but finally became airborne late in the afternoon. During this flight, at an altitude of 15 metres (50 ft), Henri attempted to bank the aircraft, but instead, it sideslipped to
100-603: A space station. The exhibits in the hall, which opened in 1984, provide an overview of how shipping developed in Switzerland. On display outside is the submersible Mésoscaphe , designed by Auguste Piccard for the Swiss national exposition of 1964 and the Rigi, the world's oldest surviving flush-deck side-wheeler steamer. The "Nautirama" multimedia show depicts the marine history of Central Switzerland . A cutaway model of
125-425: A tyre robot, interactive picking stations, and the virtual harvest-to-retail journey of a pineapple. The current aviation exhibition features civil aviation, mountain and rescue interventions, Swiss engineering achievements, and flying as a career. The 30 or so original aircraft on display range from a 1909 Dufaux 4 biplane, the oldest surviving Swiss aircraft; a Blériot XI flown by aviation pioneer Oskar Bider ,
150-445: Is Switzerland's most popular museum. The museum also maintains a large collection of work by Hans Erni , a local painter and sculptor. There are several other attractions in the museum besides the collection, including a planetarium , a large-format cinema and a 1:20,000 scale aerial photograph of Switzerland. The museum traces its history to 1897, when the first attempts at creating a museum of railway equipment were made. Following
175-882: Is located on the shore of Lake Lucerne in the northern section of the city of Lucerne , some 30 minutes walking time from the town centre. It is served by trains of the Lucerne S-Bahn at the adjacent Lucerne Verkehrshaus railway station , by boat services of the Schifffahrtsgesellschaft des Vierwaldstättersees at the Verkehrshaus-Lido landing stage on the lake, and by the Lucerne trolleybus system . All three provide convenient connections with central Lucerne. 47°03′10″N 8°20′09″E / 47.05278°N 8.33583°E / 47.05278; 8.33583 Dufaux 4 The Dufaux 4
200-707: The Gotthard railway between Erstfeld station and the Göschenen tunnel, including the three loop/curved tunnels near Wassen . Due to reconstruction of a part of the railway hall this large model railway was removed and put to storage until further notice. The hall also features a train simulator, which visitors can use to travel through the NRLA base tunnel. The road transport collection on display contains horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, motorcycles and cars, as well as an exhibition on road safety realized in cooperation with
225-619: The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention . One major attraction is the Car Theatre, in which a vehicle, selected from a collection of vehicles from all periods of automobile history, is hoisted out of a high-bay warehouse and presented on a stage. The external facades of the hall are covered by 344 Swiss road signs. The hall is also home to a special exhibition on the world of logistics. It comprises an AutoStore automated small parts warehouse, an animated miniature distribution centre,
250-679: The Panta Rhei, a mural depicting great Western thinkers on two 18 meter long panels. Also located at the museum are a planetarium and a theater. An exhibit about media was sponsored by Red Bull . The museum maintains a library and archive of documents related to transportation. The museum maintains the Swiss National Transport Collection of items of "important technical, social, economic and cultural development" related to transportation that were "produced, modified and/or used in Switzerland". The museum
275-559: The Pilatus saloon paddle steamer, engines by Saurer and Escher & Wyss , outboard engines and Voith-Schneider propellers trace the development of ship propulsion. Also in the exhibition are flying ships, the smallest two-man submersible, a model of the waterways locks in Birsfelden, sailing boats, a lifeboat from the ocean-going MS Carona [ de ] that sank in 1964, and a steamship parade featuring models of some of
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#1732791681035300-474: The aircraft was demonstrated for the Swiss military, but the brothers were informed that the aircraft was not suitable for military purposes. The Dufaux 4 is perhaps best remembered for a successful aerial crossing of Lake Geneva , performed by Armande on 28 August. He flew 66 km (41 mi) from St. Gingolph to Geneva at an altitude of around 150 m (500 ft), taking 56 minutes and 5 seconds for
325-549: The brothers hoped to claim a CHF 1,000 prize put up by the Automobile Club de Suisse for the first Swiss-built aircraft to fly a 1 km closed-circuit. In early December, flight tests commenced at a field in Corsier . Although the machine made a few hops, it would not fly. The Dufaux brothers concluded that the field chosen was too small to give the aircraft enough room to build up speed for takeoff, so they selected
350-571: The building of the former SBB material warehouse on the south side of Brugg train station. 47°28′31″N 8°12′21″E / 47.4754°N 8.2059°E / 47.4754; 8.2059 Swiss Museum of Transport The Swiss Museum of Transport or Verkehrshaus der Schweiz (literally "Transportation House of Switzerland") in Lucerne opened in July 1959 and exhibits all forms of transport including trains , automobiles , ships and aircraft as well as communication technology. It
375-532: The displays and damaged contents in the basement rooms of the navigation and aviation departments. The museum is divided into a variety of thematic areas: Amongst the rail transport collection are rolling stock from Switzerland's first ever railway, the Swiss Northern Railway and a SBB Ae 8/14 electric engine. An H0 gauge model railway layout of the Gotthard portrays the northern ramp of
400-415: The exhibition also displays a Meteodrone SUI-9999, a weather drone patented by the Swiss company Meteomatics that collects weather data from the mid and low levels of the atmosphere. The space exhibit houses the 4.5 tonne EURECA , one of only a few satellites returned safely to Earth. Other displays include a Spacelab pallet, a piece of the original foil of the solar wind experiment conducted as part of
425-550: The first Moon landing ( Apollo 11 , 1969), a Moon rock , a Martian landscape with full-size models of three Mars rovers , and duplicates of measuring instruments that explored the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet as part of the Rosetta mission . The interactive portion of the exhibition is a "Space Transformer", a large walk-in cube that rotates slowly around its diagonal axis, giving the impression of disorientation in
450-494: The ground. Both wings and the propeller were destroyed in the crash, but Henri was completely uninjured and the engine was undamaged. The brothers quickly rebuilt the machine in time to display it at an aviation meet at Colombier , but due to the inclement weather, did not attempt to fly it. By this time the brothers had started building the design, now dubbed the Dufaux 4 , in series and were accepting orders for aircraft. In May,
475-511: The interest for a national transport museum became apparent in the 1950s, the SBB participated in the foundation of the Swiss Museum of Transport , which was finally inaugurated in Lucerne in 1959. The maintenance of the functionality of the vehicles was mainly the responsibility of the main railway workshops and locomotive depots of the SBB. There the locomotives and wagons were maintained by
500-528: The old Grindelwald-Männlichen gondola cableway complete with cabin. The tourism section of the exhibition features the crowd-pulling Tourism Flipper marble run. The adjacent "Livemap Switzerland" is a 1:20000 scale aerial view of Switzerland that can be walked on. Built in 1979, the museum has on display a large collection of works by the Lucerne artist Hans Erni . It also holds temporary exhibitions featuring works by other artists. The second floor includes
525-524: The only surviving Lockheed Orion , three Swissair aircraft, including a Convair 990 ; a Northrop F-5E fighter in the colors of the Patrouille Suisse aerobatic team, and a Bombardier Challenger 604 used by the Rega air rescue service. A row of display cases containing scale models of aircraft show the development of aviation from its beginnings to the present day. Besides crewed aircraft,
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#1732791681035550-413: The planned museum, the city of Lucerne offered the association a 22,500 square metres (242,000 sq ft) site adjacent to Lake Lucerne . Construction began in 1957 and the museum was opened two years later on 1 July 1959. A planetarium was added in 1969 and an aerospace hall in 1972. In the course of a storm, flooding occurred in the museum on the night of 21–22 August 2005, which inundated some of
575-476: The vessels that ply Switzerland's lakes. The exhibition illustrates developments in aerial cableway engineering from early hand-operated cableways and ski lifts to modern-day large-capacity cable cars. It includes a working model of Engelberg 's Stand-Kleintitlis reversible cableway and a cabin from the Wetterhorn Elevator with original running gear. The exhibition also incorporates a section of
600-518: The workshop staff and the train drivers, in some cases through voluntary work. The transformation of the Swiss Federal Railways into a stock corporation in 1999 initiated a far-reaching restructuring process. In the course of concentrating on core competencies and cost optimization, SBB established the private law foundation "Historisches Erbe der SBB", commonly referred as to "SBB Historic" in English, in 2001. In 2015, SBB Historic moved from Bern into
625-471: Was an experimental aircraft built in Switzerland in 1909 and which was originally constructed as an unnamed biplane , the third aircraft constructed by the brothers Armand and Henri Dufaux . The aircraft was entirely conventional for the era - a two-bay biplane with unstaggered wings of equal span and a triangular-section fuselage. Construction began in mid-September 1909 and work proceeded rapidly, as
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