Campocologno, 553 m.
 

The little village of Campocologno lies on the Italian border. South of the village the valley becomes so narrow that there is only room for the road, the railway and the river. Further down the valley it widens up again and quickly the first houses of Tirano show up.

A special situation in Campocologno is the crossing shortly before the station, here the railway and the road cross the river on the same bridge and also cross each other on that bridge.

For parts of the freight the journey over the Bernina pass ends here, at Campocologno. Part of the wood, oil and cement, which is the majority of the freight transport in Graubünden is loaded onto trucks here in order to be transported further into Italy. Nowadays there is a new loading area on the other side of the river, opposite of the railway station. There are 4 tracks available now and enough room for the trucks. This is a great improvement over the old situation as the trucks used to block part of the station entrance. There used to be room for 5 wagons and 2 cranes only. The majority of the wood is transported all the way to Tirano and loaded onto truck there.
Our model layout shows you a picture of this station from the time that all the loading took place next to the station building. Hopefully it will be possible to really load some wood from our model train to a truck.

The railway yard

During the event "Rail 2008".
An overview of the station areas. Great to have pantograph up, that keeps the lights in the train on when standing still due to power from the overhead wire. Also the headlights stay turned on.

The emplacement from the other side.

Please find a picture based report below of our layout around Campocologno.
The pictures are not presented in chronological order but show the layout from left to right, mixed with pictures from the original.
You can click on the pictures for an enlargement in a new window.

Click here to go directly to the right hand side of Campocologno.  

River

Feb 2007
The river on the left side of Campocologno with "water".

Improvement of the railway crossing.

08-Mar-2011
It has turned out that cars do sometimes take the wrong tunnel entrance which is troublesome. Now for sale is a magnet strip that bonds the car much better to it's "track". Johan is busy applying such a band around the railway crossing near Campocologno.

The railroad crossing is getting new gates.

11-okt-2011
The railroad crossing at Campocologno still needed gates and now its happening. It's a crossing with 3 gates, 2 half gates for the main road and one full gate for the side road. We want to make it as realistic as possible. That means that the 2 gates on the main road should close first and only then the gate on the side road. Opening should all happen at the same time. Shown next to here is the still unpainted gate on the side road. Click on the picture next to here to see a film (9Mb) of the first automated closing. We use a servo to move the gate and a special printed circuit board regulates the speed of the movement. The gate on the side road gets its own servo and control so it can move separately from the gates on the main road.

VSZ road transport

2007
During our Jubilee, spotted in Campocologno

Cars with light

March 2009, home grown.

Overhead

A view from the same direction as the first picture but then in reality.
To be able to properly reconstruct the overhead catenary of Campocologno, this is one of the pictures that give us a good image of how the wires run.

Pedestrian bridge

24-Nov-2009
In Campocologno construction has resumed on the footbridge.

The home grown station building.

A picture from 2009
Built by one of members from the original drawings.

With pictures and drawings from the station building dating back to the beginning of the Bernina Bahn, one of our members created a model of the station. Including the fresco on the side of the tracks and some dirt this is a very good example of how to model a station.

From a  different angle

2016
Nicely visible here is the fresco on the wall of the station building.
Ever more buildings arise as hand made model from styrene.

Campocologno street side

April 2010

Overview of the village

To the left in 2008, below in 2016 with ever more hand made houses from styrene.

A brief comparison with the original, the old loading area next to and in front of the station.

Police control in Campocologno

2008

The house on the corner starts to arise from plastic.

Left side under construction and below, in 2014, almost finished.

Arriving train on the south side of the station.

Train leaving Campocologno in direction Tirano.

New houses under construction

2010

First new house almost done

2011

Now the original

The house above in it's real setting.

The original

The emplacement seen from the south.

River

April 2007
The river on the right hand side of Campocologno.

April 2007
Finally a short film of a train entering the station of Campocologno. (5,8Mb)

For a virtual train ride you could start here on Google streetview.
Here you will notice that the station has been drastically adjusted and simplified compared to the situation in 1996 that we modeled.

For a cadastral map of the station click here on admin.geo.ch.

Back to the left side of Campocologno.

Back to the model layout overview on the introduction page.

Back to the Bernina map on the introduction page.