RhB R12

The Bernina Railway (BB), which is adjacent to the Rhaetian Railway, gradually introduced winter operations from 1910, which was not originally planned.
The Bernina Railway therefore only ordered two steam-powered snow blowers from the Swiss Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik (SLM) some time after it was opened to keep the route free from snow, especially from drifts , which were used in 1910 (R 1051) and 1912 (R 1052 ) were delivered. As these proved their worth, the Rhaetian Railway also procured two such slingshots in 1913, which, in contrast to the vehicles built for the BB, were not self-propelled. They only received one on the second axle of the first bogieActing auxiliary drive to make repositioning and turning easier. In operation, the snow blowers were pushed over the network by ordinary steam locomotives . Snow blowers designed in the same way had already been used on the Gotthard before, and good experiences had already been made with such pushed snow blowers in the USA . The first snow blower built according to the Leslie patent was created in 1883 and probably goes back to an idea by the Canadian dentist JW Elliot in 1869. At the Rhaetian Railway, snow removal was done with plows until the snow blowers were procuredand, in the case of drifts and avalanches, carried out by hand. If there were not enough helpers on hand, the snow removal took a correspondingly long time, so that the slingshots helped increase the reliability of the railway in winter.

In the course of the introduction of the RhB's new numbering concept , the two slingshots were given the designation X red d 9211 and 9212 in 1950. The designation X red d is made up of: X = company vehicle, red = rotating, d = steam-powered. The two vehicles were in regular use until 1959, when the first modern snow blower was delivered; after that they remained an iron reserve. The X rot d 9211 was canceled in Samedan around 1966 . After being scrapped in 1968, its sister machine , the X rot d 9212, was taken to the Blonay-Chamby museum railway in 1971(BC), where it was externally refurbished in 1984 by receiving a new tin roof and a new coat of paint.

In 1996, the Blonay-Chamby swapped the spin with the Furka Cogwheel Steam Railway (DFB), the 1990 X d red 9214, former R 1052 Berninabahn the property had. One of the main reasons for this was that the Bernina Railway's sling was not able to run on the rack and pinion route of the Furka mountain route because of its profile. Since 2002, the X rot d 9212, now again referred to as the R 12, has been revised by the Furka mountain line steam train in Goldau (as of 2010, see also the link in the link list). The Furka mountain route steam train intends to use the snow blower on the route over the Furka passto use again to clear snow. As the picture at the top of this page shows, the slingshot has been used on this route before on a trial basis. The R 12 has been operational again since December 2020.

SLM HG 4/4

From 1923, nine of the steam locomotives of the type HG 4/4 were procured by the French colonial administration for use on the cogwheel railway from Song Pha to Đà Lạt in French Indochina (now Vietnam). The rack-and - pinion locomotives built by the Swiss Lokomotiv- und Maschinenfabrik Winterthur (SLM) were brought directly to France and on to Asia and remained there until the line was abandoned due to the war in the 1970s. Two machines, which were returned to Switzerland in 1990, have been preserved at the Furka Mountain Line Steam Railway (DFB), one of which has already been refurbished.