In Switzerland, there is a museum railroad that uses the abandoned NG cog-wheel main line of the FO, now MGB over Furka pass. The DFB, as this museum railroad is called, uses old steam engines that originally ran there. But there were not enough left. So in 1990, a sort of homecoming was arranged by getting engines back from Vietnam. Some of the engines have since been put back into operation. Lots of parts needed to be done from scratch. Meanwhile, there is need for more steam engines to be able to operate over the whole line when it opens next year. The two HG 4/4 engines that are now being rebuilt - often more like newly built - never ran in Switzerland. But they were constructed by the same Winterthur locomotive works as the other ones. They were then sent to Vietnam, at the time a French colony.
Lots of discussions here in the forum are reminding me of the problems encountered at the DFB and by the many volunteers who are working in the rebuild program. There is a website that shows a bit of the work on these four-couplers. [
www.furka-bergstrecke.ch]
It is all in German, and the pictures of the detail work are found by clicking on the fine blue text. Each line opens the pictures from a particular work weekend.
If you go back just a few months, you see work done on other engines as well. But the group always has to tackle imminent jobs first. Thus this fall, they also built parts for water cranes needed on the new extension.
[attachment 8138 stand_04l.jpg]
[attachment 8139 1990Rckfhrunghg44_304_1l.jpg]