Night-time operations for a smooth railway operation
Wednesday, 4 o'clock am: Work has been completed on re-feeding the overhead line at Rotstock in the Jungfrau Railway tunnel on the Kleine Scheidegg-Jungfraujoch route. The control centre in Mühleberg is contacted to switch the overhead line back on. Subsequently, this should be checked for functionality. The Jungfraubahn technical support staff did the necessary work during the night, so that the railway operations can be fully maintained during the day and the operation can be started as usual the next morning.
Adrian Castelberg is head of technical maintenance at Jungfrau Railway. His working day is always full of surprises. Usually, it includes a lot of office work, which is necessary for planning and organising the upcoming maintenance work. Not infrequently, the plans of the 52-year-old are thrown up in the air at short notice, however. Signal or switch breakdowns, ventilation and heating system malfunctions, or other technical equipment that does not work, make a quick repair by means of technical maintenance essential. This means that planned work must wait. In general, technical maintenance requires a high degree of flexibility.
Inclusion of other departments
The trained mountain guide also calls upon additional specialist areas of the Jungfrau Railways to help out with his work, or in an advisory capacity – as in the case of the night-time work mentioned in the introduction. After contacting the control centre in Mühleberg, it transpired that the overhead line cannot be switched on again. Castelberg and his team immediately set off to assess any problems on site. After an intensive search without results, the electrician decided to call in the Jungfrau Railway power plant.
Nils von Allmen, head of technical systems and former head of the power plant, tried to help solve the problem by remote diagnostics on the phone, unfortunately without success. The man from Lauterbrunnen decided without further ado to drive with an employee to the Kleine Scheidegg. They were picked up there by technical maintenance and taken by train to the trouble spot. The four of them continued to search for the cause of the disturbance, which was luckily soon discovered. A bolt had fallen out of the locking system and was "hidden" behind the shelf. This had been caused by shaking during the work at night. After the bolt had been successfully reassembled and screwed back on, the overhead line could be switched on easily and the train service started punctually the next morning.
Adrian Castelberg is a trained electrician and carpenter. He also completed mountain guide training. Since some work takes place in high alpine terrain, this training gives him the ideal preparation for the activity as head of technical maintenance at the Jungfrau Railway. Castelberg appreciates his varied area of activity and is grateful that in addition to the specialists on his team, he can always count on the support of other departments at Jungfrau Railways.
