The Czech Chess Train

Chess, anyone?

Chess Train locomotive 362 039-0 in Prague

I photographed this locomotive when I was in Prague at the main train station. The paint scheme intrigued me - why were there chess pieces on the locomotive? A little research was in order.

http://praguechess.cz

Šachový Vlak means Chess Train. This locomotive was part of the annual Chess Train that hosts an on board chess tournament as it travels from Prague to Vienna and back. The train left Prague on October 9th, a week after my wife and I went home. The train has been running annually since 2011.

The 2015 train had 11 carriages, standard Czech Railways (České dráhy) cars decorated for the event and each named for a world champion chess player.

In 2015 the route was Prague - Dresden - Wroclaw - Bratislava - Vienna - Prague, over 4 days.

Four grand masters were competing as part of the 122 chess players on board. Any chess player could participate as long as they paid the registration fee (180 Euros).

http://praguechess.cz

Participants described the venue as very interesting and entertaining, although it presented its own challenges. For example, the sun could shine on one player's face and distract him or her, or the movement of the train itself could be distracting.

The winner of the individual tournament was Swedish grand master Lars Karlsson, who was also a pioneer of computer-based chess.

I've always loved chess. In high school I would study the grand masters' famous games. If you ever play chess with me, take it seriously, because I will. :)

EDIT: I was looking back through some of my European photos and I realized I had accidentally captured another chess train locomotive, 362 035-0 I believe.

Check... and mate!

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• The Prague Chess Society

A Morning at Prague's Main Train Station, Part 2

Here's the second half of my railfan morning at Prague's main train station (hlavní nádraží). (First part)

Here's a different angle on the train station, showing the old city in the distance. The spires on the left horizon belong to the Týn Church, which was right beside our hotel. In fact when I looked out our room's window, I was looking at the side of the church.  The spires closer to the centre belong to several buildings, including the Old Town Hall Tower, home of the famous Astronomical Clock.

Hlavní nádraží, Praha

Here's a pretty versatile engine, a class 380 loco. This is capable of running up to 200 km/hr (125 MPH) under three different electrical systems: 3000V DC, 25 kV AC (50 Hz), and 15 kV AC (16.7 Hz).

CZ locomotive 380 015-8 at Prague station

I spotted sister locomotive 380 018-2 at one of the platforms later that morning.

Czech engine 380 018-2 at Prague station

Here's a Railjet coming into the station - a train much like the one we took between Vienna and Prague.

Railjet train arriving in Prague

I promised a diesel locomotive, and here it is. Czech 714 023-9 was working on the "back side" of the station, shuttling cars back and forth. I saw it had an empty autorack beside it, maybe as a reacher car? It was shuffling both passenger cars and full autoracks.

Czech locomotive 714 023-9 at work

 I walked around to get an overhead view of the locomotive. For a diesel locomotive it has a small stack.

Overhead view of Czech 714 023-9 locomotive

The class 714 locomotives are diesel-electrics capable of 80 km/hr (50 MPH). They have pretty low pulling power by North American standards, rated at 469 HP and weighing only 64 tons. You might say they are equivalent to the old 65-ton GE centre cab locos.

There were a couple of other switchers around, albeit electric switchers. Both are class 111 locomotives, essentially 1000 HP switchers. 111 011-3 is very very worn.

Czech locomotive 111 011-3 in Prague

The other class 111 was on the far side of the station. I reached it with my long lens... with some stuff in the way.

Czech locomotive 111 006-3 in Prague

I guess I have one more diesel to share - an RDC-like self-propelled car. It's a class 854 diesel hydraulic unit, with a Caterpillar prime mover and a top speed of 120 km/hr (75 MPH).

Czech class 854 railcar in Prague

The below is a class 680 high speed train built by Alstom using Pendolino (tilting) technology. The seven car trainsets are capable of 230 km/hr (140 MPH). This train reminded me of the Eurostar trains, although Eurostar can reach 300 km/hr.

Czech 682 001-3 in Prague

I'll close with a locomotive with an interesting paint scheme, decorated for the Euro.cz web site.

Czech 382 086-1 in Prague

So. Many. Trains. I was in railfan heaven!

PS - I want to share a few Czech freight cars that I saw.

Open autoracks! Who would imagine this in North American any more?

 I loved how these logs were stacked in gondolas:

Logs in gondolas

 This is a more "North American" looking bulkhead flat car:

Czech bulkhead flat car

Thanks for reading!

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Related content:

• Back to Vienna
• Start in Prague

A Morning at Prague's Main Train Station, Part 1

My wife and I visited Vienna and Prague this fall. We spent 6 days in Vienna and 6 days in Prague and thoroughly enjoyed both cities. After seeing the main train station ("hlavní nádraží") in Prague, and Tom Gatermann's great photos of the rail traffic around the station, I wanted to spend some time there. I negotiated with my wife and we agreed that I could spend a few hours one morning. On October 4th I woke up early and left the hotel just after 6 AM so I could walk the 15 minutes or so to the station while the sun rose.

On the way to the station, I captured a tram. See Trams of Prague for more!

Prague tram 8513

Once I reached the southwest end of the station I spotted someone hard at work cleaning the windows of a CityElefant train. These are electric multiple-unit (EMU) trains produced by Škoda for suburban use.

CityElefant 471 069-5 in Praha

Here's a view of the area. I spent most of my time at the southwest end, on Vinohradská street, although I did go up Španělská for a side view of the station.

See the "Me!" at bottom right of the map for where I stood for most of these photos.

This was my early view from Vinohradská street. You can see that the sun was up but not cresting the ridge east of the station.

Prague station area

Under Vinohradská there are three tunnels. All of these were used while I was there.

Tunnels under Vinohradská

 The photo below was taken later in the morning when there was more light.

Coming out of a tunnel under Vinohradská

The action was often fast and furious with trains arriving and departing all the time. From my vantage point I could often see trains on the other (northwest) end of the station but I couldn't really photograph them, given that it was a good half a kilometre away. I'm not going to post every train I saw - there were too many - but I want to provide a flavour of the rail traffic I saw.

Here's an overview of the entire station, at 7:24 AM.

Note the original station at left (preserved), the enclosed glass train shed, and the three covered platforms at right. There are a lot of tracks here!

Here's a view looking back at Vinohradská and the National Museum (Národní muzeum), and a train going into the tunnels.

I used my telephoto lens to get a closer view of a few trains at the station. Note the complex web of towers and electrical wire to serve the trains.

Given the low light available, I had to use a slow shutter speed - around 1/25s. That's too slow to freeze a train, so I resorted to panning. Here's a few pans I took.

I like how the train cars are so different

Pan-tastic!

Speaking of catenary wire... I'd hate to be an electrician here!

Wires, wires everywhere

 I think all of the "50" signs are speed limit signs, 50 km/hr. In rural areas the trains don't seem to slow down through the rural stations. I can recall blowing through some small towns at track speed, which surprised me.

Czech trains in Prague

A CityElefant train on the move.

CityElefant in Prague

Czech Railways 150 209-5 is another Škoda locomotive. It's a 3000V DC locomotive capable of 140 km/hr (87 MPH).

Czech Railways 150 209-5 in Praha

That's probably enough locomotive photos for now! In the next post I will finish up my morning railfanning at the main Prague train station. It will include a diesel switcher and a couple of electric switcher locomotives!

PS - for your amusement... when I was shooting trams in Prague, I was photobombed...

Photobombed by a nun. Now I've seen everything.

Move on to part 2

A Day Trip to Kutná Hora

While in Prague, my wife and I decided to take a day trip to visit Kutná Hora. We had considered several options, including Cesky Krumlov, the Terezin concentration camp, and of course Kutná Hora. Cesky Krumlov looks lovely but it's a 2.5 hour trip in a bus each way and that doesn't leave a lot of time to actually sightsee if you're only going for a day. The Terezin concentration camp was a possibility but we were drawn to Kutná Hora for the weird "bone church" (Sedlec ossuary, see below) and the town itself.

Early on October 2 we walked from our hotel to the main Prague train station ("hlavní nádraží") and took a train to Kutná Hora. When you buy your ticket in Prague, you can get a ticket to the Kutná Hora main train station, but I don't advise this. The train station is a few kilometres from the town itself so it is not a practical walk. You can buy a ticket for Kutná Hora město ("town") which includes a transfer to a local train to take you to the town itself. The ticket is about Cdn $6/person one way, and the ride takes about an hour.

Diesel at Kutná Hora station

The transfer between trains at the main train station in Kutná Hora is quite quick, so don't dawdle like I did to take a photo! I saw this diesel switcher and had to grab a quick shot, but we very nearly missed the transfer to the local train. My wife was not impressed, and neither was the conductor of the local train! At least the picture turned out.

The local train is a little two car affair, and I'll provide a photo later. We chose to get off at the Sedlec suburb rather than ride the train right into town. The ossuary is there so we decided to get that first. There is also a large cathedral in Sedlec with the unwieldy name of  the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist. It's impressive and important enough to earn a UNESCO designation. I checked it out briefly but we were chiefly interested in the ossuary.

What to say about this place? It's weird and creepy and interesting. The ossuary is located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints ("Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých") and contains the bones of between 40,000 and 70,000 people. Many of these bones have been artistically arranged in the 1500s and it has become a huge tourist draw.

Here are a few photos. If you google Kutná Hora bone church you will see many more.

So weird.

There's a city bus that runs from the Sedlec suburb into the old town. It's quite inexpensive but a tad slow, but we took it anyway. We got off near the giant St. Barbara's Church and visited that, then walked through the old town and had lunch at the excellent Restaurant Dačický.

The local train was due to leave at 4:45 PM so we wandered over to the station area to wait for it. I took a photo of a crossing just to show the crossing signal.

Pozor vlak = "attention train".

I'm honestly not sure what the different light colours mean, as I never saw it operate.

I took a photo from the crossing to document the yard and area - see below. There are a few details visible in the photo.

Kutná Hora train yard

The station is visible in the centre. You can see a dwarf signal on the right, and a few tracks.

The train station itself looks fairly impressive, but in reality the passengers seem to see only a small part of it.

Kutná Hora train station exterior

Kutná Hora train station interior

While waiting, I took some photos of the area. There is a nice looking building - maybe an engine house? - opposite the station.

Kutná Hora engine house?

I wish I had had time to go peer in the windows.

There was some very old railway equipment nearby too. I was wondering if they were being collected for a museum display or something. They didn't look operational at all.

Locomotive in Kutná Hora

Old railway equipment in Kutná Hora

Our cute little train arrived, right on time.

Kutná Hora local train

Everyone hopped on board and we rattled our way back to the main station outside town. From there we walked under the tracks to the platform to wait for the train to Prague.

Waiting for the train in Kutná Hora

A train to Brno came by while we were waiting. Soon our train came and we boarded and headed back to Prague. I had a little GPS app in my phone that I used to clock our top speed. Pretty impressive for a local train!

The app is pretty cool.




On the way I snapped this photo of a train in the Praha Liben train station, a suburban station I believe.

Once we arrived at the main Prague station, I took a photo of our train and a photo of the train station itself.

Our train at the Prague train station

 Like many European train stations, the train shed is pretty open and airy.

Train shed of the Prague train station

That was our day visiting Kutná Hora by train!

Next up, I spent a morning railfanning the Prague train station.

Previous posts in the series:

• Public Transit in Vienna
• A Day Trip to Salzburg
• On to the Czech Republic
• Trams of Prague

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