The brand new steam boiler of the screw steamer SS SPIEZ has been commissioned at the BLS shipyard in Thun as from March 9 to 11, 2020. By means of its electric preheating device located next to the boiler in the boiler room, the boiler was previously preheated electrically to 8 bar. In the afternoon of March 9 the oil burner has been ignited for the first time, followed by the usual commissioning and test procedures.

The Pop-type boiler safety valves, which were first produced in an improved form for the new rack-and-pinion steam locomotives built in 1992 /96, are also produced for other steam locomotives as required. In the meantime, more than 30 valves are in use in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Now a further series is being produced. Interested parties can join this order and benefit from the resulting lower prices.

On September 16, 2019, the new steam engine was shipped to the BLS shipyard in Thun, where it arrived safely the same day. Shortly before, on September 12, it was again operated with steam for customers, see video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EmvZid8Hm0

When the Na-class steam locomotive 14A of the Australian Puffing Billy Railway had been converted to oil firing, much progress has been made regarding the elimination of the occasional "rumbling" noises. These findings have now been applied to the oill firing of "Heidi". Before this little conversion it was possible but rather tricky to avoid the rambling. The picture taken by Georg Trüb shows the test train on September 11, 2019 between Zernez and Samedan.

Das kürzlich erschienene Buch zur Geschichte der Baureihe 52: https://eisenbahnfachbuch.de/buecher-vorbild/bildbaende/207/kriegslokomotive-k52 enthält auch drei Kapitel von Dipl. Masch.-Ing. ETH Roger Waller zu den 52-ern mit Wellrohrkessel, über den Rollenlagerumbau der auf Fahrwerken der Baureihe 52 basierenden Klimaschneepflügen und der Modernisierung der…

The all-new steam engine for the screw steam ship SS Spiez of Lake Thun nears completion and has recently been sucessfully tested on compressed air and steam, see: https://youtu.be/e1MtoExDfhQ

A Swiss society named Pro Dampfer intends to build an all-new paddle steamer for service on the river Rhein between the Swiss town of Schaffhausen to the German town Konstanz on lake Constance. No doubt the new paddle steamer will be popular with tourists enjoying the beautiful landscape along the meandering river, free of motor noise and exhaust emissions, but the project is also interesting from a pure technical background. As a world first, so we think, the new paddle steamer will be fuelled with local wood pellets, resulting in a CO2-neutral operation. However, the calorific value of wooden pellets is much lower compared to fuel oil, requiring an optimized steam engine. DLM now has to do the engineering for the entire drive: fuel, firing, boiler, steam engine, auxilliaries and paddle wheels.